Remote Workers Have Adopted Poor Cyber Security Habits

Cyber-crime organization REvil’s most recent attack took place on U.S. Independence Day, knowing many IT specialists and other experts would be enjoying a long weekend.

Unfortunately, this led to over 1,000 U.S. companies and 17 other countries being attacked by hackers. One company who was impacted by this attack was software provider Kaseya, which was used as a channel for spreading ransomware to other corporate networks that used their software services.

These types of attacks are becoming more common, indicating that businesses have become increasingly vulnerable during the pandemic.

In fact, a survey from security firm Tessian revealed that 56% of senior IT technicians believe that workers have adopted poor cyber-security habits while working remotely.

“One of the main mistakes we’ve seen is moving company data to personal email accounts,” said Henry Trevelyan-Thomas, vice-president of Customer Success at Tessian. “When you do that, it’s likely you don’t have any sort of two-factor authentication. This then makes it easier for attackers to exploit that data. If data is leaked, attackers compromise it and it can end up in the wrong hands.”

The pandemic may have played a direct role in this increase, with BugCrowd founder Casey Ellis adding that “phishing work[s] best when there’s a climate of uncertainty.”