Category: General Cyber Security

Must companies be afraid of internal cyber attacks?

July 15, 2021 /

One of the biggest cybersecurity threats for companies is internal attacks. To function correctly, companies need trust. You could have the best access control level system in the World, but this will not help you if your system administrator is compromised. Yes, multi-factor authentication and secret key split algorithms can help you mitigate part of these threats. However, they are not widely used. Most SMEs do not have the resources and knowledge to implement a proper access control system and thus are pretty vulnerable to inside attacks.

On the diagram, you can see the different use cases companies can use cryptography. Modern access control frameworks use cryptography heavily to ensure access to data is more restricted than ever. 

Following are some of the internal security attack vectors through which attackers can gain access to information;

  • Information leakage: One of the most common and frequently used methods by cyber attackers is a simple leakage of information. Or, in other words, industrial espionage. Many employees could use this approach to avenge themselves.
  • Illegal activities: A company must be aware of any illegal activities going in their system. Some organization members could use this approach to frame the company or use it as a proxy when hacking.
  • Downloading malicious internet content: Most of the time, employees do not intentionally download malicious content; however, this happens. In both cases, a proper access control mechanism will mitigate or at least reduce the damage.
  • Social engineering: One of the most common ways for attackers to gain access to a network is by exploiting the trusting nature of the company’s employees. An information awareness course could quickly mitigate this attack. 
  • Malicious cyberattacks: Technically proficient employees can use their system access to open back doors into computer systems or leave programs on the network to steal information and wreak havoc. The best protection against this sort of attack is monitoring employees closely and being alert for disgruntled employees who might abuse their positions. In addition, experts advise immediately canceling network access and passwords when employees leave the company to avoid remote access to the network in the future.

In conclusion, unfortunately, because of the enormous rift in the trust between employees and employers, internal attacks can become the new trend. Companies must be aware of that and do their best to implement proper access control systems. Access to resources must be given appropriately and audited for every organization member, no matter whether CEO or a utility person.

Where cyber criminals store their data?

July 8, 2021 /

Tracking hackers is not a fast and straightforward activity these days. Yes, most governments’ monitoring and data analytics capabilities are indeed becoming better and better. However, the privacy tools are becoming better and better, as well. There is a constant debate whether people must give more of their online privacy for safety. On the other side giving more power to centralized authorities can lead to dystopian states and not functional societies.

One scientific branch helping the governments to catch cybercriminals is cyber criminology. As a discipline, cyber criminology encompasses a multidisciplinary field of inquiry – criminology, sociology, psychology, victimology, information technology, and computer/internet sciences. But in short, its primary goal is to standardize the way we catch cybercriminals. As we can see, most of these disciplines are coming from the social criminology world, and they are primarily used to make a psychological profile of the attacker. On the other side, the technical aspects are crucial if we want to catch the hacker and how he/she managed to hack the system. Without cyber forensics and, most notably, computer science, we don’t have a proper way to understand what happened and how to catch hackers.

One of the main ways to hit criminal organizations properly is to target and track their infrastructure. Without a decent infrastructure, one can not do much in cyberspace. Sure, a hacker attack can steal a lot of data and create havoc, but they need computers, servers, and other equipment for all of this. The stolen data must be stored somewhere, analyzed, and eventually used for blackmail or released to the public. Like cloud providers, hackers need backup and retention plans for the stolen data, and nothing is for free.

One interesting case for such infrastructure is a former NATO bunker used to host Dark Net websites. The German police stormed the place allegedly used to host websites offering drugs, child pornography, and devices to breach computers. Over 600 police personnel were involved in the raid on what they termed a “cyber bunker data center” in the western German city of Traben-Trarbach. Seven people were arrested, with 13 more sought, although none were taken into custody at the site. The arrests occurred at a local restaurant and in the town of Schwalbach, near Frankfurt. Other raids co-occurred in Poland, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg.

This case is quite interesting because cybercriminals usually do not have so many resources to create a whole data center. Hacking has an asymmetric nature, and most of the time, attackers have fewer resources than the defenders. And these smaller criminal cells are targeting SMEs. In that case, a significant criminal group, most probably part of the mafia, owned a whole data center.

You can see how a standard privacy-oriented user would store their data in the cloud on the diagram. Criminals use the same techniques to ensure everything stored in the cloud is adequately encrypted and hard to track

In conclusion, we should track and hit cybercriminals by finding their data infrastructure and destroy it. Acquiring infrastructure is one of the most expensive parts of a hacker operation. It can take months to years to accumulate it. And here comes the cyber criminology value. We can use this interdisciplinary field to find where the infrastructure is located and destroy it.

