The Silicon Review ^Asia

Worries, worries everywhere! As the deadly virus is upon the world, employers are worried and are asking their employees to work from home, via the online medium, this may help reduce further spreading of the virus, but this concept is leading us to its darker side, increased cyber security threats.  Deepak Bhawnani, CEO at Alea Consulting said, "Companies, large and small, will be impacted due to ramifications of work from home, as this will lead to cyber security risk concerns. Proprietary corporate data is being accessed from laptops and home PCs that may not have the same level of firewall and security as in-office setups.

With this said, company’s data and other confidential information is at risk, management and IT managers will subsequently need to double-up their security measures, reassess the risk to their data, and proactively evaluate their data loss prevention processes, as this can impact their reputation going forward.

Further, cybercriminals have also started to exploit fears around the virus outbreak to conduct email scams, phishing and ransomware attacks.

Palo Alto Networks' Regional Vice President for India; SAARC Anil Bhasin said: "Cyber-criminals have been exploiting fears around the virus outbreak to conduct email scams, phishing and ransomware attacks. These emails and messages entice users to open malicious attachments by offering more information related to the COVID-19 situation but contain malicious files masked under the guise of links, pdf, mp4 or docx files.

It is true that accessing data remotely is no longer safe. With the lives of hundreds and thousands at stake, we should come up with a better idea of remote working until the dark cloud is lifted.