The Impact of Covid-19 on Cyber Security

The Covid-19 pandemic brought manifold challenges and changes in the IT industry. There was chaos all over as to how would businesses continue to operate effectively if the workplaces remain shut due to the complete lockdown imposed by the government across countries. As time passed by, work from home became the new normal and most companies adopted this new operating model. This, however, tagged major cybersecurity concerns along with it.

The shift towards the remote work culture meant that information technology on which businesses have depended for a long period- their data centers, cloud systems, departmental servers, etc. needed more security and protection. Though the demand for digital infrastructure skyrocketed because of this and digital transformation accelerated rapidly, it also became a lucrative target for cyber attackers, and called for extra cybersecurity efforts and upgrades to keep the security level intact.

In today’s blog post, we will take a look at the impact of Covid-19 on Cybersecurity and what measures can be taken by businesses to mitigate the associated risks.

Rise of a new digitally connected world

Cometh the second quarter of 2020, the world became far more digitally connected than ever. Organizations that had people working under one physical location always were now compelled to operate remotely, and facilitating remote interactions among vast employees was indeed a gigantic and cumbersome task. The shift was a massive one as no one was really prepared for this. Fast forward to today, the impact might have lessened but remote working has become a common practice to minimize social contact as much as possible.

The Rise in Cyber Risks

Yes, the world became more digitally connected but it also became more vulnerable. The surge in digital communication and operation has also led to an increase in the risk of a wide range of cyberattacks at the same time. The organization’s security level was at stake and at the risk of being breached. This required real-time risk analysis and always-on surveillance for breaches at both physical and digital levels. It was the need of the hour that the security and risk management leaders provide a quick resolution to safeguard the company, on a massive scale. They had to ensure that the organization’s digital assets are resilient against cyber attacks. 

The IT department of companies had to deploy new types of collaboration software to keep employees synchronized especially the ones in agile teams. While this was a crucial step to take, deploying such software also increased the risk of the sensitive data being hacked that resided in remote workplaces, which were less secure.

But this cannot be avoided. Access to internal services and applications is needed so that the company leaders, managers, and other staff can effectively conduct remote operations. Since organizations had never made these services and data available previously over the Internet or a virtual private network (VPN), security leaders were reluctant to grant access without strict access mechanisms in place.

Enforcing enterprise security policies and controls on the remote workforce is a challenging task. Most controls have limited scalability and require ample time to deploy. Cyber attackers are well aware of the vulnerabilities IT organizations are facing and trying to use those loopholes to siphon off money. They are just seeing Covid-19 as an opportunity to scale up their illegal activities and are launching Covid-themed attacks in the form of phishing emails with malicious attachments that drop malware to cause system breakdown or steal sensitive data and credentials. Hackers are building temporary websites or taking over vulnerable ones to host malicious code. They lure people to these websites and then drop malicious code on their digital devices. Not long ago, a video conferencing app was in the headlines for being the victim of a data breach.

How to mitigate risks?

Before you implement anything, the first and foremost thing to do is to make your workforce aware of the scam and train them on how to not be a victim of any cyberattack. IT professionals also need to plan for the long term as many organizations have permanently adopted the remote work culture. Technologies and solutions that are effective and quick to adopt need to be deployed. For instance, cloud-hosted solutions can be adopted as they significantly reduce the deployment time. Not only this, cloud-based security and platform services also allow organizations to scale up the breadth and depth of security protection swiftly depending on the threats of the moment. And this can all be managed by IT professionals remotely.

The cloud also has a key role to play in security systems. Secure-edge, cloud-based data leakage prevention, and threat-protection controls can help secure a company’s critical assets. Furthermore, cloud-based managed detection and response services can be extended to remote workplaces.

In addition to this, organizations that leverage secure remote access technology can grant remote employees private access (without a VPN) to enterprise applications and systems. They can also consider the option of using privileged access management (PAM) services to permit special remote access to their IT and application administrators.

Final Word

Adopting this new normal of remote working calls for a greater focus on cybersecurity, because of the high exposure to cyber risk. Another reason behind the risk is employees using their personal devices to access corporate information. Truth is, working from home does not guarantee the same level of cybersecurity as an office environment does. Cyber attackers are exploiting these vulnerabilities associated with the remote work culture and trying to capitalize on them as much as possible. They know that the data security measures currently in place aren’t strongly guarded or robust enough to prevent them from making successful cyberattacks.

There are ways to minimize the possibility and impact of a cyberattack, however, it requires focused action and planning. Organizations need to make their remote working practices resilient to cyberattacks and enhance their development and application of security measures. And with the pandemic not over yet, companies should be proactive in addressing the threats and plan ways of preventing successful cyberattacks rather than responding when they occur.