Hacking against corporations surges as people work from home (Al Jazeera)

Hacking against corporations surges as people work from home – By Reuters Agency (Al Jazeera) / April 17 2020

Corporate security teams have a harder time protecting data when it is dispersed on home computers with varying setups.

Hacking activity against corporations in the United States and other countries more than doubled by some measures last month as digital thieves took advantage of security weakened by pandemic work-from-home policies, researchers said.

Corporate security teams have a harder time protecting data when it is dispersed on home computers with widely varying setups and on company machines connecting remotely, experts said.

Even those remote workers using virtual private networks (VPNs), which establish secure tunnels for digital traffic, are adding to the problem, officials and researchers said.

Software and security company VMware Carbon Black said this week that ransomware attacks it monitored jumped 148 percent in March from the previous month, as governments worldwide curbed movement to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, which has killed more than 140,000.

“There is a digitally historic event occurring in the background of this pandemic, and that is there is a cybercrime pandemic that is occurring,” said VMware cybersecurity strategist Tom Kellermann.

“It’s just easier, frankly, to hack a remote user than it is someone sitting inside their corporate environment.”

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