The novel coronavirus has changed the way we live and work, apart from several other things. At a time when social distancing is a norm, several organisations in India have permitted their staff to work from home. While this is the most viable contingency plan to ensure business continuity, there are several challenges that have come to the forefront - the most prominent being cybersecurity. 

In a remote working environment, employees are using technology for everything from video conferencing, chat applications to project management. Currently, we are living in a hyper-connected world, and if we go by predictions, this is going to be the ‘new normal’, even in the post-Covid era.

While working in offices, employees who bring their own devices - whether it’s a smartphone, tablet or laptop - are properly scrutinised before they receive authorisation from the IT department. In the present scenario, this doesn’t exist. 

What’s more, there is not enough education regarding cybersecurity risks, especially in a remote working environment. According to a survey conducted by Palo Alto Networks, almost 47% of respondents stated their biggest cybersecurity challenges was the lack of cybersecurity awareness amongst their employees. 

Preventing cyberattacks is difficult but not impossible, and requires time, energy and some effort, especially when it’s about working from home. 

To begin with, employees must be aware of some patterns that might raise suspicion. New programs that were not installed before, computer slowing down, the frequent appearance of strange pop-up ads, and loss of control of mouse or keyboard, are some signs that show that your network could be threatened by a malicious cyberattack. 

Remote work concerns

As mentioned above, remote working is a breeding ground for cybercriminals, for some of these reasons. 

• Home Wi-Fi security: Unlike an office, where the IT department is in full control of Wi-Fi security, home networks are much weaker, which makes it easier for hackers to cause damage. 
• Phishing scams: One of the most common hazards of data breaches are phishing attacks. Ninety-one per cent of cyberattacks start with an email, which either leads to malicious links directly or which contains dangerous attachments. Hackers generally send emails that appear legitimate, but are deceptive, since they contain malicious links and attachments. Once an employee clicks on such a link, a hacker can gain access to the device. 
• Weak passwords: If employees have weak passwords, it is easy for hackers to crack and break into the network. What’s more, if it is used across platforms, then these cybercriminals gain unauthorised access everywhere in a short period of time.

Since working from home is a mandate now, businesses must rapidly ensure that every device is secured. Legacy-based Virtual Private Networks (VPN) must give way to cloud-agnostic and scalable network solutions. Besides, employees must be given virtual training to educate them in the event of a cyberattack, and the signs they must watch out for. 

Using the power of AI to tackle cyberattacks

With cyberattacks growing in volume and complexity, artificial intelligence or AI is helping analysts stay ahead of the threat. For starters, AI provides instant insights to help companies fight through the noise of daily alerts. Through machine and deep learning techniques, AI improves its knowledge to understand cybersecurity threats better. 

It also gathers insights to detect malicious files, suspicious IP addresses or insiders. Using AI, it takes only a few seconds or minutes for security experts to detect threats, up to 60 times faster. What’s more, it also helps minimise tedious research tasks and provides a curated analysis of risks, reducing the amount of time for analysts to make critical decisions in no time to tackle the threat. 

According to research, the impact of cyber attacks on businesses could reach USD 6 trillion by 2021. Apart from the financial loss, high profile data breaches can create a concern too, putting people’s lives and company reputations at risk. In order to bridge the skill gap, companies can also use AI in their workforce, to offer employees a combination of man and machine, in order to enhance their performance. 

Here are some practical solutions in which AI can help companies with cyber threats:

• Secure adoption of technology: Today, companies want to adopt modern technologies that enable growth. Most of these technologies barely have the basic security framework and can create problems during adoption. On the other hand, with AI, the cybersecurity team can build adequate monitoring capabilities, wherein technology is seamlessly integrated with the business ecosystem. This helps in providing real-time alerts when new data is uploaded or downloaded from cloud storage. 
• Build next-gen security teams: Owing to the large volume of data, producing actionable insights is a huge effort for security analysts. AI technology can help employees with mundane tasks, including the gathering of data. All in all, it helps security analysts with the required information for decision-making.
• Establish a security culture: According to research, forty-three per cent of cyberattacks begin with a social engineering attack, which proves that employees are the weakest link. To raise awareness amongst employees, companies can use effective communication and include mandatory training. With AI, employees can learn continuous lessons around cybersecurity; in fact, there could be customised lessons, which will be focused on user behaviour.
• Identifying malware: As the use of devices has grown, so has the attack surface. This creates bigger security threats, which need to be tackled within time. AI can identify the class of malware and its criticality. 

In a nutshell, data security has become a high priority area for the management of enterprises. With work from home set to grow even more post-Covid, it is important to use the right technologies, such as AI to detect irregularities and ensure enhanced security. As they say, a stitch in time saves nine!

Image by kalhh from Pixabay