Shift to home working due to coronavirus increases risk of cyber breach

The ongoing coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has forced most businesses to change their working patterns, allowing employees to work from home in order to reduce the risk of infection, but this sudden transition has significantly increased the risk of cyber attacks.

According to cyber insurer Beazley, the convenience of working remotely also comes with the heightened risk of cyber breach and phishing attacks.

Beazley Breach Response (BBR) Services have recently recorded an increase in reported attacks by policyholders whose systems were breached via cyber attacks against their IT managed service providers. In some cases these attacks stopped the operations of hundreds of customers downstream from the IT provider.

It said cyber criminals’ methods of attack have also evolved. The two most common forms of attack to deploy ransomware are phishing emails and breaching poorly secured remote desktop protocol (RDP). RDP enables employees to access their work computer desktops or company’s primary server from home.

“With the convenience of enabling employees to work from home, using RDP can make IT systems more susceptible to attack without the right security measures in place," said Katherine Keefe, Beazley’s global head of BBR Services. "The coronavirus has forced many more employees to work from home and in this pressured environment it is very important that companies take the right steps to reduce the vulnerability of their IT infrastructure.

Keefe suggested: "Always ensure employees can access their computer using a virtual private network with multifactor authentication. It is important to whitelist IP addresses that are allowed to connect via RDP, and make sure that unique credentials for remote access are in place – particularly for third parties.”

BBR reported the number of ransomware attack notifications against clients increased by 131 percent in 2019 compared to 2018. With the growth in frequency, the sums demanded by cybercriminals also increased exponentially, sometimes reaching seven or even eight figures.

Keefe added: “BBR Services handles thousands of breaches every year and our data demonstrates how ransomware has developed into a more serious and complex threat over the past four years. Early on, ransomware was typically used to encrypt data as leverage for a ransom demand. However, more recently, attackers have been using ransomware variants in tandem with banking Trojans such as Trickbot and Emotet. This two-pronged attack leaves organizations not only with the debilitating impact of its critical systems and data being encrypted, but with the added risk of data being accessed or stolen.

“Although these attacks can be damaging and complex, some of the most effective preventative measures are relatively simple. More than ever, organizations need to ensure their IT security measures are a top priority and up-to-date, that they have access to authoritative, experienced risk management advice, and, importantly that employees are trained and alert to the potential threats.”