The 'COVID-19' coronavirus pandemic has forced many companies to have their employees work remotely.
That is to help prevent the spread of the airborne disease, which has claimed more than 916,000 lives around the world, as of September 12, 2020.
With less face-to-face interactions, employees are required to work through the internet using various tools. And because people are relying more on tech than ever before, hackers have more than plenty of targets to choose from.
And here, companies in India are reporting more cyberattacks than any other country in the world.
That, according to Acronis Cyber Readiness Report 2020.
While the report highlights that 92% of the companies globally have adopted new technologies to enable remote work, including workplace collaboration tools, privacy solutions, and endpoint cybersecurity, many failed to properly secure their systems
32% of global IT managers believe not having been targeted or encountering cyberattacks in the past three months. While some of those companies may have successfully blocked these attacks, most of them likely failed to detect them.
The cyberattacks consisted of phishing attacks, DDoS, and video conferencing attacks.
The most worrying, is phishing campaigns, in which they reached their peak during the pandemic. This kind of attacks are happening much more often, which shouldn't be a surprise, considering that the report found only 2% of companies consider URL filtering when evaluating a cybersecurity solution.
Malware is also a problem. While it ranked last in the survey, it remains a bigger issue in India, as well as in Singapore and South Africa.
Other key findings, include:
- 39% of all companies encounter videoconferencing attacks. Canada, the UK,Switzerland, and India are among the most affected.
- 69% of remote workers have started using workplace collaboration tools like Zoom and Webex – but only 63% of IT managers reported adopting those solutions.
- 72% of organizations report that their IT costs increased during the pandemic. In particular, 27% of companies saw a significant increase during the pandemic.
- 35% of global companies reported having more new devices connected to their corporate network.
- The top three tech challenges identified by remote workers: Wi-Fi connectivity, using a VPN and other security measures, and the inability to use internal networks and applications.
- 88% of employees would like to continue working remotely to some extent: 32% favor office work, 33% would like to do a 50/50 split, and 35% favor remote work.
- 58% of remotely working employees report feeling better equipped to work remotely now than before the pandemic.
- 92% of employees expect their companies to invest more into digital transformation tools.
- Only 53% of global remote workers received clear communication when switching to working from home – the other half were left to fend for themselves.
