With the COVID-19 Pandemic still going on in full force you’d be hard pressed to find some bit of news that doesn’t make some reference to it. That said, as many employers have shifted their work forces into working remotely from home, new security concerns that a given organization may not have had to worry about previously now have to be considered. This Forbes article gives a great few suggestions for areas to focus on that may be lacking given the abrupt switch for many companies.
The first major big one that might be a bit obvious off the bat is that now employees are using their own home wifi networks to access work information. Instead of having stringent security protocols across the work network and devices, because the employee has to use their own internet connection, these networks are not necessarily configured to protect against malicious entities.
Phishing, an age old tactic and common scheme has had a resurgence in effectiveness. With all the general confusion surrounding this time, phishers are finding new success in legitimate-sounding e-mails sent to employees. If an employee believes the e-mail was sent from their employer, it’s likely the phisher is successful.
Finally, the article makes mention of insecure passwords. Many organizations have had to utilize some sort of portal now that remote work is a necessity, with the idea of new log-in’s and passwords, come a strict reminder about the security of passwords. As we all know, insecure passwords are much easier for some hacker to breach than something more secure that might be easier to define on a secure work network than remotely.
Hopefully these things won’t be forever as this pandemic eventually ramps down!
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