As the coronavirus pandemic disturbs global health, economic, political and social systems, there’s another unseen threat rapidly rising in the digital space that has disrupted businesses around the world: the risk of cyberattacks. This has left companies struggling to maintain security and business continuity.
COVID-19 has forced businesses to transform the way they work — projects which might have taken a year have been driven through in weeks. As organizations adapt to remote working to protect their employees while continuing to serve their customers and expand businesses, they have to shift the majority of their activity to the digital world—increasing the risk of cyberattacks. Organized crime groups have shown themselves ruthless and entrepreneurial in exploiting fear, uncertainty and doubt over COVID-19 — repurposing phishing and attack infrastructure to build out COVID-19 fake websites and scams. Criminal groups are increasingly switching to COVID-19 themed lures for phishing exploiting consumers’ and employees’ concerns over the pandemic and the safety of their loved ones. Using this major disaster hackers/criminals/scammers play with human emotions by generating curiosity, fear and urgency through emails with attachments (.pdf, .ppt or .doc) on the pretext of sharing or obtaining information related to COVID19.