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SINGAPORE – While working from home has become the norm for many people amid the Covid-19 pandemic, it could also have caused many organizations in Singapore to fall victim to cyber attacks.
About eight in ten public and private sector organizations attributed such a labor agreement to an increase in cyber attacks at all levels, according to a report by software company VMware on June 4.
This figure is comparable to the overall figure in 14 markets.
Almost seven in ten people said the attacks were serious enough to be reported to regulators or to call an incident response team. Overall it’s higher – at eight out of 10.
“Digital transformation programs have advanced rapidly as the surface of cyber attacks expanded to include living rooms, kitchens, home networks and personal devices,” said Rick McElroy, senior business unit cybersecurity strategist. VMware Security.
Mr. McElroy added that while remote employee work laptops are generally well secured, home Wi-Fi networks used to connect can present serious security risks.
“Home router software updates are often overlooked and many home networks do not have a firewall installed. These insecure and unpatched networks can lead to network security breaches,” he said. said, also highlighting the problems with using other devices connected to the Internet. on home networks for work.
The remote workforce behaves very differently from the office workforce – its members access the organization’s network at unpredictable hours as they strive to stay productive while taking care of their own needs. family and following government restrictions.
This means that network traffic has “changed beyond recognition,” and organizations must adapt surveillance systems or risk allowing hackers the ability to use atypical patterns to hide their infiltration attempts, said Mr. McElroy.
What is critical is that businesses need to understand how people interact with technology, he said. This can include when an employee usually works, what applications they normally use, and which websites they commonly visit.
So, for example, when an employee who usually works in California logs in 10 minutes later from Singapore, which is humanly impossible, the company knows something is wrong.
“Knowing this baseline helps you better detect a malicious connection,” McElroy said.
The study commissioned by VMware interviewed approximately 250 CIOs, CIOs and CIOs here last December.
They came from the finance, healthcare, government, retail, manufacturing and engineering, food and beverage, utilities, professional services, media and retail sectors. entertainment.
The study found that organizations here reported more cyber attacks in the past 12 months, with 64% of them.
About a year ago, that figure was 43%.
More organizations around the world saw more cyberattacks than those in Singapore in this year’s report, with 76% of them.
However, the Republic recorded more violations on average per organization – 3.3 compared to 2.35 worldwide.
The main cause of violation reported here was a weak process, with 22% of respondents citing this. An example is that companies do not regularly deploy patches.
The second leading causes of breaches were use of outdated security (20%) and third-party applications (13%).
Obsolete security includes operating systems that are no longer supported by their developers, such as those found in manufacturing systems.
Some cases involved a critical old application that is not updating, as this could cause vital systems to be taken offline.
These legacy systems and older applications could go unpatched for vulnerabilities, and it is sometimes difficult to use modern security solutions to protect them.
Third-party applications that can lead to breaches include those developed externally used for file sharing, which can allow crooks to access sensitive data in the event of a hack.
These top causes of attacks usually boil down to how organizations’ IT and security teams interact and work in silos to resolve issues, McElroy said.
To address some of these issues, he advised organizations to implement security “wherever and whenever humans interact with systems,” including online programs and applications.
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