At-Home Workers Beware!

    As the pandemic continues to trudge along, professionals find themselves relying more on at-home technology than they ever have before. But the usage of technology and reliance on data does not match up with how secure data bases are. This article discusses the major shortcomings of cybersecurity and how the COVID-19 pandemic has made this issue even worse. Many companies have the capabilities for implementing these disciplines but do not do so in a way that is beneficial for the company. While it may not be a top priority, Robb argues this could be a detrimental issue for many companies. 

    While reading this article, I found it quite interesting how the number of cyber-attacks is increasing dramatically. It would have been my first instinct to think that cyber security issues would be decreasing as technology capabilities increase. However, upon further research, cyber criminals are taking advantage of at-home workers in a variety of ways. They are targeting the computer systems that people have at home, as they are not always as up to date and could be susceptible to hacking. Furthermore, it is said that fraudulent emails, phishing attempts, and spam have increased 25% during the pandemic. 1 The more that I thought about these issues, the more they started to make sense. Not everyone has the most up to date laptops or computer systems because when people were going into work every day, no one needed the comparable system at home. In addition, this pandemic had a quick onset, and many people did not have the adequate time to prepare for the months they would be working from home.

    I can see why there has been an increase in spam and phishing emails during the pandemic. Personally, I know it is easier to detect something that is fraudulent when I'm at school and I have the ability to ask a classmate or a friend if they got the same weird email that I did. There have been a few times at Loyola where I have gotten legitimate looking phishing emails that could have compromised Loyola's data and my own. It was through friends and peers that helped me know which emails to trust. Going remote, that easy human interaction is gone, and I can see why people are falling for more tricks than they would have if they were in the workplace.

    I thought this article gave a lot of criticism to organizations about their cybersecurity yet gave very little instruction how to fix it. It was argued that the cybersecurity technology is ahead of what organizations can do to implement them. Adding some tips for companies to fix this issue would have been much more effective in pushing their message across to readers and showing they have expertise in this area. The article is very well written and had a lot of useful data, but without any advice it seems like an attack on security measures without any hope to fix these issues. 

Robb, Drew. "Corporate Cybersecurity Defenses Outgunned by Cybercriminals." CIO Insight, 22 Dec. 2020, www.cioinsight.com/security/corporate-cybersecurity-outgunned-crybercriminals.html. 

1. https://www2.deloitte.com/ch/en/pages/risk/articles/covid-19-cyber-crime-working-from-home.html