In “Digital Vaccine Needed” (15 February 2021), NJBIZ features Surjeet Mahant’s perspective on the cybersecurity challenges that come with working from home. Surjeet notes that essential services, such as financial services and healthcare, are often targets of cyber crime because their systems are critical to providing needed services to large populations. In that sense, their mission-critical systems are frequently targets for bad actors. From a financial services perspective, a fully integrated, risk-based cybersecurity profile is essential to manage cyber threats and meet regulatory demands.
According to Surjeet, bad actors are continuously innovating threat vectors to exploit vulnerabilities and oversight as a result of the new way of working. These include but are not limited to:
- Phishing emails are a top concern, as employees may be more prone to open and comply with a digital request in the current environment. There is an increased risk with cyber criminals exploiting COVID-related fears as well.
- The blending of work and personal can open doors to bad actors, as employees may inadvertently create a security risk by conducting a personal task on a company device. There is also an increased risk with employees creating multiple copies of company data, including sensitive data, which may not be known or protected.
- Weaker technological infrastructure and inadequate cyber and data security on the home network poses risk to the organization.
- The absence of corporate culture, such as employee interactions, during lockdown is not just a threat to retention or motivation. It can also pose a threat to cybersecurity. Virtual meetings alone will not be able to make up for this void.
- Fraudulent customer access is a risk in a remote environment, particularly for service-based organizations. In a bank, for example, bad actors may take advantage of the remote-work environment to manipulate information to fraudulently access accounts or services.
Read the full article in NJBIZ (registration may be required).