With the dawn of remote work culture, we have seen a rise in cyber security threats which is a long standing issue becoming more prevalent in these uncertain times.  

According to an analysis by the World Economic Forum, there is a 37.8% increase in cyberattacks and data frauds due to a sustainable shift in the work culture. In addition, there is an increase in data breach cases by 63% in today’s digital environment.

As per the survey, conducted by scam watch's, 4560 reports aggregated an amount of $5,118,000 as a loss faced due to cyber threats during the ongoing pandemic situation.

Cyber threats and Businesses

In this time, when people are prone to job losses the most, cyber attackers and cyber threat actors have got ample opportunities to mitigate company's data and sell it to business competitors or demand a handsome amount in lieu of it.

An online survey by Apricorn shows that 19% of the leaders find it challenging to manage the technology-based employee's needs securely.

Businesses are more prone to cyberthreats during the ongoing Covid-19 situation than ever. It is happening primarily due to -

1.     The sudden drift towards remote work policies - Majority of businesses were not fully prepared to opt for work from home culture but had to forcibly do so to sustain the pandemic situation and keep their operations running.

2.     No incorporation of cloud-based security systems - Cyber attackers try to procure company's data and other relevant business details. The finance team is much more prone to such threats. Introduce high-end tech-based tools to make the business operations run flawlessly. Most businesses did not pay much attention to this before the pandemic situation.

3.     Weak Risk assessment skills - Most of the employees are unable to figure out which email is a cyber threat, and which is not. Businesses are not giving risk management training to the employees in the past to evaluate and self-report the threatening cyber-attacks.

4.     Zero Digital Trust - Most businesses do not pay heed to employ authentic and genuine methods to confirm whether the right person is assessing the business data or not. Right intends and convenient access, which should be the primary checkpoints, are often wholly neglected by the companies.

How to minimize the adversity of potential cyber-attacks?

Monitoring from the hub- Achieve strict surveillance from the prime server location by:

·      Employing advance cybersecurity tools and cloud-based business technology to provide high-end security

·      Quickly detecting and surveying the critical activities

·      Incorporating robust technology to trace when systems move away from the internal network

Work from home solutions - Pursue safe remote location-based work by providing:

·      Fully patched and securely configured remote access systems

·      Highly advanced IT tools and online infrastructure

·      Excellent data tracking system and connectivity with the central server

Create High-Security alerts - You can train your staff to remain alert by:

·      Teaching them how to recognize the email containing hidden cyberthreats

·      Conduct online sessions to give them in-depth insights about cyber phishing

·      Set up the security operations center and adopt high-end IT tools to eradicate the potential threats which the internal employee reports quickly

Bottom Line:

There are hundreds of cyber phishing threats sent to employees of various organizations in this COVID era. Train your employees about how to recognize and report them properly. Seize the activities of the cyber threat actors and secure your businesses.

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