IDX President and CEO Tom Kelly Discusses Online Safety During the Summer Travel Season

With work and travel becoming more intertwined, privacy protection is as important as ever

Now that the summer travel season upon us, there are growing concerns that enterprises are neglecting the security risks associated with traveling employees who work while on vacation. These employees have become a prime target for hackers, and they risk exposing their companies to cyber threats even while taking time off.

Tom Kelly, president and CEO of IDX, sat down with Kevin Price, radio host for the Price of Business show, to discuss how traveling employees who work on vacation can threaten enterprise security, along with measures companies and employees can take to mitigate travel-related risks.

Tom pointed out that when employees go on vacation, they often aren’t thinking about how their online activity could expose themselves and their companies to a data breach or other cyber threats.

For example, if you’re using your computer or mobile device to do work on an unsecured public network, such as at a restaurant or coffee shop, that activity creates a greater surface area through which bad actors can target enterprise systems.

In order to mitigate travel-related risks, Tom argued that enterprises need to offer cybersecurity protections as an employee benefit that covers both employees and the organization, whether they are in the office or on vacation.

Those protections include secure remote networks and VPNs, identity protection, and multi-factor authentication on all devices. In other words, enterprises need to extend the same security blanket they would offer in an office environment to all working conditions. As Tom noted, this has been a top concern for organizations due to remote work, and it is now even more urgent as employees travel during the summer.

But employees can also take steps to mitigate risk. The most important step, according to Tom, is to limit your digital footprint while on vacation. Hackers can exploit something as simple as a selfie posted on social media to target you or your employer. Employees should also be cautious of their digital surroundings; a public Wi-Fi network is not the most secure environment to send a work email or conduct a digital transaction.

As employees travel for the summer, malicious cyber actors are on the lookout for any vulnerability they can exploit to target individuals and enterprises. But the tools you need to protect your business or personal information are available to you. Visit www.idx.us to see how IDX privacy protection software can help you.