All businesses these days are focussed on trying to survive the coronavirus crisis. However, most of this has been about setting up a work-from-home infrastructure, putting appropriate business continuity measures in place, and doing all they can to come out of this with their business still intact.
Yet while everyone is focussed on the day to day, opportunistic cybercriminals are taking advantage of the distraction caused by Covid-19 in order to strike.
Cybersecurity During the Coronavirus Crisis: The Problem
Action Fraud, a crime detection unit, has received 21 reports of fraud where coronavirus is mentioned. This may not sound like much, but over £800,000 has been lost so far.
This particularly comes in the form of scams that savvy SMEs can recognise and avoid, but which some employees may fall victim to – especially ones that look as if they’ve come from an internal email address and contain a dodgy attachment that could spread a virus or give hackers access to your system.
Working from home has opened multiple vectors for cyberattacks – A broad shift toward work-from-home arrangements has amplified long-standing cybersecurity challenges: unsecured data transmissions by people who aren’t using VPN software, weak enforcement of risk-mitigating behaviors (the “human firewall”), and physical and psychological stressors that compel employees to bypass controls for the sake of getting things done.
Cyber Attackers are using websites with weak security to deliver malware. With the creation of new domains and websites to spread information and resources to combat the coronavirus, attackers are exploiting the weak security controls on many of these sites to spread malware via drive-by downloads.
Keeping Your Company Safe – Essential IT Measures Your Company Should Take During the Covid-19 Pandemic:
Test Your Security Strategy
If you already have plans to reduce the risks associated with cybersecurity breaches – now is the time to test them.
If you don’t, create such plans and test them immediately. You need to know whether your response to threats and breaches are effective.
It is better to take the appropriate action now rather than later.
Set-up Round-the-Clock Network Monitoring
If you don’t already have this in place, it’s critical right now to help you monitor for potential threats and eliminate them before they cause any tangible problem.
Balanced Approach
Since there’s nothing ‘usual’ about what’s happening, and that can mean that you need to take a more flexible approach to your usual IT security policy for your business.
For example, you usually prohibit the use of flash drives and installation of new apps to mitigate risk, you may need to find a compromise and relax some of those rules in order to maintain business continuity.
Employee Training
What happens if staff could technically get online but don’t know how?
Figure out how to show them how to access your VPN, video conferencing and other tools etc.
Remote IT Security Support from Pacific Infotech
If you need help with any of the above, Pacific Infotech’s IT security specialists are here to help
Should you have any questions or concerns, feel free to contact our Technical Support Team via one of the following methods:
- Email our support team at [email protected]
- Call the Technical support team on 020 313 76707
