How COVID-19 Changed the Business Cybersecurity Rules?

The world was different before the COVID-19 pandemic. There were no such things as social distancing and lockdown. Just after the COVID-19 outbreak, In Cybersecurity Rules massive changes have been witnessed around the world. These changes were much more than ever before.

In fact, it’s not wrong to say that the COVID-19 has entirely transformed the way we work. Work from home approach has been accepted and adopted on a global scale. Office work shifted completely to work from home and enterprises around the world allowed their employees to resume work from home. This approach proved to be the best for combating the COVID-19 fight. However, things also took a worse turn and everything was not exactly the way it was planned.

The work from home trick helped workers for staying safe and it also stopped further spread, but on the other hand, businesses started facing severe challenges. The Coronavirus pandemic has redefined the cybersecurity space, particularly for businesses across the globe.

In this blog, I will try to cover some of the major challenges that companies had faced during the COVID-19 pandemic alert. Also, the scope of my blog will cover precautions that businesses took to mitigate those newly launched cyber risks while deploying remote working.

COVID-19 and the Surge in the Cyber Attacks

We all know that the Coronavirus crisis was at its peak from the first week of March till April. During this phase, the companies all over the world decided to follow the remote working and allowed their workers to continue work from home.

This is exactly the time when hackers got pushed to throw new malware for their nefarious benefits and cyberattacks surged up to 35% from March to April. Several new cyber threats were continuously emerging to hurt the business cybersecurity. For example, because of the COVID-19, the use of video conferencing apps like Zoom started to increase. People around the world interacted using apps like Zoom to successfully continue meetings at home, but errors like Zoombombing soon started to show up.

This was not the only malware there are many more. All of a sudden hackers started to attack home IP addresses. The reason behind shifting from office to home network attacks is quite evident. Hackers better understand that home networks are less secure than the office. Office networks are robust and contain authentic cybersecurity tools like heavy Firewalls, VPN connections, antivirus software, password protection, 2FA, and VPN router support. On the other hand, home networks are exposed and vulnerable and workers are sending all types of data including employee records, financial reports, and other confidential data. But only safe proxies can maintain your privacy and security such as the one listed at proxy-rarbg.org.

Therefore, it was a good opportunity for hackers to exploit the home network to steal private and sensitive work data from many companies. In fact, some hackers also send fake QR codes to spread malicious links and others tried spam LinkedIn invites. However, most of the malware was sent through emails.

The cyberattacks were exactly according to the new work patterns in fact, it has also been reported that before the remote working scenario, social-engineering cyber attacks were taking place in the normal business hours only.

But, once the culture of remote working had been accepted widely, the social-engineering attacks took place during all hours of the days even on the weekends. It means that our working hours have changed and people also started working on weekends therefore, cyber attackers got aware of the fact and manipulated their attacks as per the new working schedule.

The businesses were facing severe cyber threats even on the weekends and for longer hours than pre-COVID-19 settings.

How Business Combats the Worsen Cybersecurity Conditions?

Companies around the world realized the worsening situation of their cybersecurity space. Luckily, businesses took a comeback with some multipronged online security plans. Soon, remote workers got equipped with tools like antivirus software and Firewalls.

Not only that, but the VPN also sold worldwide and started to surge more than ever before. In fact online Canada VPN sales increased to 206.29% during the second week of March 2020. Companies also restricted their employees’ access to the information portal. Only a few approved employees with complete security measures were allowed to access sensitive information.

2FA, strong password protection and frequently updated antivirus software programs were also part of the newly followed cybersecurity plan. Many remote workers started using a VPN router to get network-wide security. Luckily, all these equipment controlled new cyber threats to a great extent.

Companies also advised their workers not to click on every link or emails they receive. In this way, the malware spread also got controlled and remote workers safely resumed their official work from home.

To Sum Up

We have witnessed some unprecedented cyber threats during the COVID-19 crises, companies and economies worldwide were facing a terrible time and declining more than ever before. COVID-19 has indeed redefined cybersecurity and today, we are obliged to equip ourselves with new tools to be completely secure online. However, the good thing is that we are still capable of taking full control of our online privacy. With every new challenge, there’s a new solution and luckily we’re not only finding new solutions but also implementing those successfully.