Data Security: Home Office Continues to Be a Gold Mine for Cyber-criminals

As long as we are not fully used to the new normal of home offices, hackers will use the pandemic to their advantage. To do this, they try to manipulate employees so that they carry out security-critical actions.




The pandemic has made home office every day for many people. In addition, large parts of the workforce are currently being increasingly encouraged to work from home if at all possible. However, the new situation poses a challenge for data security in companies and at the same time increases the risk of falling victim to phishing.

The new way of working and communicating suddenly forced companies to offer alternative communication channels, regardless of whether they were ready or not. Accordingly, we are already seeing an increase in ransomware attacks this year. After all, the new way of working increases the target area for many companies, not only on a technical but also on a social level.

Working from Home Can Result in Phishing 

Hastily set up remote access for employees has given cybercriminals a playground to gain access to internal networks. In addition, the elimination of the familiar work structure also plays an important role.

Do you still, know all of your colleagues? If not, phishing or other cyberattacks are more likely to be a victim. Because if you used to get a call from someone posing as IT support, you knew it was a call from an unauthorized person. In the end, tech support was a few desks away. So you could easily check that it wasn't him. Now without the personal interaction, do you know for sure whether someone is your new colleague or another phishing attempt?

In the future, the general uncertainty will grow as the work processes continue to change rapidly. In other words, any change in the current status quo is an opportunity for hackers.

·         Employees are asked to return to the office? Click on this link and fill in your personal details and let us know which days you will be present.
·         Can't go back to the office? We are updating the remote access for the home office, please install this new tool.

Weak Points in IT Security

In 2021 we still expect the pandemic to have an impact on our lives, our companies, and our society. The consequences will change over the course of the year, especially with the availability of vaccines. Nonetheless, many companies seem to want to keep some of the home office processes that were introduced quickly in the first days of the pandemic. However, introducing new processes and technologies under these conditions is rarely good for data security. In any case, it is important to know that cybercriminals will continue to look for ways to exploit weaknesses in companies' IT security. Greetings from phishing and the distribution of harmful content.

As a result, companies need to better protect their networks and everything cloud-based to keep their applications and data secure.

Experts for More Data Security

During the pandemic and thanks to the lockdown with the home office, private and professional life are merging more and more. While email is still a preferred way of transmitting malware, others are becoming increasingly popular. Because when private devices (phone, tablet, laptop) are also used for work, hackers suddenly have many more opportunities to cause damage.

However, in the future I expect more CVEs (industry standards for security holes) to be developed and thus more vulnerabilities to be discovered in software, especially for those that are frequently used by consumers (e.g. shopping app, for delivery tracking). With this in mind, experts in the future will concentrate more on finding security risks in these apps/software and fixing them before they can be exploited by cybercriminals.

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