A new class of business continuity in the form of remote working has kept sport, activities and leisure sectors running through successive restrictions and uncertainty.
Despite the sectors ingenuity, UKactive predicted that 90 million in revenue was lost on a weekly basis through successive lockdowns. Not only that but nearly a quarter of grassroots sports clubs may not be reopening as we transition out of lockdown.
Whilst remote working has become a new normal, for some businesses, it’s a model that is either not adaptable or susceptible to increasing cybersecurity risks and uncertainty.
With its boundless potential, putting IT-based continuity at the centre of your organisation’s recovery plan. Across the UK, activities sessions have been available online, from competitions to Zoom sessions that have kept a variety of age groups motivated and engaged.
Yet in their flexibility, it has exposed the activities sector to cybersecurity risks.
Extending collaborative software to your team
When your team is working remotely unless you are providing devices, they are using their personal devices to log in to your organisations’ internal systems.
Personal devices are subject to malware attacks from a myriad of avenues, with unsecured Wi-Fi connections, outdated devices or lagging security updates among the most common pain points.
Scams and phishing attacks have become more common so exposing your staff to phishing email tests can help to improve your understanding of the susceptibility of your business data.
The check and balance provide safety for your business and re-education can make your staff impervious to scams that seek to defraud them of bank details and personal information.
Encourage employees to normalise keeping up with their personal device updates including antivirus software and regular security patches for individual apps.
Performance and reporting tools that can tell you more about team usage
Remote working has reduced an organisations’ ability to understand how their staff are working. The conditions have led to large amounts of uncertainty globally.
Performance and reporting tools can provide your organisation with data that can drive your longer-term strategies, something sorely needed as we transition out of restrictions.
Transitioning is now predicted to include far more flexible working options available, all of which are susceptible to cybersecurity risks without data on how those systems are being used.
With data, you can see when your staff are downloading policy documents, registers, as well as which sessions are most popular or could be expanded. Consider visualising this data to further understand how to protect your business.
The threat of misconfiguration
Misconfiguration is one of the leading causes of cybersecurity attacks. Put simply, misconfiguration is the act of simply putting your platform attributes together incorrectly.
The gaps formed by this leaves your business open to attacks. As the volume of your business increases there is ample opportunity for misconfiguration or not configuring at all.
Increased internet-exposed storage means configuring those safety measures has to be a well—managed company-wide process. IT issues should not be simply for the IT team, but for them to work most efficiently, they have to be acknowledged and performed by your entire team.
How can you mitigate the risks?
Choosing a cloud-based partner with a clearly signposted customer success team should be your number one priority.
Whilst maintaining these checks and balances can be done internally, many of these practices can fall behind during busy periods or when uncertainty becomes more prevalent. Coordinate Sport can help you mitigate risks by managing the security upkeep and updates as malware becomes increasingly more sophisticated.
As you grow and adapt to a new normal, intelligent functionality can help you make better decisions and re-educate your staff to create a safer collaborative environment to share participant data.
