WFH new ground for cyber attackers
Volume of phishing incidents, data breaches risen by 400 per cent
Hyderabad: While work from home (WFH) or remote work has changed the way employees and organisations see workplaces, it has also cost companies heavily in terms of data breaches. Estimates put the cost at $1 million more on average when remote work was seen as a factor in the event.
“With most employees working from home, cyber-attacks have increased by 400 per cent and majority of these are social engineering crimes wherein these criminals use common phishing tactics to steal data, identity and money from individuals and compromise servers of organisations. Between 2019 and 2021, ransomware attacks rose by 158 per cent alone in India and a few of them are Telangana and AP Power Utilities, WannaCry, Joker malware, Mirai Botnet Malware Attack, BSNL Malware Attack, Petya and UHBVN Ransomware Attack,” says Krishna Yedula, secretary general, Society for Cyberabad Security Council (SCSC).
Some reports by cyber-security experts point out that while the number of identified attacks did not grow last year, there has been a clear redistribution of the attacks.
“One problem of remote work operations is that an organisation’s cyber-security frameworks are not available when employees are working from home. This can be a major problem while managing Identity and Access Management (IAM) for the organisation’s data network,” says Sonit Jain, CEO, GajShield Infotech.
Explaining what companies can do to better monitor their data, Hyderabad ACP (Cybercrime) KVM Prasad says: “There are two or three important things that companies can do to enhance monitoring – one is use VPN for remote working employees so as to browse and use the internet safely; second is to avoid or disable USB ports and third to avoid use of Wi-Fi as it is vulnerable to hacking. Also remote accessing apps should not be downloaded.”
Cybercriminals were spreading malicious files under the guise of popular messenger and online conferencing applications that are typically used for work. A study based on Check Point Threat Intelligence showed that in the starting months of 2020 alone, over 4,000 coronavirus-related domains were registered globally.
At the same time, according to Kaspersky (South Asia) general manager Dipesh Kaura, the sudden digital boost has made citizens more aware and careful of potential online/cyber threats and cyber-security than ever before.
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