Can solar power be used to increase our cyber security?

June 24, 2021 /

We have a pretty big problem with our technology power consumption. On average, a server uses between 400 Wh and 900 Wh. By official sources, different vendors sold almost 100 million units for the period between 2010 and 2020. And ten years is the average lifecycle for a server. So, at the moment, we can calculate that to have running just the server part of the Internet, we must generate 50 GWh. And most of this power is coming from traditional power sources, which can be a target of a cyber attack, as we saw from the Colonial Pipe case.

According to another official source, the Internet has around 5 billion daily active users. On average, every user will have at least one personal computer and a smartphone. For every four people, we have one network router. For every twenty users, we will have a network switch provided by their service provider. 

An average consumption per hour for a personal computer is around 200 Wh, for a smartphone is 1 Wh, for network switch and routers are 10 Wh. Now, this makes an additional 1000 GWh + 5 GWh + 100 GWh. Servers, network equipment, and smartphones work 24 hours, and users usually browse around for 6 hours on average, making a total of 9720 GWd or 405 GWh.

So the average consumption of the Internet is around 405 GWh. Just for comparison – one nuclear power plant can produce 1 GWh. So we need the equivalent of 405 nuclear power plants to keep everyone online.

On the diagram, you can see a standard solar-powered security system. The solar panel is sending data to the charge controller, which decides whether to charge the battery or not. The inverter chooses whether to use solar power or the standard grid and finally, the security system is powered.

There are two leading solar solutions for commercial use at the moment. The first option is the standard solar panel. The average production of such solar panels is 320 Wh. To cover the needs of the Internet using only solar panels, we shall need 1.3 billion of these solar panels placed around the World. The second option is solar power towers. The main idea of solar power towers is to establish many digitally controlled mirrors, reflecting its rays into a tower full of salt depending on the Sun location. When the salt is molted, it is combined with water, evaporating to a turbine. The most significant such installation is Ivanpah Solar Power Facility, with a production capacity of 392 MWh. To cover the needs of the Internet, we shall need around 1,000 such structures. 

However, to build a solar-based solution, we must consider the following problem: there are only around 12 hours of daylight in most locations. There are two mitigations of this problem – the first is to double the number of installations and make sure they cover the 24 hours interval for everyone by strategical placement. The second is to double the number of structures and install batteries to preserve the generated energy for night use. 

Our first mitigation creates an interesting geopolitical situation with a large number of dependencies. For the second mitigation, let’s calculate how many batteries we need to preserve the energy for night use. 405 GWh multiplied by 12 hours make around 5000 GWn. A standard Tesla Powerwall unit can store 13.5 kWh. We shall need approximately 370 million units to preserve the energy during the night.

In conclusion, solar power can be an exciting alternative to traditional power sources. In terms of cybersecurity, it could make your network and even alarm system not so dependent on power coming from the grid. The standard way of having a backup is to have a petrol-based generator unit. However, you must fill a generator with petrol, which means that the system is not 100% independent. It is essential to know that the solar power alternative can give an extended backup period, but it will come with a higher price, more complex setup, more expensive support, etc. However, it can offer quite a good way of making your security more robust.

Legend:

Wh – Watts per hour

kWh – Kilowatts per hour = 1000 Wh

mWh – Megawatts per hour = 1000000 Wh

GWh – Gigawattas per hour = 1000000000 Wh

GWd – Gigawattas per day

GWn – Gigawattas per night

How much damage can one hacker cause to a team of cyber security specialists?

June 17, 2021 /

Cybersecurity has an asymmetric nature. Usually, hacking groups do not have the resources of their targets, or the targets do not have the proper qualification to defend themselves. Now, let’s discuss the one compelling case of a hacker who managed to DDoS companies such as Microsoft and Sony.

He started hacking at the age of sixteen when he developed a Titanium Stresser program that was enough to carry out around 1.7 million attacks. With this program, he got the websites of Microsoft, Minecraft, TeamSpeak, and Xbox Live and earned £386,000 in US dollars. Along with that, he made some bitcoins by selling hacked programs on the Dark web.

The hacker turned 20 until the proceedings of the court continued. He received an accusation of causing losses to schools and colleges by hijacking their local networks. The initial investigation showed that he was also responsible for personally attacking 594 IP addresses through Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) between 2013 and 2015.

On the diagram, you can see a standard DDoS attack system architecture. The hacker usually has a control server for orchestrating the whole botnet attack.

