How can you avoid the coronavirus having a negative impact on your cyber security?
From small businesses to large multinationals, COVID-19 means that most employees now work from home. In addition to operational challenges, IT departments have also had to deal with numerous attempted cyberattacks. How do you strengthen your company’s cyber resilience? How do you prepare for the return to normality? We present 3 measures to you:
Remote work has a major impact on the security of your company’s IT. Your systems are exposed to greater dangers. This is because security checks are not always applied to personal PCs in order to remotely support staff in an emergency and ensure that the security of your computers is maintained.
BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) is on the rise. Therefore, it is important that you protect and monitor your network well. For this reason, it is also advisable to separate personal from professional use.
- Configure and update RAS systems; monitor and manage all RDP sessions;
- Consistently apply important safety checks that may have been neglected;
- Ensure that the RAS servers are resilient enough to withstand DoS attacks;
- Do not store business data on personal devices; do not connect personal removable media to business devices.
Companies must ensure that security functions are also guaranteed during remote work. Personal networks are not as secure as business networks If work notebooks are taken home, the risk of theft increases: sensitive data is at risk and unauthorised persons may be able to penetrate the network system.
- Identify critical security activities;
- Analyse how remote teams perform system administration;
- Provide asset management tools;
- Accelerate the implementation of cloud solutions.
Your company must remain vigilant against external attacks. Cyberattacks can target your employees’ personal devices. Or your employees are tricked by fake software for teleworking. These devices represent new access points outside the company and can be exploited by cybercriminals for their own purposes.
During the coronavirus pandemic, mobile working was increasingly used. For this, the digital resources and IT had to be further developed. However, this expanded the attack surface to any hardware, software and related components of a company that are connected to a network (applications, code, ports, servers).
In order to be able to manage this large attack surface and take action, it is advisable to move to proactive protection:
- Provide staff with tips on how to identify suspicious activity;
- Make finance teams aware of the increased risks of attacks: E-mails, malicious calls;
- Check IT regularly
- Consolidate terminals and phase out existing hardware;
- Continuously record and monitor systems.
