Lesson 3.3 — Home and remote workers: counting them and explaining how they connect
This lesson helps the learner identify how many staff count as home or remote workers for Cyber Essentials and explain how those workers connect to organisational data and services.
CE questionnaire questions:
A2.4.1A2.4.2
What You'll Be Able to Do
By the end of this lesson, you will be able to:
- count home and remote workers correctly
- describe their connection methods
- avoid listing home addresses or home routers incorrectly
- understand how remote working affects later Cyber Essentials control sections.
Why This Matters
It also clarifies the difference between organisational sites and remote-worker locations, and prepares the learner for later firewall, device, MFA and malware protection answers.
The most common problems are:
- counting only full-time home workers;
- excluding occasional remote workers;
- excluding directors, contractors or volunteers who access systems remotely;
- saying there are no remote workers because the organisation has an office;
The Core Rule
A2.4.1 asks how many staff are home or remote workers.
For Cyber Essentials, this includes anyone who has permission to work remotely for any period at the time of assessment.
Common Mistakes
- counting only full-time home workers;
- excluding occasional remote workers;
- excluding directors, contractors or volunteers who access systems remotely;
- saying there are no remote workers because the organisation has an office;
- listing home addresses in the site/location questions;
- listing home routers in the organisational network equipment list;
Copy This
Work through the workbook activity for this lesson. Each question maps directly to the CE questionnaire.
Quick Checklist
Before moving on, make sure you can say yes to these:
- [ ] Who should be counted as a home or remote worker for Cyber Essentials?
- [ ] Does someone need to work from home full-time to count as a home or remote worker?
- [ ] Is the A2.4.1 answer a people count or a device count?
- [ ] What does A2.4.2 ask for?
- [ ] Give three examples of remote connection methods.
Your Action
Do this now — it takes 10–20 minutes.
Count your home and remote workers and record how each group connects to organisational data — VPN, direct cloud access, or other. Add to Section A2.
Key Takeaway
The remote working answers feed into later lessons on firewalls, software firewalls, device inventory, updates, MFA and malware protection.
Your Workbook Activity
Complete: Home and remote working register
This covers questionnaire questions: A2.4.1 A2.4.2
Next Lesson
In the next lesson: Network equipment: routers, firewalls and what not to list