Over the past few months, a large portion of the workforce has transitioned to working remotely to adjust to the stay at home orders nationwide. While managers at organizations have set up work protocols for most remote employees, it’s important to recognize the important cybersecurity risks associated with working from home to protect your work and personal data. Some of the biggest cybersecurity risk factors include:
VPN Manipulation: VPN manipulation has skyrocketed during the lockdown as many individuals and businesses have opted to use VPNs for increased security. The problem with this is that hackers are taking advantage of this by providing fake VPNs and fake VPN sites. These sites prompt individuals to enter their information and hackers can see all of their activity. This can be very troublesome because the hackers will gain access to any activity done on your computer. This includes all data saved like credit cards, usernames, passwords and more.
Zoom Bombing: Zoom bombing is the unwanted intrusion into a Zoom conference video call by an uninvited individual. The uninvited attendee(s) in a zoom bombing event can lead to eavesdropping and the sharing of your business’ personal data. With zoom bombing, it’s important to double-check your security settings on Zoom to only enable people within your organization to join your Zoom call. This can help your meetings be invite-only and prevent any future intrusions into your meetings.
Phishing: Phishing is even more prevalent in regards to cybersecurity concerns with the onset of COVID-19. Since the public is in constant worry and anxiousness, this makes everyone more susceptible to phishing campaigns. Employees may receive targeted phishing campaigns that request them to add personal information to receive false government benefits. If an employee falls prey to this phishing, it can put the entire organization at risk. It’s important to notify employees that they will not receive any emails from your organization prompting them to share any personal information. This will help them identify and prevent phishing attempts that can hurt your organization.
Home Wi-Fi security: Since employees are not working at the office, all of the security parameters that are taken for granted at the office like firewalls, network security, etc. are non-existent at home. This puts more importance on the security of the home Wi-Fi networks to protect both business and personal information. It’s important for employees to know that they should never use unsecured or public Wi-Fi to do any business related activities. This puts both the employer and employee at risk and the employee will be held accountable for this. To improve Wi-Fi at home, employees should:
- Use strong passwords
- Change the router’s admin credentials
- Strengthen Wi-Fi encryption
- Limit the number of people with access to the Wi-Fi password
