At the same time more employees are working from home and other remote locations, cyber threats against their devices are on the rise. In just the first few months of the pandemic, the FBI said its Internet Crime Complaint Center fielded 3,000 to 4,000 complaints per day, up from 1,000 pre-pandemic complaints.
The attacks are becoming more insidious, such as malware that modifies itself to infiltrate a system and hit a specific target, along with attacks directed at firmware. Ransomware attacks also are up, as is crypto-jacking, where a hacker hijacks an endpoint’s processing power to mine cryptocurrency. Needless to say, phishing attacks that rely on human error still are alive and well.
