Cyber Security and Working From Home in 2020

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic 2020 leading into 2021 has been extremely uncertain. We all know that remote working has been a blessing for businesses over the past year and is continually increasing this year - especially as lockdown measures are remaining underway in most parts of the UK. Working from home has allowed businesses to maintain a 'business as usual' approach' which has been both a blessing and a curse.

Unfortunately, working from home has presented cyber criminals with a way to exploit organisations and this is evident in the increased number of cyber attacks that occurred in 2020.

86% of consumers have been victims of either identity theft, credit card fraud, or a data breach in the past year. 

Similarly…

Web Application attacks have reportedly increased by over 800% this year and in April 2020 phishing scams had reportedly risen by 67% in the USA. 

As a result of the lockdowns at the beginning of 2020 businesses made quick decisions and were bulk-buying laptops so staff could work from home. This meant that businesses left themselves vulnerable to cyber attacks – covid-19 specific fraud in particular.

How can businesses prepare themselves for future situations like this?

• Employees must work proactively with employees to prevent data breaches from happening
• They need to make cybersecurity software a necessity to be downloaded and available on every machine being used by staff members.
• Secure connections to workplace servers need to be in place to avoid any hackers entering the system.
• All work-related devices accessing any business-related data need to be fully protected to ensure no breaches occur – even work phones.

What are the financial implications that could follow a data breach?

• Not only are data breaches detrimental to businesses, they can cost thousands of pounds to recover from and are sometimes financially ruinous – to the point where some businesses cannot recover
• In March 2020 Virgin Media disclosed a data breach that affected 900,000 people with names, phone numbers, emails and addresses being accessible to hackers.