Many employees all over the world have benefited from the recent pandemic’s ability to push millions into working remotely from home. With decreased commute times and the ability to work in a more casual environment, many employees are probably hoping to continue to work remotely for some time to come. While employees may be happy with their working arrangements, the different working environment presents some definite challenges for those working in the area of technology security. Always operating as opportunists hackers target cloud services and the influx of remote workers, hoping to find a way into the cloud in order to steal data and wreak havoc, which in turn increases costs and/or headaches for organizations.

The Target

Hackers know where to find golden information and with remote users, the gold is found in the Cloud services they use. According to recent stats gathered by McAfee, attacks on Cloud services increased by 630 percent between the months of January and April of this year! It doesn’t take much to conclude that this phenomenal number of attacks coincided with the explosion of businesses across the globe who shut down their offices, thus leaving employees with working from home as their only option. 

How Hackers Attack Remote Users

Generally speaking, hackers attack remote users in two forms. Of course, virtually every computer task begins with a user entering in their login information. If a hacker can gain login information from someone working remotely, it is that much more difficult to detect if the login is coming from a legitimate remote worker or if the user logging in is a threat to the company. With remote workers sometimes living long distances away from where their physical office building resides, or if they decide to go to a vacation home or to a relative’s home in another state, it is almost impossible to determine whether a user is legitimate or not based upon geographical location.

The second form of attack which is sometimes easier to spot, has been given the name of suspicious “superhuman” logins. This occurs when multiple login attempts are noted in a very short span of time from regions scattered throughout the world.

For companies who don’t have any employees working across the globe, these types of logins are fairly obvious to spot as suspicious. However, for companies who do have staff members distributed throughout large regions, these types of attacks can still present a challenge.

Solutions

Thankfully, there is a relatively easy solution already available that can bring successful login hacking attempts down to almost nil. Two-factor authentication procedures are essentially a must for any company that has employees who work from home. When an employee has to verify their login by entering a code sent to their phone, this eliminates virtually anyone attempting a break in by way of the login process.

Of course, employers must also train their remote-work employees to be extra diligent in discerning whether someone truly is who they say they are. Hackers can easily find out which businesses have closed their public offices and often businesses will list key personnel along with their email on corporate websites.

Under these types of circumstances, it would be easy for a hacker to impersonate someone in the company, then send a phishing email that looks like an official email from someone high up in the company, to an employee working remotely at home.  Companies can address this by instructing employees to verify identification by phone, prior to releasing any sensitive data or monetary funds. 

If you would like to know more about keeping corporate data safe and secure while employees are working from home, please contact us!