Covid-19 and the pandemic has lead to more people working from home. It’s a great thing for the business owner and the employee who were able to continue working and serving customers during the coronavirus pandemic BUT that work from home culture has caused an increase in cyberattacks and hacks.
Why have cyberattacks increased? Because data is no longer as secure as it was before the work from home trend started. Business owners were not prepared for the shutdown and by how quickly they were expected to pivot, set employees up with hardware and software and not lose client trust. Hacks are not always something planned or malicious in intent.
65% Of Financial Institutions Suffer Hacks
An article in Info Security Magazine found, “Almost two-thirds (65%) of large financial services companies have suffered a cyber-attack in the past year, while 45% have experienced a rise in attack attempts since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
It’s not that the employees who are now working from home are malicious or are willingly opening the doors to hackers, but, “The main targets of this investment have included secure file transfer (64%), protecting the remote workforce (63%) and cloud/office365 (56%),” this again was reported in Info Security Magazine.
Cloud and Office 365 access and storage are part of the remote workforce and hacks happen. Staff need to be able to access documents and share them with other staff members. The cloud and Office 365 were seen as ways to do just that.
Seth Melendez, CIO and CEO of WareGeeks Solutions talked about hacks and said, “Company owners have to invest increase funds in security and data protection. Some are, and have done that, but others have not been the target of a ransom ware attack and may be convinced their business and their data are immune — it’s not.”
If a business has not been targeted yet by a hacker or cyberattack or with ransomware, that doesn’t mean your business is too small for a hacker to target. In fact, the smaller the business — usually — the lower the levels of security it has in place and the easier it is to hack.
Melendez said, “Investing in hardware and software to protect data is a step in the right direction BUT two-thirds of the equation of protecting company data is the company and its people.”
He said, “No matter how much you spend, you need to invest in training staff, instituting security protocols and enforcing those protocols. No matter how much tech you invest in you need to work with the people and on the culture to make that investment effective.”
One way a company can “force” adherence to a password procedure is to set up password protocols that require:
- A certain length password
- A mix of upper case and lower case letters
- Symbols and numbers
Require staff to use a password generator because then there will be no excuse to not adhere to your company’s new password requirements. The investment in a password manager and password generator is a step in the right direction of “forcing” adherence to security measures to protect your data.
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WareGeeks Solutions is a Roselle, New Jersey-based complete IT consultant and solutions provider. We specialist in Data Protection, specifically Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (#BCDR). We work with law firms, real estate and property management professionals and in the healthcare industry. If you have IT or security questions contact Seth at WareGeeks Solutions. For information or a consultation, call (877) 653-7146, or email us at info@waregeeks.com. www.waregeeks.com