Phishing attacks during covid-19 have emerged as the leading cybersecurity threats. Hackers have been using the same technique of making users reveal sensitive information, but the ways to do so have changed significantly. This is the reason that even employees that have an idea about phishing haven’t been able to identify the theft many times.
Some examples to make you understand how advanced forms of hacking can affect even aware employees and organizations are listed below. Have a look.
- Hackers still use email phishing to deceive users. But the kind of emails that they send are mostly related to the pandemic. Now you might be wondering why would people click on those links? Well, that’s primarily because of two reasons – one, the emails somehow slip in the inbox and not the spam folder and two, the source looks super legit. One example of such email theft includes the email that was circulated as covid guidelines under the impression that it was coming from WHO. The doppelganger ID was so similar to the WHO website that users were tricked into believing that WHO had really released some new covid guidelines. Hence, they had clicked on the email attachments.
- Hackers create fake online retail shops to sell pandemic related items like sanitizers. The domain name looks so similar to an actual website that users can be easily fooled. In fact, a new trend that was seen in 2020 was that hackers were somehow able to corrupt the DNS of the server. The DNS was then redirecting users to the fake websites. How hackers found the way to infect the DNS is still not clear. But the one thing that’s clear from such hack attempts is that using advanced cybersecurity techniques is a pre-requisite now.
Now comes the question about solutions. It’s obvious that users will have questions on whether or not such security breaches can be prevented. And the answer to these questions is, yes.
Adopting a couple of techniques – given below – together has shown phenomenal results in stopping security breaching attempts. You should consider adopting them as well.
Using MFA
Backdoor password guards a system from hackers. Similarly, adding more security layers for access is even better. This technique is multi-factor authentication (MFA). Unless a user clears all the layers, the system remains inaccessible.
Using VPN
This is a technique that companies should use for employees that are working from home and in general too. All the traffic that goes in the system through the web is first checked by the VPN for vulnerability detection. You can consider VPN like a scanning machine that’s used in the airport to scan luggage. Only upon the confirmation that there’s nothing malicious that the system can be put on the internet.
These 2 techniques in addition to the basic password practices are very effective against all kinds of hacking attempts. So, as an aware user, you must ensure that you take all such precautions.