Don’t forward work emails to a personal a/c, separate work & life: Centre

New Delhi: Do not forward work emails to a personal email account, separate your work and private life as much as possible, use the organisation’s approved methods to share files, store work-related content on government-approved services only. These are among the suggestions made by the Centre as organisations promote work from home (WFH) due to Covid-19.

These have been compiled with inputs from the US homeland cyber security guidelines, officials said. “Rather than travelling to office, the employee travels via telecommunication links, keeping in touch with coworkers and employers via telephone, online chat programmes, video meetings and email. A remote attacker can compromise the security of the organisation if proper security measures are not taken,” the advisory states.

It encourages using complex passwords for home Wi-Fi network and broadband router and sharing them only with trusted people. “Create a separate user profile with minimal privileges for work-only use. Close all work-related windows, applications, files, and documents when not in use. Do not use work email addresses to sign up for unauthorised, free tools. Grant access to your employees to corporate network only though a company-approved VPN with multi-factor authentication,” it adds.


For videoconferencing, the advisory suggests not to make meetings “public” unless they are intended to be open to everyone. Use password and features such as a waiting room to control the admittance of guests at private meetings. For enhanced security, randomly generated meeting codes and strong passwords have been suggested. Do not share a link to a teleconference on an unrestricted, publicly available social media post, the SOP reads.