The novel coronavirus has introduced potential threats to humanity and revealed the vulnerabilities of businesses in terms of their cybersecurity.
Securing infrastructure from potential threats that are lurking around the web, is one of the significant cybersecurity problems that businesses face and constantly have to tackle. However, since the world has gone into lockdown, combating cyber threats has become even more difficult.
It is showing how businesses across all industries are ill-prepared when it comes to their cybersecurity. “Opportunistic cybercriminals have taken advantage of the Covid-19 pandemic to target companies in sophisticated campaigns like phishing or ransomware attacks.
And SMEs have not been exempt from their target list. For example, we’ve seen hackers impersonate trusted government agencies, supposedly providing information about financial relief schemes to support small businesses during the pandemic.
By the time the business owner has clicked the link to look for more information, it’s too late,” comments Tim Sadler, CEO and Chief Security expert, Tessian, speaking on the situation.
In the UK alone, over 65,000 cybersecurity attacks are being carried out on a daily basis, of them around 4,500 are successful, a report by Robert Walters and data provider Vacancysoft. The findings also show that this lack of preparedness of enterprises to combat the cybersecurity threats reveals how many businesses, especially SMEs are at risk.
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Digitization of the retail industry has added a huge risk to its operations. Especially the smaller brands whose businesses went online without having sufficient security in place, they have been creating opportunities for cyber-attacks.
The ones who have become victims are finding it increasingly difficult to gain their customer’s trust. In fact, 44% of the public would not use the brand again if their data were to be breached.
“Hackers are well aware that an SME’s security may not be as robust as larger enterprises, and they will find ways to exploit vulnerabilities in their defenses to access employee or customer information or install malware.
The other problem is that, all too often, cybercriminals will target SMEs in order to gain access to the larger companies they work with,” adds Tim Sadler. Clearly, emerging businesses need to take the necessary steps to keep their business sustainable as well as secure.
On the other hand, with an increase in remote working, most businesses were seamlessly able to transition to work from home models. Though these helped IT firms and other white-collar ones to sustain their businesses, little attention was given to the vulnerability of IT & Cloud security.
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Over 48% of the companies admitted that they don’t have sufficient cybersecurity infrastructure in place to support remote working model.
“With businesses reportedly losing over £2 million per security incident, SMEs need to seriously consider how they could be targeted by cybercriminals and take measures to address any gaps in their defenses.
Better visibility into threats, the ability to flag or block suspicious activity, and greater protection for employees are important first steps, especially as people continue to work remotely,” adds Tim Sadler.
As businesses are increasingly transitioning to remote working and relying on internet and cloud services, it is essential that they also take necessary provisions to secure their infrastructure. This will secure their infrastructure and will strengthen their trust with their customers.
