Cybercriminals are still managing to capitalize on remote working to cause disruption for businesses, more than a year since working from home became the norm.
This is according to a new report from the Neustar International Security Council (NISC), which claims that more than half (54 percent) of organizations still suffer downtime as a result of network security issues.
Companies seem to be adapting quite poorly, as the number of businesses suffering downtime has dropped by just seven percent over the last six months. For almost two-thirds (61 percent) of respondents in EMEA and the US, downtime was either “significant” or “moderate”.
Rodney Joffe, Chairman of NISC and Senior VP and Fellow at Neustar, claims the problem lies in the fact cybercriminals adopted to the “new normal” faster than organizations. “As companies have continued to adapt, bad actors have become more sophisticated, exploiting the disruption for their own malicious gain,” he says.
Despite the numbers showing sluggish progress, most respondents are optimistic. Almost nine in ten (89 percent) agree the challenges they faced over the past 12 months strengthened their network security, while four in five (79 percent) think the pandemic forced their organizations to improve their corporate VPNs.
Awareness of the different threats lurking online is also on the rise, Neustar says. The pandemic has made most respondents (90 percent) “at least somewhat confident” that most executives now understand and appreciate network security better.
Of all the different threats, DDoS, system compromise and ransomware were the biggest worries for the respondents.
