In this post, we explore email security and home working and offer advice to help businesses ensure their workers, devices, and networks are protected.
The 2019 Novel Coronavirus pandemic has forced many workers to self-isolate at home and an increasing number of employees want to work from home to reduce the risk of contracting COVID-19. Businesses are under pressure to allow their workers to stay at home and use either company-issued or personal devices to access their networks and work remotely.
Cybercriminals are constantly changing their tactics, techniques, and procedures and they have jumped at the opportunity provided by the Novel Coronavirus. People are scared and rightly so. COVID-19 has a high mortality rate and the virus is spreading like wildfire. People want information about cases in their local area, advice on how to protect themselves, and information about possible cures. Cybercriminals have obliged and are conducting phishing campaigns that claim to offer all that information. Many campaigns have now been detected from many different threat groups that attempt to obtain login credentials and spread malware. Since early January when the first major campaigns were detected, the volume of coronavirus and COVID-19 emails has increased significantly.
Campaigns are being conducted impersonating authorities on the Novel Coronavirus and COVID-19, such as the World Health Organization (WHO), the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and other government agencies. COVID-19-themed emails are being sent to remote workers that spoof HR departments warning about cases that have been detected within the organization. Health insurers are being spoofed in campaigns that include invoices for coverage for COVID-19.
Since January, more than 16,000 Coronavirus and COVID-19-themed domains have been registered which are being used to host phishing kits and distribute malware. Researchers at CheckPoint Software report that those domains are 50% more likely to be malicious than other domains registered in the same period.
Email security and home working will naturally be a major concern for IT teams given the sheer number of home workers due to the Coronavirus pandemic and the volume of attacks that are now being conducted targeting home workers. With so many devices now connecting to networks remotely, if cybercriminals do obtain credentials, it will be much harder for IT teams to identify threat actors connecting remotely. Fortunately, there are steps that can be taken to improve email security and home working need not majorly increase risk.
You should make sure that your employees can only connect to your network and cloud-based services through a VPN. Enterprise VPNs can be configured to force all traffic through the VPN to reduce the potential for error. Make sure that the VPN is configured to start automatically when the device is powered up.
It is crucial that all remote workers are protected by a robust and effective email security solution. It is not possible to stop cybercriminals targeting remote workers, but it is possible to stop phishing and malware threats from reaching inboxes.
To protect your employees against phishing attacks and malware, an advanced email security solution is essential. If you use Office 365 for email, do not rely on Office 365 email security. You will need greater protection than Exchange Online Protection provides to protect against phishing, spear phishing, and zero-day threats.
SpamTitan has multiple detection mechanisms to identify and block the full range of email threats. SpamTitan incorporates SPF and DMARC to provide protection against email impersonation attacks, machine learning algorithms and predictive technology to protect against zero-day attacks, advanced phishing protection from whaling and spear phishing attacks by scanning inbound email in real-time, dual antivirus engines to block malware threats, and email sandboxing for in-depth analysis of suspicious attachments. SpamTitan also includes 6 specialist RBLs, supports whitelisting, blacklisting, and greylisting, and incorporates multiple threat intelligence feeds.
There is an increased risk of insider threats with remote workers. To provide protection and prevent accidental policy violations, SpamTitan incorporates a data loss prevention filter to stop credit card numbers, Social Security numbers, and other data types from being sent via email.
No email security solution will be able to block 100% of email threats, 100% of the time. It is therefore important to provide regular cybersecurity training to employees to make them aware of phishing threats, train them how to identify a phishing email or social engineering scam, and to condition remote employees how to respond should a threat be received. Phishing simulation exercises are also useful to find out which employees require additional training and to identify possible gaps in training programs. IT security basic training refreshers should also be provided to ensure employees know what can and cannot be done with work devices.
Multifactor authentication must be implemented on all applications and email accounts to provide protection in the event of an account compromise. If credentials are stolen and used from a previously unknown location or an unfamiliar device, a second authentication factor must be provided before access is granted. You should also disable macros on all user devices unless a specific user needs to use macros for work.
You can arrange a demonstration to see SpamTitan in action and you can also sign up for a free trial to put SpamTitan to the test in your own environment.