Covid-19 Worsens Corporate Cyber-Security Woes

As organisations struggle to spread the security umbrella to remote workers, experts urge renewed commitment to cybersecurity best practices

- David Ndichu

An authentic-looking email arrives with the subject line, Covid-19. The sender appears to be the US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, a trustworthy name in healthcare. There’s either an attachment or a link that promises “further information” or such.

Such emails seem completely genuine to the uninformed eye. Only with deeper analysis does a malware payload hiding behind the link or attachment become apparent, capable of giving hackers access to the organisation’s network and placing the company’s entire data at risk.

Such cybersecurity nightmare scenarios have confronted many organisations in the wake of Covid-19.

Cybercriminals went to work in the days and weeks following the pandemic, creating bogus domains, which they used to send phishing emails promoting either fake treatments for the coronavirus or some other prevention protocols, observes Tamer El Refaey, chief cyber security strategist, Emerging Markets, Micro Focus.

The result is that employees, desperate to get their hands on critical health information, fell for Covid-19 related phishing attacks.

As the Covid situation evolved, the threat landscape also kept pace. Threat actors are carefully following each development around the coronavirus and launching attacks that closely mimic new incoming information, observes Emile Abou Saleh, regional director, Middle East and Africa at Proofpoint.

“The large number of remote workers across the country presents an inviting target for cybercriminals to pursue in an attempt to compromise victims’ systems and gain access to corporate resources and applications,” he says.

WORK FROM HOME