Covid-19 And Cybersecurity: Safety Tips For Companies By Reuben Okafor

The outbreak of Corona Virus (Covid-19) has adversely disrupted the global economy and also introduced a new perspective in people’s approach to work, learning and general activities. The virus is contracted through personal contact with an infected person, and people have been advised by health experts and governments to practise social distancing, frequent hand washing, use of Hand Sanitizers and all other safety measures to curtail the widespread of the virus. This has negatively impacted the global economy, as a great majority of the workforce now find it impossible to have access to their places of work thereby reducing the workforce. There are predictions that global recession is imminent. Companies in the advanced countries, as well as the third world countries, are taking advantage of technology to enable working from home.

Globally, there are currently 3,855,812 confirmed Covid-19 cases with 265,862 deaths (this figure changes per day) and there indications that a lot more people could contract the virus. This does not sound good. Of course, this is not the first time in the world’s history when cases like this have had impacts on the world. For instance, between 1918 and 1919, the world was ravaged by the Spanish Virus which claimed a total of 50 million lives across the globe. In Africa, and most recently, Africa had its fair share of the Ebola Virus (EVD) pandemic leading to 11,310 deaths. However, the impact of Covid-19 is far reaching; it has presented health and economic challenges and the International Labour Organisation (ILO) has predicted that 25 million jobs could be lost to the virus.

To ensure continuous delivery of goods and services during these uncertain times, some companies are already leveraging the internet and all other available information technology infrastructures to deliver goods and services to their customers and clients; tools like Zoom, Slack, Facebook Work Station, Skype etc. have been gaining surge in their usage on a daily basis. Zoom, in particular, appears to be the most favourite in this regard, and this lead to an exponential growth in its usage from 10 million to 300 million users within a three month period. The adoption of these platforms has opened the floodgate for infiltrations and cyberattacks from unscrupulous individuals who have been on standby for times like these. The rate of cyberattacks has increased significantly within these few days of lockdown and most masquerading themselves to be health experts, charity organisations or government authorities.

During this period, phishing campaigns and distribution of malware are on the increase, there have been ransomware shutting down medical, scientific and other health related infrastructures in order to extort ransom from their victims, attacks against critical infrastructures or international organisations have increased, there are ransomware targeting mobile device users so as to extract payments, infiltration into the systems of companies by targeting their employees who are working remotely, and some of them masquerade themselves as charity organisations who are supporting Covid-19 victims and, in so doing, defraud their unsuspecting victims. As a matter of fact, a report by Mimecast, a security firm, shows that between January and March, 2020, spam and opportunistic messages increased by 26.3%, impersonation by 30.3%, malware by 35.16%, and blocking of URL clicks by 55.8%.

It is important that companies, having taken advantage of technology to provide goods and services, should adopt safety measures to foreclose these cybercriminals from infiltrating into their systems to perpetrate their wicked acts. In most cases, the most vulnerable class in these activities are the employees of companies, and this necessitates that companies should take their time to train their employees on the dos and don’ts of remote working to avoid being hacked. The training should engender the basics of using the internet and understanding the necessary techniques for using computer systems, the internet, clicking on and responding to emails from unfamiliar persons or institutions etc. The following safety measures should be adopted by companies to ensure the safety of their cyber infrastructure:

1. employees should be suspicious of emails from unfamiliar senders;
2. employees should report such suspicious emails to the cybersecurity team and the management;
3. employees should not to open, respond to or forward the said suspicious emails to a colleague in the office (an email will be suspicious where the sender claims to be representing a known organisation whilst the body of the email is fraught with typos);
4. employees should ensure that the company approved anti-virus and anti-phishing filters are installed on the laptop in use.

Companies should beef up their cybersecurity teams and infrastructure, and develop a working template for fraud detections and response measures. These are critical times and everybody ought to be on red alert so as not to fall victim to either the virus or the preying cybercriminals.

Reuben Okafor, Attorney, Information Technology