Businesses have always been susceptible to fraud, and today’s fraudsters are taking things to a special level. Not only that, but their methods and approaches are changing all the time, making it difficult for organisations to stay up.
The pandemic hasn’t helped. Scammers are quick to require advantage of latest opportunities, and therefore the virus was a present . Phishing attacks using Covid-related messages rose by 600% and in at some point alone, Google intercepted 18 million emails trying to take advantage of our curiosity and concern about the pandemic.
Remote working has also given – and can still give – hackers and scammers an excellent opportunity to try to to more business. That’s because our habits change once we work from home. We not get the everyday psychological signals that put us during a ‘security first’ frame of mind – things like key passes to urge into the office, no signing in and out. No seeing people lock their laptops once they leave their desks, and no big warning signs about cyber security from IT.
Faced with the loss of those signals, we tend to be more relaxed reception . And hackers know this. Our wifi connections are less secure. We’re more likely to be distracted, and that we might not report worries as quickly as we might have wiped out the past.
Cyber security and remote working
What does this mean for organisations considering hybrid working? Essentially, it means you would like to try to to the maximum amount as you’ll to make sure your employees are taking cyber security seriously, wherever they’re performing from . Here, we share the highest five ways in which a hacker could get into your systems, and what you’ll do to undertake and stop them.
Risk 1: Mishandled company data
Your business is bound by the united kingdom equivalent of GDPR no matter where your employees are based. Personal email accounts are often easier to hack than organisational ones, and even a paper printout are often potentially damaging.
Make sure that employees don’t send company or customer data to their personal email accounts, or display it or print it out if they’re employing a shared co-working space.
Risk 2: Open wifi networks
Remote workers are likely to either be performing on their home wifi connection, or at a hot-desking space. If the wifi isn’t secure enough, hackers can easily access the laptops, tablets and phones using it.
Make sure that employees found out their home network with WPA2 (Wi-Fi Protected Access 2), a network security technology commonly used on wifi wireless networks and used on all wifi hardware since 2006, which encrypts data because it is transmitted.
It’s also an honest idea to recommend changing the default router password to something much stronger – preferably a password that’s a minimum of 15 characters and includes letters and special characters like *&^%$.
Risk 3: Control the hardware
Personal devices don’t tend to possess an equivalent level of security protection as company ones. So hackers are going to be trying to find people that are using their own devices. they’re easier to hack which means a much bigger , better return for the hacker.
Make sure that, wherever you’ll , you provide the devices that your employees use, which those devices have the simplest possible protection on them. Abandon any Bring Your Own Devices policies if you’ll .
Risk 4: Cyber security gets forgotten
As we’ve said already, the traditional cues for cyber-secure behaviour don’t exist reception . this suggests people tend to be more relaxed – which presents a true opportunity for a scammer.
Make sure that you simply send regular messages – via emails, team video meetings and training – to stay cyber security front of mind. Get your people into the habit of checking anything unexpected, from email attachments to text messages, in order that you’re keeping vigilance levels high.
Risk 5: People don’t know what to seem for
“It will never happen to me” is that the initiative towards cyber disaster. Clicking on a phishing link or opening a seemingly innocent attachment takes but a second, and we’re all in danger of doing it. Scams are sophisticated and appearance authentic – that’s why they work.
Make sure your people know what to seem out for. And quite that, confirm they need the proper behaviour towards potential cyber scams, in order that working safely becomes a habit, not an exception.
The importance of employee vigilance
It really doesn’t matter how you’re getting to add the longer term . Wherever they’re based, your people might be the target of a cyber scam. As long because the scams still work and still make money for hackers – and hackers make millions from their activities – it remains vital that folks have the tools and behaviours they have to identify potential issues and protect both their individual and their organisation’s data.
Flexible working is here to remain , and while that creates your organisation potentially more susceptible to cyberattack, you ought to still see it as a chance . Just confirm that you simply give cyber security the time and a spotlight it deserves – which means listening to training your people also as ensuring your IT systems are secure.
Remember, around 90% of successful attacks are right down to human error. now’s the right time for organisations to try to to what they will to avoid being a part of that statistics.
