Home office instead of office work: In light of the coronavirus pandemic, more and more employees are currently moving to home offices – initially for an indefinite period. However, this increased workload from home poses numerous security risks.
Inadequate security opens the door to potential hackers for successful attacks. Phishing emails specifically tailored to the coronavirus crisis are also on the rise. Here’s what companies should definitely consider in this context and how they can protect themselves.
IT security must not be neglected
The mass relocation of their employees presented many companies with an enormous challenge and pushed IT departments to their limits. The goal: to get back to work and fully operational as quickly as possible – sometimes at the expense of IT security.
The associated time pressure and stress often increased the susceptibility to configuration errors. In particular, the fear of no longer being able to women database operate led in many cases to a tendency to lower the actual security level in favor of operational capability. This, in turn, spurred cybercriminals to new attack attempts.
But what cyber threats are associated with working from home and how can companies protect themselves against them?
Old threats in a new guise
“The threat of cybercrime is fundamentally amar shanghavi analyst nothing new; quite the opposite: In principle, these are largely familiar dangers, but with a coronavirus-specific veneer,” explains Dennis Schröder, Team Leader Cyber Security & Privacy at TÜViT.
“The coronavirus pandemic is forcing companies to act quickly. Unfortunately, quality assurance often falls victim to time constraints. Short-term remote access is more prone to errors, and temporarily issued additional work equipment may not be properly secured.”
Therefore, companies need to upgrade where necessary and protect their IT infrastructure with appropriate measures, such as firewalls, secure VPN access points or access authorizations to central services and servers.
Penetration testing
In particular, helps identify and close existing security gaps. Our IT security experts (so-called “ethical hackers”) attack companies’ IT infrastructure components accessible via the Internet and put them to the (security) test on their behalf. Remote access and clients, among other things, are at the center of these ‘hacker attacks’, which are coordinated with the customer,” explains Dirk Kretzschmar.
Penetration testing is therefore an effective measure that companies can use to protect themselves as much as possible from cyberattacks .
Furthermore, business continuity management is strongly recommended and helps ensure an appropriate response to such crisis situations. The security policy and associated data protection instructions created within this framework can serve as necessary guidance for employees in such cases. In addition, certain processes should be protected with a security code word.
Employees as an important factor in the fight against cybercrime
In addition to technical security on the company side, every individual employee plays a crucial role in the fight against cybercrime. Employees can actively contribute to minimizing potential attack surfaces by securing their private work environment and avoiding unsafe or unknown devices on their home LAN/Wi-Fi.
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The same applies to the use of new technologies: Here, too, employees can ensure increased security by, for example, assigning different passwords for participation in video conferences and thus preventing unauthorized participation.
Many video conferencing systems also offer connection encryption, which is easily recognizable by the lock symbol in the application. If an open lock is visible, the encryption option is unfortunately not available. In this context, it’s useful to have clear security guidelines for working from home that employees can follow.
At the same time, the risk of becoming a victim belgium numbers of social . Engineering or phishing attempts is increasing in the wake of the coronavirus crisis. “Uncertainty, fear, and panic are excellent guarantors for successful attacks via phishing email,” notes IT security expert Dennis Schröder.
“As many companies are currently reporting restrictions or measures taken via email. Cybercriminals are also jumping on the bandwagon and sending fake emails to infect devices with malware or steal personal data.”
