Cybersecurity at home
Over the past few blogs, we’ve discussed how we got to where we are with remote work as well as the challenges and considerations that are key to making a remote work environment permanent for your employees. In this blog, we answer the question, “Okay, but how do we do it?” It is not enough to simply allow your employees to go remote. Your company must ensure that employees can collaborate easily and that their technology allows them to be productive. You also must protect your data and networks from the risk that remote work introduces. In addition, creating a comprehensive remote work strategy as part of an overall strategic IT roadmap that includes timelines and budgets can help your business plan for the future without surprises.
Enabling collaboration and engagement
Collaboration tools are a crucial piece in keeping remote workers productive, creative, and connected to your company culture. There are several solutions available that enable employees to engage with one another. For example, Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams include a comprehensive suite of tools that can improve your employees’ ability to engage with one another. Instant messaging (in chat rooms and between individuals), audio and video calling, rich online meetings, mobile experiences, extensive web conferencing capabilities, file storage, tool integration, and more make Microsoft 365 an ideal solution for those looking to make remote work successful.
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Keeping your company data and assets secure
Whether you implement a fully remote workforce, a hybrid approach, or just let people work from home when they or their children are ill or have other personal needs, security is one of the most important aspects of remote work to consider. When it comes to remote work security, the idea is that you cannot eliminate risk, so you must mitigate it.
One aspect of security planning for remote work is a usage policy. Usage policies are business rules and processes that employees agree to follow when working from home or in other remote locations—such as the use of laptops on insecure networks, the types of other devices that can be on the same network, password requirements, and more. The usage policy should be included in your remote work strategy and clearly communicated to employees during training. In addition, every SMB should have a security prevention, detection, and remediation tool, such as Microsoft 365 Security Plus, regardless of whether they undertake a remote work strategy. Ensuring your security tools cover not only your office network, but also your employees’ home networks is equally important.
Most home networks are insecure. They have dozens of devices connected to them—laptops, tablets, phones, TVs, printers, kitchen and laundry appliances, security cameras, smart home devices, virtual reality, doorbell cameras, and more. Every one of these devices is treated as an equal citizen on your employees’ home networks and each is vector that can be compromised and put your company data at risk. Your employees may also have other members of their household working from home, meaning that devices and data from two separate companies are sharing the same network.
As a business owner, you cannot require your employees to eliminate their smart homes, but you can design around it. Logic Speak is evaluating technology that provides a hardware layer of abstraction between insecure home networks and the employee laptops that access your company’s networks and data. With this technology, instead of connecting to their home wireless networks, employees connect to a device, which then connects out to the internet—segmenting your company data away from the other devices on the network.
Training is an often-overlooked piece of security. You can utilize training to not only teach employees how to set up secure networks in their homes, but also how to recognize attempts to breach your systems. While this type of training is rarely used in small businesses currently, it is more crucial when moving to remote work.
Enabling success
Throughout this blog series, we’ve covered important challenges, technology considerations, and security needs that must be addressed by SMBs that wish to implement remote work. Addressing these issues on your own can be daunting and is not likely within the budget or bandwidth constraints of your existing IT staff. That’s where a qualified managed service provider (MSP) can help. An MSP such as Logic Speak can help you develop a remote work strategy that encompasses all of the necessary considerations and technologies, with a strategic plan that includes timelines and budgets. Logic Speak’s Success department has vast experience in developing strategic IT roadmaps with expertise in standards and best practices, budgeting, and prioritization. They get to know your business, understand your remote work needs, and utilize a process-driven, strategic methodology to help you create your remote work strategy.
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At Logic Speak, our core values shape how we lead, how we work, and how we serve our clients. They’re not words on a wall, they’re filters for decisions and expectations for how we show up every day.
But here’s something we’ve learned the hard way: even good values have a shadow side.
Values, when taken too far or applied without self‑awareness, can create unintended consequences. What starts as a strength can quietly become a blind spot. And if we’re not careful, the very things we pride ourselves on can work against us.
So today, we want to talk honestly about our values, not just the best of them, but the risks of overusing them.
We Care for You
The strength:
Caring for others is foundational to who we are. It means treating people with dignity, empathy, and kindness. It means remembering that coworkers, clients, and partners are humans first, not just roles or tickets or invoices.
The shadow side:
When care goes unchecked, it can turn into avoidance. We may hesitate to give hard feedback because we don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings. We may tolerate behaviors longer than we should because we empathize deeply with circumstances. Over time, clarity suffers, and ironically, so does trust.
Care without courage isn’t actually care.
We Lean In
The strength:
We lean in when there’s a need. We take ownership. We step up when things are unclear or uncomfortable. This value fuels responsibility, initiative, and teamwork.
The shadow side:
Leaning in too much can become overfunctioning. We jump in to fix things that aren’t ours to fix. We take on too much instead of letting others wrestle and grow. Eventually, this can lead to burnout, resentment, or invisible bottlenecks where “that person always handles it.”
Sometimes the most responsible thing to do is not lean in, but step back.
We Love Our Craft
The strength:
We take pride in doing things well. We pay attention to details. We care about quality, process, and doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.
The shadow side:
At its extreme, loving our craft can turn into perfectionism. We may over‑engineer solutions, delay decisions, or become critical when others don’t meet our internal standards. What was meant to produce excellence can unintentionally slow momentum or make collaboration harder.
Excellence should serve the outcome, not replace it.
We Keep Improving
The strength:
Growth matters here. We believe learning never stops and that feedback, when handled well, is a gift. This value keeps us curious, hungry, and moving forward.
The shadow side:
Constant improvement can quietly create the feeling that “where we are is never enough.” Wins may go uncelebrated because we’re already focused on what’s next. People may feel like they’re always being evaluated instead of occasionally being affirmed.
Improvement without appreciation can feel exhausting.
Why This Matters: Blind Spots Are Part of Being Human
None of these shadow sides mean our values are flawed. They mean we’re human.
Every person, every team, and every organization has blind spots. Often, they’re not found in our weaknesses, but in our strengths, overused or unexamined. The danger isn’t having blind spots, it’s assuming we don’t.
That’s why self‑awareness matters so deeply to us. It’s why feedback matters. It’s why we believe asking questions like “How is this landing?” and “What might I be missing?” is a leadership responsibility, not a sign of insecurity.
Living Our Values With Humility
Our goal isn’t to live our values perfectly. It’s to live them thoughtfully.
That means holding our values firmly, but ourselves humbly. It means inviting perspective, welcoming challenge, and remembering that good intentions don’t eliminate unintended impact.
When we name the shadow side, we don’t weaken our culture, we strengthen it.
Because the best teams aren’t made of people without blind spots.
They’re made of people willing to look for them.
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