Remote Working Security Guide for Professional Services: Protecting Distributed Teams and Client Data
Remote working is now the norm for most professional services firms. Consultants work from client offices, home studies, hotel business centres, and airport lounges. This distributed model creates security challenges that the traditional office-centric security model was not designed for. Data accessed on a hotel WiFi network, a meeting recorded on a personal device, a client document emailed from a personal account — each of these represents a risk that requires deliberate controls to manage.
43% of professional services data breaches involve remote working as a contributing factor — IBM.
Remote Working Security Controls for Professional Services
A complete remote working security programme for professional services firms covers:
- Device security — full disk encryption on all laptops; EDR for threat detection; MDM for device management and remote wipe
- Identity security — MFA on all accounts; conditional access policies that assess device health before granting access
- Network security — VPN or zero trust network access for connections to internal systems; guidance prohibiting sensitive work on public WiFi without a VPN
- Data security — DLP to prevent sensitive data being saved to personal cloud storage; encryption for sensitive documents shared with clients
- Physical security — clear screen policies in public locations; screen privacy filters for sensitive work in public
Frequently Asked Questions
Should professional services staff use a VPN when working remotely?
A VPN encrypts traffic between the device and the VPN server, protecting against interception on untrusted networks such as hotel or coffee shop WiFi. For professional services work involving confidential client data, a VPN is strongly recommended for connections on public networks. Modern zero trust solutions (Microsoft Entra ID conditional access, Coro) can replace traditional VPNs by enforcing per-application access controls based on device health and identity — providing stronger security without VPN connectivity overhead.
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