Fighting hackers is one of the last things on most people's and companies' minds right now, when keeping business running and healthy is a top priority. But the disruption the coronavirus has caused to our routines signals that in the next six months we could be facing the biggest cyber attack ever.
Why can we affirm that something so frightening is true? Because the coronavirus has opened up all the virtual defences of every Brazilian company.
Let's think about how we worked before the pandemic.
The home office was not the routine of most professionals. And those who were in this regime by company guidance, received special laptops with reinforced security, which made it more difficult to hack.
The problem is that the coronavirus has dismantled our lives in many ways. And among the most serious disruptions is that it has forced millions of people to work from home. That means entire companies with employees in all areas accessing sensitive information and data from a makeshift desk on their kitchen table.
No company has had more than a week to put together remote working plans.
No one needs to be an information security genius to deduce that most of them did not have time to elaborate a secure home office scheme to shield access from invaders. I don't even think it would be too much to say that the vast majority of these employees who are working from home office overnight don't even have dedicated laptops just for work. The greater probability is that they are performing corporate tasks from personal computers, connected to the unsecured home internet, accessing files containing confidential information and personal data.
The scenario is more than favourable to criminals. It is as if it were paradise.
All a hacker needs is an entry point to take control of a company's entire system. Getting through the door, all the data, secrets, valuable information, is under their domain.
Hacker attacks are not among most companies' priorities, but it has to be said: they should be.
In recent months, hackers have been attacking hospitals, health departments in various countries and multinationals. Attacks against the World Health Organisation have more than doubled.
In Brazil, the movement of hackers is also more intense. ISH Tecnologia's engineers have seen all the variations they were used to in the cybersecurity environment skyrocket. We are halfway through the second quarter and attacks have already increased 235% compared to the first three months of the year. The vast majority related to the "COVID-19" theme.
The record becomes even more alarming if we consider that, before the coronavirus, the periods of the year when damage attempts increased, such as Christmas and Income Tax return days, nothing used to exceed 8%.
No one wants to be certain about something like this, even more so in times of fighting a deadly pandemic, but all indications are that it's only a matter of time before we hear about a major cyber breach.
Home office workers are fertile ground for cybercriminals. The attack surface has never been wider. The alarm has been raised. We can't wait for massive intrusions to hit the headlines before we step up our data protection actions. We have to do something now.
By Allan Costa