Later on, the court revealed that the hacker was not alone in his hacking. His program had around 112,000 registered users in a kind of vDoS service, and they collectively hacked over 660,000 IP addresses. He put some clever schemes for gaining users fast, like inviting a friend. Many of these attacks were based in the United Kingdom. One notorious attack was on Runescape. The owner of the company had to protect the website by spending around six million euros.

During the hearing, the hacker’s lawyer tried to justify his stance by saying that his medical condition (a form of autism) was not mild enough to understand between wrong and right. Additionally, the lawyer pled that the hacker was in the gaming community but was not good enough and wanted to make him higher.

Now, I see it quite interesting how a 16 years old kid managed to invent a vDoS service and make over 112,000 people register to this service to attack different services across the World. It is a beautiful case of how asymmetric is the nature of hacking. Despite his lack of resources, he managed to build a botnet network of over 112 000 machines. And all of this without any hacking activity towards the registered users. Let’s take that the average Internet speed is around 50 megabits. The total capacity of the botnet is about 600 gigabits of bandwidth. And all of this done by one single guy.

In conclusion, we have to be happy there are no more hackers such as this one. Most of the hackers are for the money. However, this boy managed to DDoS companies with millions of dollars for a cybersecurity budget. And all of this just for fun. Imagine what could happen in case most of the criminals have similar to his mind.

Cyber war for Natural Resources

June 10, 2021 /

Cyberwarfare is our new reality. There are many examples where state and non-state actors were involved in hacking government-based organizations. Reasons for these attacks are different, but essentially financial gains and personal vendetta are the two most common. However, we could add one more reason for a cyber attack – an attempt to take leverage. Sometimes these cyber-attacks can sabotage even natural resources. Let us see if we could find any example for it or not.

The GERD case:

One example of cyber warfare for natural resources is the one related to the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. The dam is a reason for a dispute for a long time. However, at the end of June, a hacker group executed many attacks on the Ethiopian government’s websites. The attacks targeted information technology infrastructure, communications, and websites of public service agencies, security organizations, and other public and private institutions. On June 18, the hacker group announced that they would strike six other websites in response to the Ethiopian government intransigence on the GERD issue. As with every cyberattack origin of the attack is unknown.

On the diagram, you can see a sample diagram of how a squad of cyber soldiers can execute their attack. Now think about what will happen with large-scale operations between different nations.

The Colonial Pipeline case:

Another exciting and relatively soon case is the one with the Colonial pipeline. Ransomware managed to block the entire infrastructure of the company. In response, Colonial Pipeline Company halted all of the pipeline’s operations to contain the attack. Colonial Pipeline paid the requested ransom (75 bitcoins or $4.4 million) within several hours after the attack. The hackers then sent Colonial Pipeline a software application to restore their network, but it operated very slowly. How the attackers reacted is a little bit suspicious because usually, attackers want you to receive your data immediately after you pay. In another case, no one will ever pay them again. And most of the cybercriminals are after the money. The origin of this attack is unknown. 

Florida water systems hack:

A plant operator for the city of about 15,000 on Florida’s west coast saw his cursor being moved around on his computer screen, opening various software functions that control the water being treated. The intruder boosted the level of sodium hydroxide—or lye—in the water supply to 100 times higher than normal.

Sodium hydroxide, the main ingredient in liquid drain cleaners, controls water acidity and removes metals from drinking water in treatment plants. Lye poisoning can cause burns, vomiting, severe pain, and bleeding. After the hacker exited the computer, the operator immediately reduced the sodium hydroxide back to its normal level and then notified his supervisor,

In conclusion, governments must treat their systems similar to what big corporates and organizations do. Critical infrastructure needs proper defenses, and a good security level is not achievable without appropriate resources and budget. With the coming of the Internet, the World is no longer a disconnected place with multiple local communities. Now we live in an era where everyone connects to everyone else up to a couple of milliseconds. And as we can see the cyberspace more and more can affect our real lives.

Are hackers used in guerilla warfare?

June 3, 2021 /

Once the top interest of the state was its national integrity and the protection of its borders, that no more seem like the top priority with the rise of globalization. The world has now turned into a global village, and everyone is interconnected. We no longer base the international policy on the principle of expansionism but more on soft and indirect interventions. Cyber-attacks have become very common these days to steal sensitive data or block a critical infrastructure of any country by targeting its vital computer systems. State governments sponsor part of these cyber-attacks to penetrate rival states. Criminals execute another piece for the sake of financial gains.

