As an effort to not only prevent the further spread of Coronavirus but also to flatten the curve, the majority of businesses have instilled a work from home (WFH) policy. While this transition is crucial during this ongoing pandemic to ensure business operations are still up and running, a sudden shift to remote working surely puts the security of your networks and IT infrastructure at a huge risk.
No matter how well your digital agency has built the website design, it is important to have strict security measures in place to prevent potential cyber attacks and make sure business continuity.
That said, it is highly likely that your in-house IT team is overwhelmed trying to leverage automated technologies and place stringent security.
This is where your organisation can make use of security ratings. With these ratings, you can identify and eliminate possible threats to your cyber security posture and third party systems while creating a safer environment for remote working.
In this article, we have mentioned some of the biggest threats your business is likely to experience in the wake of the pandemic.
Additionally, we have also highlighted how you can determine the threats and get rid of them before they cause a huge issue.
Table of Contents
Complete Access To Business Networks
While the majority of WFH policies comprise various guidelines, it’s next to impossible to ensure that your staff is adhering to them.
What’s more, access to company networks outside the business premises can result in an increased risk of unaccredited access and data breaches. This is likely to be your primary concern since a lot of people working remotely might not make use of a VPN to access the company network.
This means your staff may not even have those IT security systems like firewall, network behaviour analytics, and IDS, making you more vulnerable to cyber attacks.
CYBRI is a U.S.-based penetration testing company helping businesses detect and remediate mission-critical vulnerabilities before they get exploited by hackers. Cybri penetration testing provides state of the art penetration testing services performed by the CYBRI Red Team (CRT) as well as virtual CISO (V CISO) programs to ensure that all businesses receive this needed level of protection.
Also Read: Cybersecurity: Here Are The Security Trends Of 2021
How To Secure Your Networks
As your staff may connect to the Internet via unsecured networks, your business needs to make sure a secure and robust HTTPS connection is leveraged to access corporate portals along with having a business disaster recovery plan.
Not having an unbreachable connection can lead to malicious activities between your website and browser, resulting in attacks and data leaks.
Along with secured connections, you can use app security measures to enable your IT team to determine potential security risks and vulnerabilities linked to your website apps.
Phishing Attack
One of the biggest cyber security threats, phishing attacks have been taking place for quite some time. However, now that the workforce has become entirely remote, the odds of receiving fake emails and other communications has only increased.
This will further make it all the more difficult for your employees to comprehend what’s a genuine email and what’s a scam.
As per the latest studies, it has been revealed that cyber criminals are leveraging general uncertainty and other crucial data about Coronavirus to connect with users through phishing email attacks.
How To Identify Phishing Attack
You can make use of domain name detection tools to assist your business to understand whether it has faced a phishing attack.
These tools comprise domain names that are closely associated with the well-known, legitimate, and reputable ones, for example, Farebook rather than Facebook.
This type of cyber attack focuses on distributing phish or malware among your employees to steal their confidential information by imitating a legitimate website. However, with domain name detection tools, your business can review various domains and identify whether it is a legitimate one or indeed a malicious site.
Also Read: Cyber Attacks: 3 Types Of Threats To Watch Out For in 2021
Spread Of Malware
No matter whether you’re a custom beer mats printing company, web designing agency, or an eCommerce business, the odds of an attack on your organisation is only going to increase. The reason being – all your employees will be working remotely and they won’t be under a robust IT infrastructure or network security devices as that of your office space.
That being the case, more cyber criminals will latch onto opportunities like spreading of malware. Moreover, they’ve already started taking advantage of the fear and lack of knowledge regarding COVID-19 to attack computers.
As per studies, it has been revealed that hackers are using an intuitive dashboard showing the number of Coronavirus cases and deaths (by Johns Hopkins University) in fake websites as a method to steal passwords. So, it’s important that employees start thinking twice before opening an unknown attachment or link.
How To Prevent The Spread Of Malware
You can use various platforms like ‘outside-in view’ to enable your company to see what exactly the cyber criminals are looking for.
Through these platforms, you can surface malware found by your IT team on the basis of outside-in view. Your business can then leverage this piece of information to identify endpoints that are more vulnerable to a cyber attack.
Other Essential Factors You Need to Consider
- Check who all have complete access to the business data and IT systems, and whether they are being properly secured.
- Make sure security patches are applied and all the systems and networks are updated the moment they’re available.
- Make sure crucial information is frequently backed up and other security measures are tested. Also ensure that you know who all has access to data backups.
- Download applications or software and open emails only from trusted and known sources.
- Secure your email to avoid receiving spam mails.
- Avoid opening attachments or links in your email that weren’t expected or have been received from unknown sources.
- Have unique and strong passwords in place and make sure you are changing them frequently.
- If you aren’t sure about something or find things to be suspicious, speak with your data protection provider or in-house IT team.
Conclusion
In the wake of this pandemic, the chances of cyber attacks have increased which is why you need to be extra careful about how your data is used. This will make sure that your sensitive information is safe and secure at all times alongside solid data protection measures.
During this crisis, what you need to understand is your business operations and working environment have changed.
Additionally, these changes have brought with themselves a whole new range of challenges, which is going to be all the more difficult in the post-pandemic phase given that several businesses have started preparing their staff to return to the office.
Nonetheless, the important message, in terms of reducing the perils of a potential cyber security breach during these uncertain times, is – to stay as vigilant as possible and follow the guidance and security measures that have been put in place!
Also Read: 10 Tips To Avoid Cyber Attacks
