If you were to go to one of the thousands of empty offices right now and open the drawer of an IT manager, you would surely find projects with titles like: "Eventual remote work scheme" or "Assessment for possible infrastructure upgrade and policies associated with teleworking". Faced with the need for a resilient, decentralized and pandemic-proof business, from one day to the next these plans became the cornerstone of the companies' operations. Those who had an innovative vision were one step ahead while those who decided to "box them in" will remember this time as one of the most complex exercises and one of the most adverse scenarios they had to face.
Companies and employees quickly adapted to this new modality. But so did medicine, education, transportation, financial institutions, industrial activity, consumers, and government entities, among others. And as offices moved into homes, this context left the door open for hackers to go out and attack vulnerable environments with a prey of choice: the employee who is outside the cybersecurity architecture designed by the company and even operating on personal computers or mobile phones.
This new global context, and in the case of Uruguay where the voluntary quarantine was respected from the first day by most Uruguayans, led to a notorious increase in the use of streaming platforms, already known as Netflix, YouTube, Spotify, Twitch. This led to an increase in frauds sent by email (phishing). In many cases stealing personal credit card data or credentials associated with these platforms.
In addition to this, we are presented with a wave of information about the Coronavirus in different media. Today, it is not only the user's responsibility to look for reliable sources and avoid consuming the well-known "fake news", but we are also the most vulnerable point of our companies. Hackers or cybercriminal organizations did not take a break, taking advantage of this situation more than ever, creating web pages with fake maps that redirected the user to other portals or directly downloaded malware on the device.
Another recent episode published by the BBC was the extortion of a US university researching a cure for the coronavirus. The hacker group under this attack was demanding $1 million to release the information that had been "hijacked" from the university. This attack is known as Ransomware and they are clearly seeing a huge opportunity in educational and medical facilities.
Bearing in mind that healthcare is currently one of the most important essential services on a global scale, the FBI released a statement focused on public and private entities in this sector in which it confirms the existence of successful attacks on a large number of hospitals linked to Remote Access Trojan (RAT) malware known as "Kwampir". Composed of different modules that allow the attacker to enter and remain in the institution's network and then gain access to identities stored in domain controllers, critical information hosted on file servers, industrial control equipment managers of the hospital's own network, among others. In these cases the origin is mainly associated with suppliers, both software and hardware, that provide services to hospitals.
Enabling teleworking solves part of the problem, but now is the time to act on security and typify each and every one of the roles that require access to systems to continue operating. Implementing second factor authentication solutions or tools to protect against distributed denial of service attacks for those who must expose themselves publicly are essential, among other measures, but it is also necessary to technologically equip and train people so that they can protect the operation of the business. Attackers are still active, they have shifted their focus and know that employees connected to the Internet are the gateway to gain access quickly, easily and silently.
About Logicalis
Logicalis is an international provider of digital services solutions that seeks to accelerate the digital transformation of its 10,000 customers worldwide.
Through a network of globally connected centers of expertise, leading industry experts (education, financial services, government, healthcare, manufacturing, professional services, retail and telecommunications) and strategic partners (such as Cisco, Microsoft, HPE, IBM, NetApp, Oracle, ServiceNow and VMware), Logicalis has more than 6,500 employees focused on understanding customer priorities and improving the customer experience.
As Architects of ChangeTM, Logicalis' focus is to design, support and execute clients' digital transformation by marrying their vision with its technology expertise and industry knowledge. From its deep understanding of IT industry trends, such as Security, Cloud, Data Management and IoT, the company is able to address its clients' priorities, such as revenue and business growth, operational efficiency, innovation, risk and compliance, data management and sustainability.
The Logicalis Group has annual revenues of $1.7 billion, with operations in Europe, North America, Latin America, Asia Pacific and Africa. It is a division of Datatec Limited, listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, with revenues of over $4.3 billion.
For more information, visit https://www.logicalis.com/
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