State-Sponsored Cyber Soldiers:

Despite having conventional solid militaries, many countries are putting efforts into arranging training programs for cyber soldiers who are getting themselves ready for cyber warfare. They are picking up the best people from network exploitation, malware, or firmware reverse engineering. It is essential to understand that cyber warfare usually has asymmetric nature. A small unit attacks a relatively bigger target in terms of resources. That’s the reason these people receive additional training in guerilla warfare by top military specialists.

On the diagram, you can see how different hacker cells secure themselves during different types of communication. Security during operations and internal group communications is with the highest guarantee.

Everyone is welcome to the party:

Almost every country now has a position regarding cybersecurity. And every country confirms that it has or wants to have highly developed cyber warfare systems. Although most countries are strictly against the use of military cyber systems to access the sensitive data of any other country, they keep on developing their cybersecurity platforms. An analysis of cyber capabilities of one relatively big country from 2009 to 2015 showed seven major cyberattacks origin from it. The hacker group tried to hack everything, starting from simple data theft from technological companies to hacking a Personnel Management office of a government agency.

Unofficial cyber attacks:

Not all cyber attacks are for getting to know the secrets of other nations. Sometimes cyber attacks are used to gain access to critical infrastructure and gain leverage during war actions. Cybersecurity is vital during these wartime operations, keeping in mind that now almost everything is digital and modern armies use more and more information systems to increase their efficiency on the battlefield. 

There are several other examples where unaffiliated groups were involved in violating cyberspace. Most cases even show that the state government is well aware of these groups but does not act against them. These attacks bring betterment for the state, so as long as they benefit the government, it does not interfere in their matters but even shields the hacker groups. If they use their skills to steal money, the money comes to the home state, which is beneficial for state economics. That is why governments often allow such hackings in their territory. 

Many unofficial and unethical cybercriminals are the silent pupils of state-sponsored cyber actors. They learn the tricks from the big boys but use them for other malicious reasons and financial gains. It is essential to understand that these days everyone is a target. Especially having in mind that many states manufacture and use military-grade malware. Later this malware can be recycled by criminals and used versus non-state level organizations or even small and medium businesses. 

Security dangers of DNA based storages

May 27, 2021 /

Data storage was never such a big issue in the past. However, nowadays, every day, we produce a massive amount of data. The newest form of storing data is DNA sequencing. The current leader in long-term storage is magnetic tape. Unfortunately, magnetic tapes can store data only for thirty years. One device has the capacity of only a terabyte of data. In comparison, DNA Fountain-based storage could store data at a density of 215 petabytes per gram of DNA.

But to store a massive amount of data in such a tiny medium has its unique list of dangers. Let us look at those potential risks one by one.

  • Risk for Computers: At the moment, there is no threat to your computer by storing data into a DNA sequence. However, similar to every data medium, hackers can use DNA storage to keep and spread malware.
  • Intentional insertion of malware:  Unfortunately, one of the main disadvantages of using DNA-based storage is that the physical world can modify your DNA. A skillful attacker can create an entirely different set of threats such as biological viruses or bacterias, transmitting and injecting malware programs into your DNA storage.
  • No way to erase the storage: Once written, DNA is usually quite tricky to modify. We should treat the DNA-based storages such as highly capable compact discs with slow rewriting capabilities. The most trustful way to erase such storage is to eradicate it.
  • Easier to physically steal: How do you assure the physical security of under one gram of data? Do we store it in a safe? Sure, but hackers can make a hole in your safe and steal your data. The size of DNA-based storage devices introduces an entirely different set of challenges for your physical security.
A sample diagram of how DNA-based storage works. To record your data into DNA, you can create an entirely new footprint with your data encoded as Nucleo code. After that, you have to synthesis it into a DNA sequence.

Benefits of using DNA based storages:

Despite the threats, we could still prefer DNA-based storage in the future because it can store data for thousands of years, unlike hard drives. The information stored in DNA will not go extinct until human beings exist. These characteristics make DNA-based storage a perfect replacement for the currently used cold backup systems such as magnetic tapes.

How to control the security threats associated with DNA-based storages?

Fortunately, at this current moment, there is no significant adoption of DNA-based storage devices. The current leader is magnetic tape and will stay the same for foresee future. At the same time, the ordinary person does no use magnetic tape to store data. Usually, we use a collection of hard drives with multiple copies of our data. With this in mind, we can deduce that DNA-based storage will find its use mainly in data centers and big corporations’ data storage departments. Still, it is essential to understand that we must implement an entirely different set of techniques when we speak about DNA. With our current speed of technological development, it is quite possible to have DNA-based storage in our homes or bodies in the next decade or two.

