With the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic, top web security organizations have witnessed an increase in the number of cyber-attacks, phishing attacks, Malspams and ransomware attacks, and website exploitation attempts. Due to this outbreak, people have been restricted from going out and almost everything is happening online, right from grocery shopping to payment of the utilities. Hackers are exploiting this panic and discomfort to craft malware and phishing attacks worldwide.

Cybercriminal Taking Advantage Of The COVID-19 Situation

The spread of the coronavirus has forced almost all the organizations to embrace the new changes of social distancing and working from home or remote working. This will continue until the government reconsiders the country’s stable development and upcoming economic plans. Amidst all this, cybercriminals are getting busy capitalizing on the global crisis. The cybercriminals are using the COVID-19 as bait to mislead employees and customers.

Increased Security Risk From Remote Working/Learning:

Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, employees are working from home and the students are learning virtually through VPNs. These VPNs are now considered as the lifelines for companies as well as schools-colleges. While using VPNs, there is a possibility of security misconfiguration which might lead to exposing sensitive information or getting attacked by the unethical hackers. Moreover, sometimes the employee might make use of personal computers or laptops to accomplish the official work. This will pose a great risk to the confidential data of the organization.

Tip: You must ensure that your VPN services are safe and reliable

Potential Delays In Cyber-Attack Detection And Response

The services and functioning of the security teams are getting impaired which is making the detection of cyber-attacks and malicious activities quite difficult. Accomplishing a small task of updating patches on the entire system is also a challenge as the working staff is not operational.

Tip: Organizations should evaluate the security defenses in place and explore the use of co-sourcing with external consultants especially for areas where key man risks have been identified.

The influx Of Cybercriminals:

To cope with this global crisis, companies are reducing the workforce. People are losing their means of livelihood due to government restrictions across the globe. This has increased the growth of cybercriminals due to the increase of idle people with unlimited internet access.

Tip:

You must encourage all who have lost their jobs or are currently being restricted to a location to consider taking this period to learn a new profitable skill and undertake online courses.

Physical Security Getting Exposed:

People are adopting the “Work from Home” policy to keep working and support various organizations in every possible way. Employees are making use of the personal wifi or shared wifi system to accomplish the work. This behavior can inadvertently expose the computing facilities and confidential information it contains to cybercriminals who are just waiting for such events to happen. In such situations, organizations must take measures to implement security in personal spaces and help employees to work effectively.

Summary:

The most important point is that all the organizations must take proactive measures to protect the data from malicious attacks and other cyber threats. You must organize programs to spread awareness among the staff and employees to be more vigilant and cautious while opening any sort of link or e-mails or forwarded documents. Moreover, the organizations must be careful to ensure their detection and alerting capabilities are functional while keeping an eye on the impact of having many remote workers. The widespread COVID-19 virus has created a great impact on cybersecurity issues. Taking effective measures to protect your company data and your client’s confidential data is very important and one must not compromise on it in any situation. Incorporate new Cyber Security measures to prevent any sort of cyber attack on your organization’s data.

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