COVID-19 is having a huge impact on us all while we work from home, social distance ourselves from society and continue to keep our businesses going and surviving. For many SMEs the recent switch to home working has required a sudden implementation of new tools and new business processes in order to communicate, collaborate and transact with their teams, suppliers and customers remotely.
But how do you know whether you have set your home working solution up securely for you and your staff? Have your new business processes introduced additional risks and vulnerabilities to your business? Where is your sensitive information now being stored if you have suddenly moved to the Cloud? Are you ensuring to continue your current processes such as patching and vulnerability management during this hectic period? Are your staff aware of the many COVID-19 phishing emails and spams there are?
Criminals are ruthless at manipulating periods of confusion and unfortunately COVID-19 is a perfect situation for them to exploit – everyone is trying to find out as much information on business support as possible so when an email supposedly from Scottish Government or HMRC comes into your inbox you desperately click on it within a moments hesitation. Unfortunately some business will consequently end up having not only home working and disrupted business processes to deal with them may also find themselves a victim of ransomware or dealing with a data breach.
And how many businesses have thought about the offices now left empty? Is the post being regularly collected or has it been diverted to your home? Empty offices and uncollected post is another entry route for criminals to exploit.
I realise businesses have a huge challenge ahead but it is this disruption, distraction and confusion that is manna from heaven for these criminals who have no hesitation in exploiting this situation for their own benefit. Businesses need to stay on top of this as part of their transition to their new ‘norm’. Hopefully the ScotlandIS hub can help to navigate the information and offer for support that is available to businesses and we have already added some cyber guidance thanks to 7Elements.
ScotlandIS are organising a webinar which will cover these topics as well as give practical advice on working safely from home. Registration for the event is here.