Way Out of these Threats:

In conclusion, DNA-based storage is just another data medium. To secure the data stored there, we can use the same set of principles for storing data in hard drives. We could use strong encryption, excellent authentication, and a sound policy to store your data on a digital device or in paper documents.

Are law firms high value target for hackers?

May 20, 2021 /

New York-based law firm fell victim to a cyber attack. That wasn’t only unfortunate for the firm alone, but for the countless celebrity clients, they represent. Their client list comprises many A-level celebrities.

All these people fell victim to hackers.

The hacker group that carried out the attack remained unnamed. It got dubbed REvil because that’s the ransomware used by the group.

The cybercriminals targeted the law firm’s internal data systems. They managed to get away with 756 gigabytes of data, which they deemed was worth $21 million in ransom. When the law firm stated they had no intention of paying a dime in ransom, the criminals released a statement that they’re doubling their ransom request to the staggering $42 million.

After the firm refused to comply with the ransom demand, the hackers released an astonishing 2.4 gigabyte batch of data. It included private files and all sorts of sensitive information: contracts, non-disclosure agreements, promotional agreements, and expense sheets, among others.

The data dump wasn’t the only bombshell the cybercriminals dropped. They claimed to have an ace up their sleeve. They had private documents belonging to the American President. The law firm was quick to deny having any business dealings with the President. They only claimed that his name only got mentioned in some of their documents connected to their other clients.

Due to the hack’s success and the massive breach of privacy, the FBI got involved. They advised against paying the ransom as, in most such cases, payment doesn’t do much besides cost the victim money.

If you’re a victim of cybercriminals, you’re in a lose-lose situation. If you refuse to pay them, they can release the information they stole if that’s what they wish, and the victims get left to deal with the consequences. To pay the ransom they demand means you’re accepting their promise to destroy the data they stole.

You can see a standard distribution for malware types on the diagram and how the malware authors target their victims. In the case of organizations, the main approaches for crime making are data steal and ransomware

Can you trust the word of hackers? No, you can’t. However, it is essential to know that if the criminals do not hold their word, no one will pay the ransom to have this final option. Unfortunately, paying the ransom usually motivates more and more criminal groups to execute such operations.

This hack wasn’t their first attempt to score big. The attackers carried an attack on a foreign currency dealer as well. However, the ransom demand they went with paled compared to the $42, or even $21, million they demanded from the law firm. In this case, they asked for $6 million under threat to delete customer data. After a few weeks of having their services kept offline, the dealer caved and coughed up $2.3 million as payment.

Especially with COVID-19, more and more law and financial companies can become a target to attackers. It is essential to understand that blind fate into your cloud provider is only part of the equation. Every organization must take care of its defenses and upgrade them as much as it can. Only doing this can make attackers’ life harder.

Why You [Don’t] Need a VPN in 2021?

May 13, 2021 /

In 2021, the VPN users are in their billions, with an average user growth of 8%. According to a recent study conducted in early 2021, 50% of the respondents claimed to be using a VPN regularly to access usually restricted entertainment content. These VPN users were predominantly younger, and 62% identified as male by gender. Geographically users in the Asia-Pacific region make up a majority of all those who access a VPN with 30%, compared with Europe and North America, who combined made up 32% of those accessing a VPN worldwide.

VPNs are getting pushed as a must-have multi-service product. Are they?

VPN stands for Virtual Private Network, and it gets used for a variety of things. It can protect your online privacy by hiding your traffic and location. It masks your IP address making it easier to bypass censorship and geo-blocks. But its primary purpose is to provide your organization an encrypted tunnel to your enterprise network.

On the diagram, you can see how different users connect to a VPN (black is for the local user network, and red is for the connection to the VPN). After that, the VPN server redirects your connection to the website you want to use. The website will see your IP as the VPN’s IP (blue connections).

A remote-access VPN creates a connection between individual users and a remote network.

Remote access VPNs use two key components: Network Access Server (NAS), a dedicated server, or a software application on a shared server connected to the business’s internal network. And the second component is VPN client – software installed on a user’s computer or mobile device.

VPN protocol secures the data you input when registering on websites and creating accounts. It ensures that even if attackers manage to sniff data from you, they will need more resources to decrypt it. Some VPNs even block malicious ads, trackers, and websites that stealthily download malware on your device without you even realizing it. That’s how VPNs get advertised, and on the surface, all that sounds useful, right? The critical thing is, you don’t need a VPN to do everything listed above.

