9 Security Threats Introduced by Covid-19 and the WFH Rush

Covid-19 has hit the world stronger than professionals predicted; in a matter of days, the majority of the world hit a lockdown. We were happily shopping, buzzing through our lives, dining out, traveling places, and in an instant, most of us were locked in our own homes. This is the bitter reality of Covid-19 that we just have to accept, and even after so much time has passed, the pandemic seems to be hitting the second wave instead of getting controlled. Another global lockdown has become imminent. 

Despite the fact that most of the life activities completely froze down, there were some that remained alive. We are talking about the digital IT landscape. The coders, programmers, web designers, freelancers, and e-commerce, or simply persons who did earn their income from the internet was doing well during the Covid-19 global lockdown. Millions of companies even realized that it is more feasible to let the employees work from home (WFH) instead of making them come to the office during and even after passing the lockdown.  about our IT security certifications. Connect with our experts to learn more about our IT security certifications.

It is great for those people working from home, not being bothered every day to get ready and go to the office, and companies save tons and tons of money in renting and paying for other resources that their employees use when working in the office. So, is the digital world economy spinning at a more elevated pace and is everybody winning in this scenario? No, because there are many consequences than benefits in this pandemic. In terms of security threats, security can become a deadly problem in this situation, such as through employees connecting with the company's network using their own or other public networks.

As you can guess, these endpoints are riddled with various malware, malicious scripts and other dedicated elements that are just not in sync with any business’ security code and conduct. But this is happening right now as we speak, and employees are as clueless about it as the enterprises are. That is why some awareness needs to be brought to this thread so that everyone can review this scenario and can develop a dedicated safe channel to go through with it.

Why Is the Review of the Security Threats Significant During COVID-19?

To support the argument, hackers and cybercriminals don't take off or care about the current global condition or the fact that the economy and everything along with it is facing many issues right now. They will continue to go about their work to exploit vulnerabilities within the network and security detailing of the companies and exploit these to their advantage. It can be for extracting useful data that can be sold on the black market, engaging the company so they can ask for ransomware, or even releasing the confidential corporate data online just to nag the very enterprise in question.

Yes, hackers and cybercriminals with years of training and the right knowledge are capable of doing that and more. Therefore, it is essential that you understand the full scale of going with work from home strategy and other such implementations introduced by the Covid-19 pandemic. The following are some of the common security flaws that you should be looking out for:

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The Influx of New Devices

In the event of Covid-19, working from home became the norm, and that is why corporate decided to buy their employees tons of new stuff, such as mobile devices and laptops so that they can be facilitated with remote working. It brought a ton of benefits to the workers and the company in general by staying on schedule and not distributing the work. It also introduced a new security threat of adding too many devices on the company's network. If the network is not fully optimized, then with all this bandwidth load, it could go down or spring up a vulnerability for the hackers to follow in on and wreak havoc as usual.

On the other hand, another thing also springs up in mind. That is, how many of these devices were properly synced with or regulated according to the company's security policy? Was it loaded with antimalware or an antivirus system, a firewall or some other element to deal with scripted attacks and lending protection to workers? If not, you can only think of the number of affected devices, posed a risk to the company's network security, or worse, opened up a vulnerability channel for the hackers to exploit. And more importantly, having this kind of information, what are you willing to do about it?

Patches and Updates

Patches and updates are the only things that come in between your networking system's security and hackers trying to exploit it at any cost. Many companies and software entities release continuous updates and security patches to make sure that nothing of the sort ever happens to their customers. But the question arises that knowing the number of devices that are airborne and are in the hands of your remote employees, is your IT team working on the development of these updates and patches specifically for the devices that are working remotely and are connected with the network of the company in the same fashion?

How are you releasing these patches or updates for these remote devices that are not even in the same location and can pose a severe threat to your company's overall security and integrity? How are you planning to provide them with some support regarding the tackling of some vulnerability?

