Working From Home During Coronavirus Crisis Leads to Rise in Cybercrime

Published Date : Mar 26, 2020

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The deadly Coronavirus has taken the world down. It has not only broken the health services of the entire world but is also on its mission to break the internet.

People are being forced to work from home due to the exponential and uncontrolled Covid-19 pandemic. Millions of people have been forced to stay at home and carry their day to day office work from their homes. A lot have also carried their systems and company data with them.

This might give rise to data mining cases as home computers are highly vulnerable and exposed to digital threats. Many government officials in Britain, the US, and other companies have identified the possible dangers and have warned people about all the dangers related to working from home and remote workforce scenarios.

As per the recent data, Cisco systems has seen exponential growth in the number of employees asking for additional security support.

A senior advisor at Cisco Duo Security Wendy Nather said that a major portion of work from home employees have never done it before and are experiencing various security challenges.

She further added that the new scenario has opened the ground for numerous mistakes and loopholes which means digital criminals now have an open platform to exploit the available system and security vulnerabilities.

Many cyber criminals are trying to trick people by sending infected emails and password-stealing messages. They are also sending alerts and warning messages related to Covid-19 to fool people to click on the links.

Security experts have said that these hackers are faking themselves as Government officials or US Center officials working to control the spread of Coronavirus.

Covid-19 that has infected around 380,000 people globally and killed 16,500 people is also exploiting the digital world. In a recent case reported by researchers at Israeli company discovered that cyber hackers were trying to break into the confidential Mongolian government data.

The US security officials have advised people to use VPN connections to safeguard their system from unauthorized access and avoid any data leakage. On similar lines, the National Cyber Security Center of Britain has also released guidelines for companies to manage work from the home workforce.

Digital criminals are well aware of the loopholes of work from home scenarios and are exploiting it at a very high rate. Esti Peshin, cyber division head of State-owned Israel Aerospace Industries said that cyber criminals are doing their bit to break into various government and private organizations.

Work From Home – Ready Platform for Cyber Criminals

Many organizations are loosening the security standards and restrictions so that their employees can work from home. This is giving ready access to cyber hooks to exploit system vulnerabilities.
It also results in numerous security-related issues and lower-tech threats arising due to human errors.

Israel’s Pershin said that home desktops and systems are not tightly encrypted and are equally insecure which makes it easy for cyber criminals to infiltrate into various systems and confidential data.

Further on this, Cisco’s Nather added that the new home workforce scenario is a blessing for online scammers, digital invaders, and impersonators who pretend to be tech and security experts.

Stay alert and carry necessary precautions to keep yourself digitally safe from data mining and digital crimes.

Prachi Dani

Prachi Dani is a technical content writer who specializes in areas of science and technology. She is highly up to date with technological transitions and transformations. Writing is not her passion but the only thing that carries satisfaction in life. If not writing, you may find her engrossed playing action games on her treasured smartphone.