Malware Attacks on Remote Working Devices Are On the Rise

In the light of the pandemic, enterprises globally were forced to transit their business operations into a remote working model – lading to an increase in malware attacks.

With more organizations working remotely lately, employees are away from secure network area. As a result, IT policies across industries have been revised to accommodate more tools, devices, networks, and apps into new places like never before.

Unsurprisingly, cyber-attackers are taking advantage of the exposure by leveraging different tactics. A recent study from Wandera reveals nearly 52% of organizations have experienced a malware incident on remote devices in 2020. This is up from around 37% in 2019.

Of the tools compromised by malware in 2020, about 37% continued accessing their corporate emails – even after being compromised. Another 11% of the respondents continued accessing cloud storage for their work.

In this context, many professionals highlighted the need for companies to determine how they can configure business devices to ensure fast, safe connectivity for all users over time.

Read More: Leveraging Data for Tackling Today’s Enterprise Challenges

Lately, enterprises aspire for robust endpoint security; however, they run into corporate dilemmas like: how companies can temporarily secure contractor systems while they access sensitive data. Besides, IT leaders are constantly focused on how to respect employees’ privacy on BYOD devices – as they are still enforcing some sort of security measures.

The professionals are usually opposed to organizational security as well as management solutions. Most of them do not want to be spied on – as they are aware such solutions conduct critical monitoring to ‘catch’ the illegal stuff.

Some key finding from the study re –

• In 2020, about 28% of organizations were regularly using an operating system with at least one identified security vulnerability.
• Relative to pre-COVID times, there has been a notable increase (for almost 100%) in connections to incorrect content within office hours.
• Android devices were 5.3X more likely to have a vulnerable application installed, compared to iOS devices.
• At the peak in the weekends, phishing attacks were 6% more frequent than during any weekday peak.
• However, on a positive note – only 4% of users were connected to a risky hotspot each week in 2020. This is down from 7% in 2019.
• Around 15% of enterprises had (at least) one device using an application, which leaked password data. This is up from 11% year-over-year.

Read More : Leveraging perseverance to push security measures in the post-pandemic world

As Eldar Tuvey, CEO at Wandera, explains – “2020 saw businesses struggle to transition to fully remote operations while maintaining productivity and security. Now, more than ever, it’s clear that secure remote access is imperative for organizations across industries.”

As the business landscape is embracing a new era of work, the legacy remote access tools are needed to be abandoned. This is in favor of a modern SASE security strategy – based on zero-trust network access.