Why is Cybersecurity Essential Amid Coronavirus Outbreak?

The coronavirus disease has reached over 150 countries around the world and continues to disrupt the global economy, health, transportation, and political and social systems. However, as the world is completely affected by this deadly outbreak, there is another concealed threat is rising in the digital space is cyberattacks. By the day, most companies allow their employees to work from home, so as they work remotely, this leads the reliance on digital infrastructure or digital tools. That can create an attack surface for cybercriminals who always in search of breaches.

Malicious actors or hackers are attempting to capitalize on the Covid-19 outbreak to deliver malware, steal bank details and more. In this effort, companies including Facebook, Google, Microsoft, LinkedIn, Reddit, Twitter, and YouTube come out with joint statement promising to fight Covid-19 fraud and restraint misinformation.

Earlier this week, the US Health and Human Services Department was hit by a cyberattack. The attack was on the department's computer system, and administration officials saying they were investigating a significant increase in activity on its cyberinfrastructure.

One of the Czech Republic's hospitals, Brno University Hospital, in the city of Brno, also hit by a cyberattack in the midst of Covid-19 that was testing this outbreak. Though the hospital officials haven't unveiled the nature of the security breach but the incident was deemed severe enough to postpone urgent surgical interventions, and re-route new acute patients to nearby hospitals, according to reports.

During this pandemic, the dependency on digital infrastructure or digital communications continues to multiply which raises the cost of failure. The internet has now become the most crucial channel for effective human interaction and the primary way to work, contact and assist others.

Moreover, cybercriminals are extremely creative in devising new ways to exploit users and technology to access passwords, networks and data. They often take advantage of prevalent issues and trends to tempt users into unsafe online behavior. In this scenario too, as the coronavirus outbreak continues to disrupt everything, hackers may put phishing emails designed to lure people or employees to click on the latest and greatest offer related to this virus protections, or urgent instructions. All this can lead a person to unwittingly download malware onto his/her device and the company's systems.

Thus, being extra vigilant about these kinds of attacks can be constructive to ensure security amidst the Covid-19. In addition to this, there is a need to verify the source of every URL while signing up for new services.

To ensure cybersecurity for devices like smartphones, computers, laptops, and others, people or businesses also must follow up updates of their systems and applications regularly to patch any weaknesses that may be exploited. For employees, it is significant to work only on secure, password-protected internet connections as it is a very common source of breaching data or placing malware.