Webinar report: cyber security – turning a crisis into an enabler for convenience

Hackers are seeing the coronavirus crisis as an opportunity to attack businesses as an army of workers are forced to relocate to home offices – that was the message from an IT specialist at our latest webinar.

Mark Lomas of Probrand said that the huge upheaval of recent weeks has presented a chance to exploit uncertainty that has surrounded working from home during the lockdown – and has warned that business owners need to act now to prevent them becoming another cyber security statistic.

You can view the entire webinar here.

Lomas said: “We’ve certainly seen a lot of that going on. There’s been a rise in a variety of different types of attacks. And of course, hackers are trying to exploit some of the human elements of this as well. Confusion around how to access systems remotely might lead people to be clicking on things that maybe they otherwise wouldn’t be exposed to, for example.”

The battle against hackers is ongoing, said, Lomas – something that industry giants are recognising.

He said: “Microsoft are fully acknowledging of the fact that security is something that they’re constantly having to battle with. And we’re not just talking about fighting bugs, we’re talking about the kind of attacks that security that malicious actors are trying to execute on. And what we really see here is a regular change in the way in which these attacks are executed.”

The figures involved in this fight are huge, said Lomas.

He added: “We’ve seen a big increase in the volume of Coronavirus scam email activity. Google alone has pushed out some statistics by saying 18 million scam emails a day are being sent on average. And of course that’s just google blocks by Microsoft and other email filtering solutions will take that figure significantly higher.”

Lomas said that was businesses should be looking for is a combination of robust cybersecurity and strong workforce empowerment.

He said: “On the one hand, we need to reduce that risk profile and deliver protection. On the other hand, we’re also trying to protect and maybe even improve workforce productivity, and empower our workforce to be able to work from anywhere in this case, primarily from home of course, using whatever devices they’ve been providing with or have to hand.

“Now, I believe these goals are actually integrated in nature. And whilst in the past we might have sometimes have thought of security and condition as being enemies of one another, I prefer to see security of something as an enabler for convenience, if done correctly and comprehensively.”