One thing that cyber-criminals love to see is businesses operating outside of their normal routines. Non-routine operations can cause confusion and chaos. New ways of operating must be developed and fielded on the fly. Personnel are often required to work from remote locations and may need to undertake duties that are new and unfamiliar to them. This is almost sure to cause IT personnel to become overwhelmed, which can cause delays that can seriously affect business operations.
And when it becomes a question of providing services or maintaining security, most businesses will opt for continuing services and dealing with security matters later. Such situations not only greatly increase the number of attack surfaces and vectors available for cyber-criminals to exploit, it also increases their chances of success in any given attack. The current pandemic situation has them all licking their chops!
Outside of war, I can’t think of more widespread and disruptive disaster scenario than a pandemic response of this magnitude. Unlike earthquakes or hurricanes or floods or most other catastrophes, pandemic interruptions are anything but localized; they affect virtually every business and person on the planet.
People are afraid of getting the flu, and of course they are also afraid of losing income and not being able to pay their bills. They fear that perhaps their employer companies will fold, and that they won’t be able to catch up once things settle back down. Such fears can lead to mistakes and security failures. That is why businesses should be increasing their security efforts, not letting them fall along the wayside.
Businesses should ensure that all their systems have logging enabled, and that monitoring of those logs is being undertaken. If possible, the number of employees dedicated to security monitoring should be increased. This effort will be much easier to implement if cross-training of personnel and full written operating procedures are in place; a lesson that should be learned from the current emergency and implemented in written pandemic planning.
In addition, businesses should ensure that secure mechanisms for remote working are in place. It is important that not only secure connection mechanisms are in place, but that multipart authentication techniques are used to the greatest extent possible. Whitelisting of authorized devices, tokens, digital certificates and biometrics should all be considered.
Just as important as technical security, businesses should ensure that all personnel are receiving security and awareness training. They should be fully trained in how to secure their laptops and home computers, how to connect to business assets securely and how to respond if they suspect they are vulnerable or being hacked. Responding to incidents quickly and correctly are key factors in minimizing damage from a security event.