As a result of the declaration of emergency, many organizations went remote quickly and adapted their current controls and processes for a remote setting. In many cases, they couldn’t revise policies fast enough to adapt.
It’s a good time to review and revise policies and procedures, considering criteria for onsite and remote operations. In many cases, limited human resources constrain organizations regardless of increasing demand in productivity.
Ensuring maintenance of segregation of duties and new software implementation, where feasible, can increase productivity and controls even in these challenging times.
A record number of employees now work remotely or onsite part time, which makes them more reliant on virtual private networks (VPNs). This exposes normally onsite devices outside the workplace environment to the internet’s inherent threats.
The likelihood of a malicious cyberattack during a major disruptive event like the COVID-19 pandemic increased given both recent ransomware and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) trends and the increased exposure of systems while employees work remotely.
These attacks have greater impact because response and recovery time tends to lag when employees work across multiple locations—and organizations rely more on IT systems.
Many organizations still depended on physical access to fix configuration issues as well, so quarantine or shelter-in-place policies limiting IT teams’ access to servers and network devices further delayed incident response and troubleshooting efforts.
For more information on how to identify potential cyberthreats, please see our article.