Personal Cloud Storage

Make sure that you have a policy in place that forbids your employees from using the personal cloud storage systems for the company's work or integrating any data or service of the company with them. It is important to do so, and there is reasoning at work here. Suppose your employees are using such cloud storage solutions, i.e., Google Drive, Dropbox or OneDrive, regarding company work and storing files that belong to the company system. Many companies have such policies in effect where employees can’t use these storage solutions at all because then the company itself doesn't have any control over the files/data that is being shared and stored there, nor even the passwords that are used to access these accounts.

That is why it is recommended that you circulate or develop the same policy for your employees working remotely from home.

Band-Aid solutions

Band-Aid solutions generally refer to techniques that are rather obsolete to contain a dedicated situation but are used to avoid financial stress. The same happened in terms of the work from home situation. Experts couldn't guess the ultimate duration that the pandemic will take to grow serious so they can work on some solutions to avoid the disruption of work, such as the work from home solution. This transition took place so fast that it took many companies and professionals unprepared. They couldn't get their employees a company-issued smartphone or laptop to assist their remote working; either all of these were sold due to the transition or it was not feasible in financial terms.

Either way, Band-Aid solutions were introduced here where the companies decided to use the bring your own device strategy to use their own device to connect with the company's network and start working remotely. This is where the issue persists; a company-issued device might come with some sort of security regulation or firewall system to make the remote experience more feasible or genuine security-wise for both the employees and the company in question. There might be a lot of loose ends here and there that might put the security of the company in jeopardy; that is why some serious action should be taken to avoid it.

Phishing Emails

Phishing remains the ultimate hacking technique to this date. Even after so much awareness is distributed across digital channels, people fall prey to it from time to time. Employee training is recommended to make sure that they can differentiate between a genuine and phishing email. There are usually a lot of tells when it comes to dissecting a phishing email from a genuine one. But some companies use a more sophisticated approach where the technical systems do all the monitoring and processing of the emails to stamp it as genuine or a phish.

With people working from home, they can’t have this service anymore, which means they are mostly on their own. And if a service can’t help them in this regard, then they would be able to help themselves, thus the need for appropriate employee training.

Local/Home Networks

Home/local networks are not that secure when it comes to the security of the firewalls and providing access for connectivity, some of them being public even offers free connectivity without providing any password. It makes things easier for the hackers; by connecting with these routers, they can instantly connect/interact with the corporate network, which is an extremely dangerous thing. That is why it is recommended that you look forward to changing your employees' home routers if they are working from the comfort of their home to a better security engaged router. This way, they will have some upgraded devices to connect with the internet and the corporate network.

Financial Cutbacks

Budget cuts have become the norm these days among IT organizations. Given these challenging times, it is not that surprising. But what is more shocking about it than most of the IT technology/systems and the training side of things are the elements that are getting beat down in response to these financial cutbacks. Although it might only seem rational to do so at this point, this is exactly the time not to extract funding from these two sections and support these more and more. You can only ensure your organization's safety or security if you heavily guard your digital interests, and that is by providing financial support to the IT technology and by training your employees to guard these interests side by side along with the digital systems.

Improper Authentication Protocols

It might be possible that when working from the office of the company, the employees need to complete multi-factor authentication to get access to the company's network. This is done to ensure that no unauthorized personnel can have access to the secured elements of the company's network. But for people who are now working from the comfort of their homes, there might not be such authentication protocols available, so there is a risk of lending access to unauthorized users. This is something that you should direct your energy towards, as it is a loophole or a vulnerability that needs to be tackled on a priority basis.

Using Unprotected Networks

Enterprise networks are something different, as these are promptly configured to be used by professionals. With the help of all the firewalls embedded into it, the connection becomes safer and more efficient than ever. People working remotely from the comfort of their homes might not be able to find a protected network, which is a real issue as threats can emerge while using an unprotected network channel to connect with the company's primary network. That is why it is recommended that you emphasize the use of a premium VPN service by the employees so they can mask their identity and connection while sifting through important data or making a contract with the enterprise's network.

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