With the outbreak of this Coronavirus, we are facing a challenging situation with a clear emphasis on work from home operations by businesses and government.
However, this sudden increase in remote working has caused a burden to the telecommunications infrastructure, making data vulnerable to hackers.
With more businesses shifting to the remote workplace, the number of scams has reached its unprecedented height during COVID-19 lockdown. We have jotted down the possible scams that are taking place with ways to avoid those:
IT scams:
This is the most popular scam. Taking advantage of the remote workplace, hackers may send links that can extract your company's data or highly confidential information. One of the ways to prevent it is by informing your employees well in advance.
Fraud calls:
Your employees might get calls from unknown numbers trying to sell them something. They might misuse the Covid-19 concerns of people by trying to persuade people to buy sanitation kits or essential things to earn money. Again, avoiding such calls is a better way to not fall into the hackers' traps.
Supply scams:
Be sure that you purchase your necessary goods and supplies from an authentic website as there are a number of fraud websites that might trick you and take all your information regarding credit/debit cards. So it is always safe to directly type the URL as prevention is always better than cure.
Public health scams:
You might get messages from public health offices asking you to provide social security numbers like Tax id, Aadhar Card number, etc. You might also get a link to download some files. It might be a way to back your computer and steal data so beware.
Government check scams:
Taking advantage of the fact that the government is providing financial support to small businesses, you might get fake calls which might tempt you to reveal personal details and confidential information. Again staying alert is the only way to avoid these.
Business email scams:
Your employees might get mails from other employees or companies higher up asking to give personal details or click certain links which are just hackers' way to get confidential information by spoofing emails and phone numbers. Making your company officials aware of these things is one of the ways to prevent falling into the trap.
In this time of crisis, working from home is inevitable. However, the risks that are offered by it should not be ignored. Remote working systems are not tested in critical situations so in this global pandemic, to ensure company safety, adhere to security policies.
Make sure both you and your company stay safe!