Challenging times ahead in Cybersecurity Posed by COVID-19

The unprecedented spread of COVID-19 worldwide, which has still not subsided, has brought about lasting changes to our professional and personal lives. It has also forced organisations and individuals to embrace new practices with ever-growing remote workforce and organizations to adopt new cloud technologies to replace no longer functioning traditional approaches, but cloud adoption hits network performance when huge software packages are transferred to every endpoint.

The Bright Side of the New Normal is we have shifted from face-to-face to virtual meetings, from visiting our family doctor to consulting with him/her online. We have traded our runs in the park for working out in front of a screen, and our kids now attend school online via Zoom or Google Meet. The good part of all this is that life did not come to a standstill and we realized within a short span of time that almost anything could be done remotely via a computer or a smartphone. At the same time, the Dark Side of New Normal gives us flexibility of time and place. However, it also gives rise to various challenges and cybersecurity is one of those. While the world is focused on the health and economy related challenges posed by COVID-19, cybercriminals around the globe are capitalizing on this crisis to launch well-planned cyberattacks. The cyberthreat landscape has changed dramatically in recent months. In this scenario, the ones responsible for cybersecurity must aggressively confront the risks.

As digital consumers continue to be inundated with marketing messages in their inboxes, marketers are struggling to find ways to have their communications stand out amongst the rest.

During the challenging times, the threat actors are also making use of emerging technologies such as AI/ML to launch cyber-attacks. There are many cases found where the users demand simple access to applications wherever they are, from any device they wish. With this the cybersecurity challenges are far greater and more complex than ever before. Resulting in the growth of Firewall management becoming important to ensure that your business runs without any unexpected breaches. It is undoubtedly an ongoing and essential process as new technology is always incorporated into a business and the same can pose new cybersecurity related challenges.

Secondly, there is a need of the hour to prepare the IT teams to set up and deploy remote access systems and testing of all remote access systems is more important than ever. The rapid shift to remote working has resulted in the growth of personal devices being used for official use. This is compounded by the use of home networks, which in most cases is poorly-secured. It is vital to ensure that sensitive data is separated from personal devices or implement a dual-factor authentication for accessing such information. Storing such data in an encrypted manner can be used as an added measure.

At the same time there is an urgency to place the stringent BYOD policy in place for the employees to understand the boundaries while using personal devices for work. Considering the level of risk that digitization and remote working poses to organizations, an adequate investment in cyber insurance cover is the need of the hour.

So, beware and stay safe from all the adversaries

S Mohini Ratna, Editor, VARINDIA