With all that they do, many people wonder if VPNs are even legal. VPNs are legal in most countries, with only a few exceptions. Places that either regulate or outright ban VPNs are China, Iraq, North Korea, Oman, Russia, and the UAE, to name a few. A downfall of using a VPN is that your connection speed will suffer slightly. Many will also admit that setting up a VPN, especially for some specific business needs, could be time-consuming and may challenge your tenacity.

A negative aspect of VPNs is that while you may be keeping your data encrypted and safe from hackers, that doesn’t apply to the VPN company. Whichever provider you’re using, it has access to all of your information – location, IP address, which sites you frequent, all manner of sensitive data. Do you think it wise to trust a company with such private information?

You can ensure your online security without turning to the services of a VPN. There are a few key steps to follow.

As already mentioned, make sure only to visit secure websites – starting with HTTPS:// instead of HTTP://. Next, two-factor authentication is your best friend when logging into a site. Add an extra layer of protection. Physical keys are an excellent option for that task. They vary in price, but there are affordable options. If you can’t manage to get one, use an SMS or email authentication. Use whatever you can to ensure a two-step verification when accessing sites. It can save you a ton of trouble. A username and password aren’t enough.

Another helpful step to ensure security is not to use shared devices. Sharing a laptop or a PC with a third party is a terrible idea as it can open the floodgates to malware, keyloggers, and who knows what else. And, lastly, update regularly. That may sound like a no-brainer, but people tend to postpone updates indefinitely. Don’t do that. Timely updates go a long way.

But, if you want to use VPN, please use providers, which offer VPN over Tor and anonymous registration. They must take payments in cryptocurrencies as well. This setup provides you some privacy and a way to avoid firewalls. However, this setup can be categorized as a grey or black hat technique in many countries and could bring you troubles.

Does Your VPN Protect From Cybercriminals, or Invite Them In?

May 6, 2021 /

The Coronavirus pandemic forced a variety of new adjustments on people. Most offices had to close down, and workers had to turn to their home offices to do work. Schools, universities, most places of education did the same and introduced home learning. Most entertainment outlets were no longer accessible either – the movies, theatres, concerts, everything got canceled or delayed. Home computers and laptops became an essential piece of technology at home. We use them for work, study, and fun. But can you trust them to be secure enough not to lead to trouble? You might be thinking, ”Well, I have a VPN, I’m safe.” But are you?
What is a VPN, and what does it do? VPN stands for virtual private network, and its general role boils down to two words – connectivity and security. A VPN extends a private network across a public network and allows users to exchange data across shared or public networks as though their devices connect directly to the private network. VPNs shield your original IP address and protect your data. If you join a VPN to your router, it covers all your devices connected to said router. Like, phone, PC, laptop, gaming console, smart TV, and other IoT devices.

On the diagram, you can see a standard VPN network configuration. The blue lines represent encrypted tunnels from different networks to your company infrastructure. After packet inspection with the red line, your Firewall sends the traffic to your VPN server. Finally, the VPN server decrypts the traffic and sends it to your local corporate network.


In Corona-times, VPNs are a godsend for employees who aim to reach and use corporate resources. They connect to the company VPN and go about their daily business. The question is, do they use a company device to do their work, as a company PC or laptop, or do they use a home one? That makes all the difference. If you connect the company VPN on your home network, you expose your company to malware. Think about it. What if you, or a family member, carelessly clicked on something they shouldn’t have, and now malware lurks on the PC that you’re connecting to your corporate network?
Another issue with that scenario is what type of VPN the home-office employee turns to exactly? Is it a consumer VPN server based in a different country? That’s risky.
Employees find themselves in a completely new situation, unique to both them and their employer. What had previously gotten used only on rare occasions or emergencies is now used on a regular day-to-day basis, given that 100% of the workload gets done from home. That makes workers vulnerable to targeted attacks. There are already examples of that. According to Sultan Meghji, CEO of Neocova (a cloud-based suite of banking solutions company), several bank CFOs became victims of criminals and state-based attackers.
Cybercriminals are on the lookout for easy targets. They search for open WiFi and encryption that they can break easily. Don’t be that easy target! An excellent way to up your home cybersecurity is to update your router. Ask yourself whether the router you use daily is older than your phone. If yes, replace it ASAP.
Another way to keep the office and home systems safe is education. Employers should educate their employees on cybersecurity and the best practices to implement for the most protection.