Doing business during the pandemic has changed a lot. This health crisis has actually been a major opportunity for cybercriminals to attack and has resulted in a rise of losses by over 50 percent. Let’s look at pandemic cyberattacks and how they, sadly, might just continue.
Cybercrime equals Huge Business Losses
Over the past year, around 2 billion dollars have been stolen from businesses. Compared to 2019, there was only $600 million stolen. While neither of these amounts is ideal, you can clearly see the increase that has occurred. Beyond this number, an additional $380 million has been paid by firms in ransom attacks.
Cybercrime Attacks Are Up in Current State
Because of the mass amounts of people working from home, cybersecurity has been at an all-time low. Because of this, cyberattacks are happening around 4,000 times a day. Beyond the lack of cybersecurity, many attackers are using the pandemic itself as a way to hack people, like pretending to be COVID-19 vaccine researchers or pollers. Remote workers have also been found to be more vulnerable to ransomware attacks and there are some major strategies being pushed. These are:
- Emails claiming to contain COVID-19 vaccine information
- Messages claiming to be about government stimulus checks or payments
- Downloads of video or audio conferencing solutions
How to Respond to Cybercrime
Here are some of the biggest challenges affected businesses, that you can avoid:
- Unprepared businesses: These businesses had no security precautions in place to make remote work safe.
- Untrained employees: All employees should have security training and should know what to look for when reading phishing emails, or receiving phony phone calls.
Here is what we recommend for businesses moving forward:
Security Training- Your team can either be your weakest link or your strongest asset. In terms of your security, they need to know what to look for. Make sure they are educated about different ways cybercriminals will try to manipulate them, and what to keep an eye out for.
Keep Backups- A comprehensive and secure disaster recovery strategy is necessary. This includes an offsite data backup, which will help ensure your operations if an attack disrupts them.
Patch Software- Software vulnerabilities can easily let in attacks, so make sure that all your solutions are always updated and patched.
Separate Home and Work- If a work profile is available on a device, use that functionality to avoid personal and professional data overlapping and to better mitigate threats from seeping in.
It is your responsibility to protect your business, but it can be hard when unprecedented times stir up trouble. You’re not alone and we can help you prepare so you’re never left vulnerable again. Call MyTek at 623-312-2440 to learn how to avoid pandemic cyberattacks.