Why Hackers are Taking Advantage of COVID-19?

Cybersecurity threats have seen a massive upsurge since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic that forced a majority of people to work from home which now is leading to attacks on remote workforces. Amid the anxiety it created, hackers have devised multiple ways to take advantage of the coronavirus and continued to exploit the fear amongst people in a number of ways, one being the distribution malware in the facade of Covid-19 or Corona related emails.

The threat posed by the Coronavirus has been seen to be scaling beyond human health, job losses and the collapsing global economy as it also set the stage for hackers to scam people for monetary and other gains. The urgency revolving around the novel biological virus robbed tech vendors and corporate systems of their ability to effectively tackle the risks. Scammers are well aware of the overwhelmed state of cybersecurity groups that led to a dramatic rise in phishing attempts and cyberattacks. Notably, hackers are exploiting the Covid-19 charged environment in various ways such as malicious infiltration of organizations, voice phishing, WhatsApp phishing, email phishing, social media, fake apps, and websites. As per the warnings given by WHO, criminals are also acting as WHO officials in order to scam people for financial gains or sensitive data.

Problems Arising with Security Operation Centers (SOC)? 

Security Operation Center is a centralized function set up across a company's IT infrastructure. The objective of the security operation team here is to detect and then respond to cybersecurity risks in order to safeguard important assets such as business systems, employee data, and intellectual property. Upon detecting a confirm threat, the SOC immediately isolates endpoints in an attempt to terminate harmful actions such as execution or deletion. It does do while ensuring no disruption is faced by the business continuity or lessening the impact to the best of its ability.

However, as the process of strengthening an organization's security requires sophisticated infrastructure (SIEM system), coordinated efforts and continuous monitoring by people and technology-with limited staff and people made to work from home, it has become difficult to prevent, detect, analyze and respond to cybersecurity incidents.

The SOC relies upon cybersecurity tools whose operations require complete understanding and expertise making the overall workflow complex, therefore the prevention and security can not take place whilst being at home.

Adverse Impact on IT Sector

IT sector is the lifeline of almost every global economy, it plays a vital role in the functioning of nearly every other major sector including human resources, manufacturing, finance, security, and health care. It's a well-known fact how heavily IT organizations rely on manpower to function, however, due to the lockdowns, quarantine periods and stringent curbs in the movement of people, many businesses are being shut down as the global supply chains of manufacturing are being heavily disrupted. IT professionals are not able to deliver on the projects, as a result of which production dropped by a significant margin and is expected to drop even further.

The coronavirus situation worsens with the security vendors not being paid timely and as a result of halted work, gates are being left unmanned providing potential hackers with an opening. Companies are advised to stay prepared for security breaches and individuals should consider sticking to strong passwords and keeping their systems updated as the number of scams is expected to rise amid the tremendous uncertainty of the crisis.

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