As businesses transition their workforces back to the office, hackers are distributing phishing emails and malicious files disguised as COVID-19 training materials. Return to work traps are becoming more common as cyber criminals take advantage of the pandemic.
Return to work traps take advantage of employees
According to a new report from UK Tech News, criminals are setting “return to work traps”, taking advantage of the training employees need to go through as they return to the office in its new form.
They claim many workers now need to go through various tutorials, webinars and training sessions. Ensuring they are compliant with new workplace rules set up to prevent viral transmission. Sensing an opportunity, cybercriminals are disguising malware as webinar recordings and other educational material, it was said.
According to the report, these new practices are mostly reserved for businesses in North America and Europe, where lockdown measures are slowly being eased up and people are being allowed to return to work.
Workers return to their offices and cyber criminals will abuse Covid-19 to spread malware and steal sensitive data.
Open emails and documents with caution
Make sure emails and documents are from a legitimate source from within the company. We are seeing a trend of hackers leveraging household names, such as Microsoft Office 365, to trick employees. One thing is for certain: the coronavirus pandemic is leading us towards a cyber-pandemic.
Protect you staff at home
Organizations are allowing employers to access work-critical information from their homes. This is a vulnerability as many employers working from home are in need for a VPN (virtual private network). Unconsciously they are downloading software from untrustworthy sites leaving their computers infected.
In addition, the tech support scammers will also emerge, pretending to be trying to fix an IT problem. They attempt to gain control of a target’s computer; and hackers may call pretending to be another department of an organization to get access remote and tricking general staff. On a bigger scale, cyber criminal groups in Russia, China and North Korea were exploiting the growing chaos to target national governments like the US, Japan, and Italy.
While some organizations are using tech to fight coronavirus, attackers are using healthcare organizations as a target. This will be particularly dangerous as those are the most vital among us at the time. A recent example was the ransomware attack against the University Hospital in Brno, Czech Republic. One of the largest COVID-19 research labs in the country, shutting down the entire IT network and causing anxiety to an already stressed staff.
Stay safe. Protect your business
Unfortunately, we do not see cybercrime going away in the near future. Cybercrime has rocketed since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic as many try to exploit people’s fears. IS your operating system and software up to date? Do you use the latest Anti-Virus and Anti-Spam solutions?
Contact the LIS Help Desk to discuss the most cost-effective solutions for your company. Our experienced and friendly team will make sure you have the correct protection in place. We will carry out an IT Audit and recommend upgrades to hardware and software. Why worry about your IT security? LIS take care of all your IT requirements.
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