Cybersecurity expert, CrowdStrike, has issued a stark warning to British businesses, telling them to crack down on lax remote working policies now or risk catastrophic exposure at the hands of adversaries after lockdown is over.
Its latest research, in cooperation with YouGov, has found that over half (52%) of people in the UK working from home do so on their own personal devices, creating potential backdoors into corporate systems for adversaries. CrowdStrike has also seen a 100X increase in COVID-19 related malicious files circulating in February and March, yet two thirds (65%) of remote workers in the UK say they had no extra training against cyberattacks.
Mike Sentonas, CTO at CrowdStrike, said: “Most companies had to improvise in order to keep their operations running during lockdown. But the rush of creating a fully remote workforce has meant that proper cybersecurity practices have fallen by the wayside. We have seen a rapid increase in attempted cyberattacks by criminals taking advantage of the situation.”
Despite the rapid evolution and expansion of the cybersecurity threat landscape during the pandemic, only a third (33%) of respondents believe that cyberattacks are more likely now than before the lockdown. Similarly, only 6% of respondents believe their personal devices are less secure than corporate ones.
