The unique conditions of 2020 mean businesses are more reliant on being digitally connected than ever before. Cyber criminals know this, which is why ransomware attacks have become even more pervasive – and effective during the course of this year.
Hackers are breaking into networks of organisations ranging from tech companies to local governments and almost every other sector; encrypting servers, services and files with ransomware before demanding a bitcoin ransom that can be measured in hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars.
Part of the reason for the upswing in successful ransomware attacks is the huge growth of remote working as a result of the pandemic.
While employees and their PCs were once safely behind the office firewall, now they’re trying perched at a makeshift workstation in their kitchen or bedrooms, using all manner of cobbled-together technologies to get the job done.
“You have a much bigger attack surface; not necessarily because you have more employees, but because they’re all in different locations, operating from different networks, not working with the organisation’s perimeter network on multiple types of devices. The complexity of the attack surface grows dramatically,” says Shimon Oren, VP of research and deep learning at security company Deep Instinct.
For many employees, the pandemic could have been the first time that they’ve ever worked remotely. And being isolated from the corporate environment – a place where they might see or hear warnings over cybersecurity and staying safe online on a daily basis, as well as being able to directly ask for advice in person, makes it harder to make good decisions about security.
By Danny Palmer | October 27, 2020
