Jack Nilles, a NASA engineer, coined the term “Telecommuting” in the year 1973 using electronics to work remotely. At the time, he estimated this style of work to become the norm in about 20 years. His evaluation was right and remote working did pick up in many parts of the world and today the pandemic situation COVID19 outbreak has, however, made remote working a necessity overnight. It has changed the habits and work routines of millions. Thanks to the tech developments and improved connectivity employees can work remotely from almost any part of the world. However, these tech developments are like a double-edged sword and come with cyber risks. The current pandemic situation has created a perfect storm for Cybercriminals to capitalize on the latest trends to try and boost the success rates of attacks. The malware and cybersecurity attacks have been hitting all over, like NASA sees an exponential jump in Malware attacks as personnel war from home (source: ars TECHNICA) and the more popular Zoom conferencing is hit by fake Zoom installer downloading malware (source: Bleeping Computer). Everyone has to understand that no data is safely stored digitally. Information stored in data banks is often protected by some form of security solutions, but each of these data banks is subject to breach, whether due to human error or cybercriminal attacks.
“As the innovations are adding to the technology, hackers are getting even more advanced. With each user or a device accessing a network remotely it presents a potential entry point for hackers, it is important to ensure that all user access and devices are protected to the highest possible level to avoid damaging fallout from a cyber breach. In this pandemic situation to ensure the business continuity organizations must need to protect themselves with a holistic, end-to-end security architecture.” said Prashanth G J CEO at TechnoBind.
New technologies have made a common life simpler at the same time it has also brought a rise in cybercrime and the fact that cybercrime now permeates every facet of society showing why Cybersecurity is crucially important. It is very important to educate employees on how to secure the company data from cybersecurity attacks, some tips to address would be:
- Employees should be encouraged to log out from the corporate network at the end of every day.
- Employees should use complex passwords and should change these passwords frequently
- One should change their default settings and passwords to reduce the potential impact on their work of an attack via other connected devices.
- Use and regularly update antivirus and antispyware software on every computer used in your business
- Employees working remotely should be required to use multifactor authentication (MFA) to access networks and critical applications
- A VPN can be used especially when accessing the internal network to encrypt corporate traffic when using home or public internet
- Virtual desktop interface solutions is also a good solution
- To avoid risk, one should turn off any file-sharing on the work system and ensure home router or Wi-Fi access point has WPA2 security enabled while accessing or working on important documents
