Cyberattacks are on the rise in the COVID-era. While some of the surge can be chalked up to hackers capitalizing on confusion surrounding the virus, a sharp uptick in usage of the cloud and other digital data tools by millions newly working from home has also inspired new schemes. While the cloud can provide huge benefits for productivity, networks remain vulnerable and will need new enterprise-scale tools to fight back. Cybersecurity firms stand to benefit from this demand.
Related ETF: First Trust NASDAQ Cybersecurity ETF (CIBR)
As the workforce becomes more and more dependent on digital platforms, hackers continue to step up their offensive. According to the 2020 Trustwave Global Security Report, the volume of attacks on cloud services more than doubled in 2019 and accounted for 20% of investigated incidents. Although corporate and internal networks remain the most targeted domains, representing 54% of incidents, cloud environments are now the third most targeted environment for cyberattacks.
The COVID-19 pandemic unleashed a new wave of phishing and other scams earlier this year. As MRP wrote back in April, cybercriminals have capitalized on anxiety about the virus to spread infections of their own. Emails doctored to look like a company’s purchase order for face masks or other supplies have seemed convincing enough to trick an employee into wiring payments to a fraudulent account. In another phishing case, an email purportedly from the World Health Organization was sent to companies in the transportation sector. It contained false instructions about how to monitor crews aboard ships for coronavirus symptoms and included an infected attachment with those instructions.
Palo Alto Networks found over 1,700 malicious coronavirus-themed domains are now created every day.
Remote work brings additional cybersecurity challenges as…
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