Lock the Front Door to Your Remote Workplace

This week has been interesting to say the least.  I feel like most of us played the role of firefighter.

The general public scrambled to digest current news as it was fed to them.  Companies moved at a rapid pace to enact remote work policies for their teams and prepared to “hunker down”.

For us, our internal tickets increased by 400% this week.  Clients have been and continue to request emergency projects to roll out remote and cloud solutions.  T|S did what we do best while also learning new temporary norms to prepare for the coming weeks!

By staying positive and energized we’ve had the ability to solve problems creatively through Design Thinking.   We emphasized checking-in on our community and nonprofit partners as well as helping the Governor’s Workforce Development Board strategically navigate through these uncertain times.

So what's next?

The reality is that hackers know you're working fast and embrace this opportunity to take advantage of companies and their people.  They look for distracted users who have implemented untested remote solutions or are making quick changes that might open “holes”.   

“Companies are making changes at a rapid pace and people are tired, stressed and overworked. Hackers thrive in times like these.”

One of the more alarming trends we’ve seen has been the increase in malicious cyber activity. Our SOC tickets can attest to that, having seen a tremendous increase in threat attempts this week.  

Our SIEM partner, Securonix caught 5,000 unique domains created over 96 hours alone with the word “corona” or “covid” in them.  This is concerning because organizations have been getting an average of 350 emails each day from external senders about this topic using those words.  One malware they caught was related to a CoronaVirus Map, sent seemingly from a “trusted” source.   Unfortunately, interaction with that malware triggered it to start performing malicious activity and stealing data and credentials on unprotected machines.

Now is when we need to be our most vigilant.

The devastation that a ransomware or hack could cause is great, especially if our healthcare or financial institutions are impacted during this time.

Here are a few questions to review with your team to ensure you, your employees and your clients are protected:

1. Are the devices our employees are using to connect, safe and secure?
2. Are the remote technologies we are using, secure?
3. Did any changes that we made, open any holes, or change our overall security posture?
4. Did all changes get recorded and added to all relevant security monitoring tools?
5. Are we properly training our employees right now?
6.  Are our employees storing secure information locally to their home computers?

We were built for this, so if you weren't, we're here for you.

Reach out at chris@thinkstack.co

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