Security News > 2020 > October > How the enterprise can shut down cyber criminals and protect a remote staff
The coronavirus pandemic brought a new slew of cyber threats, feeding on how "Anxiety and desperation can make it easy to let one's guard down when it comes to online threats," Forcepoint principal security analyst Carl Leonard told TechRepublic in March.
Briefly, the 411 on the current cyber threat situation revolves around: Personal devices used for work can be hacked in a multitude of ways; the vast majority of hacks don't use malware; unemotional and undaunted by a lack of feeling, AI is a great tool to use, and won't be jeopardized by human error, and now is the time for companies to adopt and integrate much-needed security measures, supported by great company/employee communication, trainings, etc.
It's important to remember that it's not only team leaders and their teams telecommuting, "IT and security stakeholders are themselves more remote than ever from the people they are trying to protect," Cleveland said.
"There are some more manual approaches as an initial entry point that remote workers create opportunity for. Some examples in crude weak security on home routers or smart devices attached to the same network. Even in these scenarios, if a manual attack against something like a printer takes place to gain access to the network, at some point malware will likely be delayed against the target machine."
"IT security can reduce the risks from such threats by increased cyber security awareness for employees and practicing the principle of least privilege, meaning employee credentials cannot be abused by criminals to gain access to other parts of the organization's network. A strong cyber defense starts with the employee and the ability to detect attacks that start from their home network as well as the ability to reduce those risks with a strong privileged access security solution that can implement a least privilege strategy."