Covid-19 leading to greater cybersecurity challenges
People working from home have been warned about the dangers of scamming by online hackers and have been advised to protect themselves from cyber-attacks.
The National Cyber Security Centre in Communications Minister Richard Bruton’’s department has issued a series of guidelines and warnings to employees working from home because of the Covid-19 crisis.
Mr Bruton said the COVID-19 situation has suddenly presented IT personnel and indeed all users with a set of cybersecurity challenges that, whilst not unique, are being experienced on a significantly larger scale than ever before.
The speed and scale at which cybercriminals have adapted their operations to exploit the general public’s anxiety and vulnerabilities created by the response to the COVID-19 pandemic has created a considerable amount of concern amongst the cybersecurity community.
Mr Bruton is warning that hackers are reusing existing infrastructure with COVID-19-themed lures and texts; creating additional infrastructure to mimic COVID-19 related organisations; targeting organisations’’ staff working from home; targeting health care services that are under stress with responding to COVID-19; and exploiting weaknesses introduced into business processes from their response to COVID-19 and creating malware with COVID-19 themes.
He is calling on people to also be wary of unsolicited phone calls claiming to be from banks, internet providers or any other entity requesting passwords, usernames or money for any service.
Homeworkers are advised to secure their home Wifi network, ensure strong passwords are used on various devices used for work and secure connections to ensure virtual conference calls are protected from hackers.
Mr Bruton’s officials are recommending that passwords should be at least 12 characters in length.
“Consider using passphrases; these are easier to remember and help in creating longer, more complex passwords – Use random and unrelated words,” the NCSC said.
Among some of the other tips include using words from different languages and using a combination of random numerical and special characters throughout the passphrase. They should also avoid using common phrases or quotes, personal words like family names, pets, local football club or anything associated with their personal life. Also they should avoid the reuse of passwords across multiple accounts.
When working at home, the NCSC said “work-issued devices must not be used by anyone other than you”.
