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Hackers Targeting Remote Work Forces to Gain Access to Sensitive Data and Enterprise Networks

Thursday, September 17, 2020 22:44

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The year 2020 has been the most difficult year of the 21st century. COVID-19 has changed the way that people think, work, and behave. Businesses and individuals have had to quickly adapt.

The first few months of 2020, life seemed to go on as normal. By March, people were just trying to figure out how to stay mentally and emotionally healthy. At the same time, businesses were figuring out how to adapt to the new normal that required them to close their doors, focus on e-marketing, and function with employees working from home.

Not every business has experienced economic turmoil as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. You can think of some companies, like Zoom, that have thrived as a result of people working from home. Zoom and other companies like it are making exponentially more money, are hiring more people, and are experiencing phenomenal growth.

The same thing can be said of many VPN companies. As more people are working from home, they are turning to VPNs as a way of sending encrypted information. Many people who have been stuck outside of their home country have also seen VPNs as a way to stay connected to the news, business, and other information that might only be available in their home country.

The Explosion of Remote Work

Remote work is by no means new. There have been remote workers for just about as long as the Internet has been a stable means of transmitting data and information. And the trend toward more workers working from home was always moving upward in the United States.

However, the start of 2020 saw an explosion in the number of remote workers. Organizations needed to quickly figure out how to transmit data back and forth with their employees while at the same time maintain a level of security that they had inside their offices.

According to the IBM report remote work has increased the average cost of a data breach by $137,000. A sudden shift to remote work meant that most of the employees weren’t educated enough on cybersecurity and how to protect their devices while working from home. There are simple cybersecurity practices that you can stick to like using a secure VPN solution, installing a reputable antivirus software, using work related devices for work related stuff only, etc. That could drastically reduce the risk of cyberattacks including potential data breach that could cost a fortune to recover from.

But it’s not fair to say that the cybersecurity dangers faced by having remote workers is new. Employers have known about them for a long time, and that’s why many have been reluctant to have a work from home workforce. Hackers have also been aware of these dangers. This is why many organizations, even before COVID-19, already had protocols in place that controlled things like bringing your own devices to work or working on non-organization devices.

COVID-19 has exploited the weaknesses that were already present when employees worked at home. Before COVID-19, if an organization wanted an employee to work from home, they had the time to set up secure devices and to put the employee through strenuous training so that the employee could be the first line of defense in identifying and preventing potential cybersecurity issues.

Because of the pandemic, changes had to be made so quickly that these safeguards could not be put in place. Many organizations have hundreds, if not thousands, of unique apps that remote workers need to access. These applications require remote workers to use unique passwords. Employees might forget passwords, reuse the same password for multiple applications, which creates weaknesses, or forget their passwords, which leads to a host of other issues.

Cyber Scams That Have Had the Biggest Effect

Since the pandemic started, cybersecurity experts have seen a notable uptick in attacks that have interrupted business email or other forms of communication. There have been several instances where Gmail accounts and Office 365 accounts have been hacked because of phishing scams.

One scam that seems to be effective, especially when remote workers are involved, is where a hacker sends a fraudulent invoice that seems to come from a legitimate worker. The invoice has new instructions for wiring the money. The result is that money actually gets transferred to the hacker’s account.

Unfortunately, once the hack is complete and the business reconciles its accounts receivables, the money is gone. There is no way for them to get it back.

Other cybersecurity attacks have led to businesses paying for services and goods that they never received. And the account is still due because the money they paid went to a cyber criminal. For this reason, many organizations are revisiting the importance of enabling multi factor authentication on all the accounts a business controls.

It is imperative that organizations train their employees on the most common cybersecurity schemes. Organizations should require individuals to speak directly to a person prior to making any changes to ACH/direct deposits or other account information.

Protecting Physical Devices When Working From Home

Another issue that organizations face with remote workers is that employees are using devices issued by their employer or personal devices from home that have access to corporate data. However, since the device is outside of the protected environment of the office, there is the chance of the device being stolen or the employee losing the device. Cyber criminals may be able to access the sensitive information stored on the device or may be able to use the credentials on the device to gain access to an organization’s data system.

Some remote workers choose to work at a coffee shop or in a public setting. They may connect to Wi-Fi accounts that are not secure. As a result, they are exposed to eavesdropping, unauthorized access, and network hacking.

Some hackers have become adept at manipulating a network or mimicking the name of a secured network so an individual working from a coffee shop, for example, thinks that they are connecting to a legitimate network when they are not. To protect their data organizations should force employees to only use secure password protected Internet connections. If an employee is in a situation where they must use public Wi-Fi, they should verify that the Wi-Fi network is legitimate and all information should be sent through a trusted VPN.

Many remote workers work around smart speakers. They may have Amazon Alexa, Siri, or Google Assistant. All of these devices have become popular but are susceptible to eavesdropping and spying. Researchers and ethical hackers have exposed a number of vulnerabilities in these devices.

It is imperative that organizations take steps to protect themselves, their employees, and their data. The work from home environment is not going anywhere. Hackers are not going to quit trying to steal sensitive data. Therefore, organizations must take a proactive approach and train their remote workers so that they can be the first line of defense against hackers.

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