With companies across the globe turning to work from home, via the online medium amid the COVID-19 outbreak, threats to cyber security have increased.

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.

Management and IT managers will subsequently need to reassess the risk to their data, and proactively evaluate their data loss prevention processes, as this can impact their reputation going forward, he added.

Further, cybercriminals has also started to exploit fears around the COVID-19 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 COVID-19 outbreak to conduct email scams, phishing and ransomwareattacks. 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. With employees taking to work-from-home, cyber security threat multiplies, says Debasish Mukherjee, VP, Regional Sales APAC at SonicWall.

“These are exactly the times when hackers get creative with their malicious intent of hacking into devices and stealing data,” Mukherjee said.

From creating malicious links to developing otherwise unsuspecting apps, the hackers of the digital age are getting creative in executing their attacks.