With all the workplace changes happening due to COVID-19 – work-from-home, hybrid, hoteling, etc. – many companies are revisiting their facilities strategy and some are deciding to moving to new, more flexible spaces. From our years of helping companies navigate these transitions, it’s clear that relocating your business is a stressful time and an intricate web of moving parts (pardon the pun).

With how reliant many businesses are on technology these days, moving all of these systems can be a significant feat and security can sometimes lapse during these complicated times of transition. Unfortunately, 95 percent of cybersecurity breaches are caused by human error. And the costs of these breaches to a business can be devastating. The move is stressful enough, and the last thing you want is to leave your data vulnerable while your office is relocating. Based on all our experiences, here some top cybersecurity mistakes to avoid during an office move.

1. Delaying Security Patches and Updates

While saving disconnections until later in the process can be good during an office move, the longer your computer hardware is offline, the more likely you will be to miss pertinent security patches. You may even be tempted to delay essential updates for your operating systems. Yet, these security patches and system updates are vital to your business’s cybersecurity standing, so we recommend making these patches a priority.

2. Sharing Passwords Too Openly

During all the chaos of an office move, it may be tempting for you to grant access permissions and disclose passwords to employees that would typically not have those credentials. For example, if the office manager is overwhelmed with handling client queries due to the move, they may pass a password to another staff member to run another task. Unfortunately, this is how private login credentials often land in the wrong hands to be used by people with ill intent.

3. Not Backing Up Your Data

Before disconnecting all systems responsible for housing essential business data, ensure that you have adequately backed up data. While losing data is not necessarily a cybersecurity problem, it can generate a lot of issues when your business gets back up and running. Look at cloud data storage solutions that have several layers of security to ensure you can quickly re-access business data once you have moved your equipment. If anything is lost in-house, you will still have the critical data you need to continue business as usual.

4. Relying on Questionable Wi-Fi Sources

A move may mean switching network providers when it comes to establishing your new office connections to the internet. Or, it may simply mean transferring your services to a new location. In either case, be sure to have the network set up and ready to support your Wi-Fi needs as soon as you get the office set up. Reliance on questionable internet networks can mean weakened firewalls, diminished security, and data compromise threats. For example, even temporarily connecting to a public hotspot could put your systems at risk of a malware attack.

Here to Help

Moving to a new office often causes understandable worries. However, planning and working with a team of professional office movers can help. Reach out to our team to discuss how we can help safeguard your systems and data during a move, dispose of e-waste securely, and help you get your team back up and running in your new space without missing a beat. And as an added benefit, we also offer data breach reporting and readiness testing through our partnership with CSR Professional Services, Inc.