Work From Home Cybersecurity Exposures

Due to the exposure of COVID-19, hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. are having to adjust from working around other people to working within the confines of their homes. Now they may also be exposing themselves to another type of risk – cyber-attacks.

Email phishing attacks are by far the most effective means that attackers use to gain entry into an entity’s network. A phish is a link, attachment, or other containment in an email that is used to implant malware in a computer that can give hackers an opportunity to demand a ransom or steal data once the user clicks to open the phish. Email phishing is so successful because it only takes one person to accept an invitation to open a link or attachment sent by email to open a worm or virus that will work its way through the entire systems network. This is called spear-phishing, as it uses one infected host to spread to others. And attackers are very adept at making these emails look official – they may look like they are from the entity’s management, a supplier or vendor, a partner relationship, or some other work-related entity. Other successful email phishing attacks contain links to a joke, gif or emoji attachments, invitations to events or contests, etc.; anything that would entice someone to open the link or attachment.