The Covid-19 pandemic caused an outbreak and created new challenges for businesses worldwide. To continue operating the workflow of the businesses regardless of the vast shutdown of the offices and other facilities, they adopt a remote work model for the employees.
All the data centers, cloud systems, departmental servers, and the digital devices on which they have long depended are now easily accessible by the employees from home to stay connected and run their business.
Due to these immediate changes, such remote work setups also brings Cyber Security a major concern for businesses and a more fruitful target for cyber criminals.
Evolving Nature of Cyber Attacks during Covid-19 Pandemic:
Due to the pandemic and lockdown measures imposed by the government, the cyber criminals became sophisticated to utilize this condition, they developed much new malware to attack and exploit the systems and devices.
There is a sharp increase of 35% of unseen malware or methods which is only 20% before the pandemic. Cyber attackers utilize the form of artificial intelligence and machine learning and use different mediums for the attacks such as SMS, voice, emails, etc.
Increase of Cyber Attacks in the Covid-19 Pandemic:
Due to the increase of remote working and everyone operating their business online, there is a tremendous increase in cyber attacks. Cyber attackers see the pandemic as an opportunity and exploiting the vulnerability by performing phishing and malware attacks on the targets.
The phishing tactics have evolved and cyber criminals are using Covid-19 themed attacks by sending phishing emails, creating malicious fake websites related to coronavirus related news, etc. In fact, there is a huge increase of 600% on Covid-19 related phishing emails in recent times.
Image source: Paloalto Networks
While remote working, 47% of people fall into phishing scams related to covid-19.
Phishing campaigns were used by the cyber attackers on the Covid-19 news related to vaccine development, treatments, deaths, count of affected persons, etc.
For example, attackers have been spreading malware by adding text from news stories related to Coronavirus to phishing emails to bypass security software applications that utilize artificial intelligence and machine learning to discover it.
In the below screenshot, an example of the covid-19 themed phishing attack. Hackers used a fake google form where it asks the user to give the person’s email address and password to participate in the company covid-19 screening program. To look legitimate, in the subsequent pages, the form asks the health-related questions and the final question before submission will be digitally sign the form by entering the employee’s full name.
Another way cyber criminals are targeting is by creating fake temporary websites on Covid-19. They attract people to these fake websites and inject malicious code into their digital systems and devices.
For example, below is the screenshot of a fake Covid-19 interactive map using the name of Johns Hopkins University. It uses the malware AZORult information stealer, which harvests passwords, login data and stored browser information from infected devices.
Malicious coronavirus themed websites have also been engaging in fake donations for the Covid-19 victims through email links. Various mobile apps giving covid-19 patient counts, deaths, status are also loaded with viruses and theft malware.
Remote video conferencing tools have also been a victim and have been exploited for vulnerabilities in them.
Due to this, ransomware attacks also become more sophisticated as cyber criminals incorporate data leakage attacks with ransomware and demand the victims to pay the ransom.
Businesses and brands without the protection of this kind of sophisticated attacks, left themselves, employees and customers vulnerable.
Must Read | Mitigation Steps to Prevent Ransomware Attack | What is Ransomware Attack? | How Ransomware Malware gains Access to Devices | Click Here | Ransomware Attack – How to Prevent and Protect?
Reason for the Increase of Cyber Attacks during Covid-19 Pandemic:
There was a big challenge for the small and medium sized organizations on remote working.
As, in a short period of time, they have to increase their capabilities for work at home for the employees and unfortunately, Cyber Security will always not be a priority.
Due to the shortage of devices and systems during the pandemic and strained budgets, these companies have allowed their employees to utilize their personal devices to access corporate information.
Basically, it is possible that organizations failed to check that personal devices are equipped with standard security protections or not and just depend on the VPN technologies that these devices default did not design for.
There is always remote work that doesn’t provide the same level of cyber security as an office environment. A home network doesn’t have sophisticated enterprise prevention and detection measures and an employee may not perform an antivirus protection scan regularly.
Also, most remote workers use Wi-Fi networks for internet services that are much easier to attack.
Must Read | Wi-Fi Security Practices for General Users and Organizations | What is Wi-Fi? | Evolution of Wi-Fi and its Impact | Click Here | Wi-Fi Security Best Practices
Another reason for the increase in cyber attacks is that corporate data and information are easily visible to outsiders. Before, the sensitive information of the organization can be viewed and accessed in well protected company network infrastructure.
But due to the pandemic conditions, where forcefully companies have to utilize remote work environments to run their businesses, their data and information are unknowingly or inattentively viewed and accessed apart from the authorized person such as family members, social visitors, etc.
Conclusion:
Due to this increase of cyber attacks during this covid-19 pandemic, Cyber Security becomes a major concern and also gives us a new age of cyber awareness as companies adopt the remote work environment.
In the middle of the second wave and potential third wave, the companies should give additional observation in perspective of growing threats and plan different ways to prevent successful cyber attacks rather than acknowledging them after they occur.
This pandemic has enlightened us that prevention measures are a key to successfully restricting the risks related to cyber attacks. Organizations that are already affected and exploited with vulnerabilities in their environment should prioritize reducing the cyber security loopholes.
Additionally, corporate devices should comply with standard protocol and restrictions to access confidential and sensitive company information remotely. For the corporate information accessing in the personal devices, cyber risks should be evaluated and necessary actions should be performed to limit the cyber threat vulnerability.
Cyber criminals will still continue to exploit by using different tactics as the world is not fully recovered by covid-19. It is important to the companies to enhance their cyber security measures into their corporate culture and it will still remain vigilant till the normal phase takes place in the world.
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