magine if a bank had a million dollars in its vault, and then one day its employees each took a share of the stash home for safekeeping.
That’s a little like what’s happened with companies’ data and communications since the COVID-19 pandemic arrived. In the space of weeks, whole workforces transitioned from the office to their homes, straining the capacity of companies’ digital infrastructure and posing a major test of their cybersecurity readiness.
Related: How Safe Is Your Data While Working Remotely?
Six plus months later, many enterprises are still playing catch-up with the security risks created by the new normal of working from home. Weak or no home wifi passwords, laptops shared among family members, a lack of firewalls, and patchy use of VPNs, executing critical business transactions: these are some of the nightmares for IT security professionals. And there’s been plenty of evidence that a sense of urgency is justified.
Feeding off the pandemic
Cybercriminals have seized on the opportunity, stepping up their efforts to infiltrate company systems, prey on the vulnerable at home, and obtain sensitive data. In a survey conducted by VMWare, 91 percent of global respondents reported a rise in cyber attacks since the pandemic started.
The number of denial of service attacks tripled in the second quarter, according to a security report, as bad actors exploited the greater vulnerability of home networks. Ransomware and malware attacks are also on the rise, including high-profile incidents at Garmin and Carnival Cruises. It should be noted that most of the incidents are not reported and a ransom is often paid before business impacts are realized.
With remote work looking set to outlast the pandemic, businesses are being forced to change the way they think about cybersecurity. Although the importance of cybersecurity has been rising for years, it was still treated by many companies as something of an after-thought that only came to the fore when something bad happened.
Related: A Business Leader’s Beginner Guide to Cybersecurity
Now, companies in all sectors have to start treating cybersecurity as part of their organizational DNA and as an essential building block of the ecosystems that connect them with their customers and third-party partners. The posture is changing from being reactive to predictive. Threat monitoring is becoming a primary goal for most cyber-savvy organizations when it comes to reducing business risk.
Stronger security is a must
Companies have woken up to the need to have a robust business continuity plan after many were caught off guard by the sudden, unanticipated arrival of the coronavirus. Even many who did have an emergency plan in place found it was inadequate, either because a pandemic wasn’t one of…
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