How Are Organisations Ensuring Cyber Security While Working From Home?

While remote working has been deemed as the new normal owing to the outbreak of the pandemic, there have been enormous reports of cyber attacks too while equipping to the new normal. What safety measures can organisation abide by?

According to a national publication, hackers have accessed over 7.9 billion consumer records, and experts have been predicting that more than 8.5 billion accounts have a possibility of being exposed by the end of 2020. Last year in 2019, organisations like Quest Diagnostics, Houzz, Capital One, Dubsmash, and Zynga had expressed serious concerns over cyber attacks, and what’s even more worrying is that data is being compromised in such cases.

In order to gain a clear understanding of the same, Express Computer reached out to industry leaders, to gain an understanding about how their organisation is holding up amid such challenging times. Umesh Bhapkar, Senior Director – Systems, Synechron, says, “Cybersecurity teams in big corporations are watching out for social engineering attacks as miscreants rely on user psychology to trick them into doing something that serves the attacker’s purpose. During a time like this, attackers can capitalize on rapid change, confusion, and, at some level, fear. At Synechron, we enhanced our security policies in relevance to the current COVID-19 situation to include remote working access management, the use of personal devices and home networks and the associated risks involved. When we procured and distributed new desktops and laptops, we ensured that these, like our existing machines, also had encrypted hard drives and other security controls before allotting to the employees. The remote work facilities through a virtual private network (VPN) were enhanced with Multifactor authorization, and host checker software to make sure the end points are checked before employees are granted access.”

Now, while working from home, several safety standards have to be borne in mind, especially when employees are using their home computers that has turned out to be their work computer. Stressing on these lines Bhapkar continues, “it’s important for employees working remotely to maintain a security mindset. Thus, organisations are taking efforts to constantly create cybersecurity awareness amongst their employees as often people are the weakest link in the chain.

To control the situation in real-time, Enterprise IT Systems and networks at Synechron are continuously monitored through 24X7 Network Operations Center (NOC), which includes monitoring of our critical applications, servers, and enterprise network. Any potential security incidents involving an attempt for a data breach or web site defacement etc is quickly detected and responded to, by the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT).”

What unique policies and initiatives has Synechron undertaken to tackle the situation, “IT administrators across organisations, are ensuring that end-user computer system and operating system auto-updates are enabled and operational. Synechron is no exception. Our teams are ensuring regular backups and store backup data in offline locations, which will help to recover quickly from potential cyber and ransomware attacks. Security is never 100% or finished, since the cybercriminals are endlessly innovative and adaptive. It should also thus be noted that cybercriminals need to be successful just once, while the defenders of the organisation need to be successful every single time to anticipate their malicious intents and remain ahead of their game.”

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News Source: https://www.expresscomputer.in/