Recommendations for maintaining data security when working remotely : Interviews with IT stakeholders post COVID-19

With companies having recently transitioned into working from home, more so in the recent years due to the appearance of COVID-19, the need to restructure the processes, invest in newtechnology, and adapt the users to the new working environment is a must. Due to the existence of available technology and processes that can be used when working remotely but where there is a lack of qualitative interviews with companies regarding the usage aspect, this study will focus on conducting qualitative interviews with data security experts from IT companies regarding their knowledge over the data security issues their company has when working from home and the recommendations they can share to prevent these issues from appearing.There will be 5 semi-structured interviews conducted with data security experts from IT companies. Their perspectives regarding data security when working remotely will also be collected. The collected data will then be analyzed manually by using Thematic Analysis to reach an outcome for this study.By conducting the Thematic Analysis, 4 themes were found, namely User Vulnerability on Data Security, Company Key Priorities, Data Backup, and User Security Measures. With these themes, it was analyzed and concluded that there are companies that still lack awareness and experience regarding data security and even though recommendations were gained to achieve this study’s purpose, it was made evident that without proper experience or communication within a company regarding data security, preventing data security breaches from appearing when working remotely will become difficult