There were some high-profile cyber breaches during the COVID-19 pandemic, like children’s zoom classes being interrupted by adult material or video meetings that were hijacked by pranksters. We will explore the problems that arose during the pandemic and how you can protect yourself from these risks.
Increase in Security Risks and Criminal Activity
As more people were restricted to working from home, the level of network security was obviously much lower than office networks giving criminals and malevolent actors opportunities to strike. A report by cyber experts reported that there were as many as 4,000 cyber-attacks a day since the pandemic started.
Your website is in the public domain and can often be targeted, so one of the easiest ways to ensure it is suitably protected is to have secure hosting with a recognized IT provider. Even if you use free website hosting from companies like Wix, there is no need to worry – they are usually completely secure as well.
It is not only bad actors looking to profit from ransomware or spam, but some attacks took on a political angle. Another less obvious example would be the alleged voter fraud in the many elections around the world, like in the USA where mail-in voting became necessary for so many voters and opened up the risk of duplication or fraudulent votes.
The World Health Organization (WHO) was the target of many data breaches including 450 email addresses that were leaked and made public in April 2020. Overall, they put an increase in cyberattacks at 400%. This has led industry commentators to coin the phrase “Cyber Pandemic” in reference to the global Covid Pandemic.
Big Brother
It is not only the increase in criminal activity that should alarm us but also the rise in surveillance from national authorities. Governments are using the pandemic as validation for upping the big brother surveillance on its citizens. Nation-states are imposing tracking apps and monitoring software on the public in what they argue is necessary to monitor and control the outbreaks of disease.
Many organizations, including Freedom House who act as a watchdog for digital and online rights claim that our liberties have been seriously reduced by governments since the beginning of the pandemic.
Types of Attacks
Types of security risks include data breaches and ransomware.
Ransomware is an activity criminals use to hijack data or a network and ask the victim to pay a ransom for it to be returned or destroyed. Clearly, the data involved can be sensitive and most commonly will include emails, the contact information of customers or partners which if made public would embarrass the victim if not cause financial harm.
Data breaches are common because businesses do not protect their data securely enough. It could be your customer delivery addresses, phone numbers or payment details, but having vulnerabilities in your website hosting or database software can lead to holes that can be exploited. So, these attacks have become more frequent and more widespread, targeting businesses but even non-profit organizations like hospitals and schools.
There is a lot of “significant” cyber-attacks reported on the site of the CSIS that makes worrying reading, including an attack on the Irish Health Service in May 2021 by a Russian cyber-crime group, US defense contractors were targeted by hackers who discovered vulnerabilities in the VPN’s they were using and an email server belonging to the US State Department was compromised resulting in thousands of confidential emails being stolen in March 2021.
Things Your Organization Can Do Now
We have talked about hosting, but what other actions can you take now to mitigate the rising risk from cyber-attacks and breaches.
First has to be a thorough review and check on where vulnerabilities or data exist in your organization. Once identified, fixes and security software can be added to guard these most vulnerable points. Attackers will always look for the path of least resistance, so they will always target the weak points in your network and move on if they see too many levels of security.
Having a clear security policy and data policy are simple things your IT department or administrators can create. These need to be shared with all staff, especially those working remotely so simple things like password-protecting data sheets and encrypting emails are processes that everyone in the business follows.
Have secure networks in place that individuals can connect to for transmitting data and downloading information needed to do their work. Having local data storage and clients just increases the number of vulnerabilities. Get some more tips here.
Conclusion
It is true technology like VPNs, Cloud and virtual networks have been important in keeping businesses going during the pandemic and have probably led to permanent shifts in how we operate, however with so much information and data moving online, comes the greater threat of that channel being compromised. It could be something as innocent as lost data, or mistyped email addresses but the threat of bad actors is also growing and very harmful and measures have to be taken to protect your organization.
