India Witnessed Spike in Cyber Attacks Amidst Covid-19

Awareness in the context of COVID-19 is not only a medical, social and economic threat, but also a cyber security crisis. The pandemic has posed new challenges to business in terms of remote cooperation and business continuity.

As remote working for better business continuity increases, employees use various internet tools. As companies and individuals become increasingly dependent on technology and involved in the fight against the pandemic, attackers have more opportunities than ever to defeat the pandemic.

According to the April PWC report, the number of threats to the security of Indian society doubled by March 2020 – the 100 percent increase between 17 March and 31 December 2010 is particularly worrying. From March to March 20th. March from January 2020.

Sanjay Dhotre, Minister of State of the Union for Electronics and Information Technology (MeITY), said more than 350,000 cyber attacks were recorded in India in the second quarter, three times more than in the first quarter of 2020. He also pointed out that 700,000 cyber security incidents have been recorded as of August 2020.

Major Cyber Security crises in rooms

According to the ACRONIS Cyber Readiness Report 2020, 31 percent of companies worldwide experience at least one cyber security incident per day. However, India reports a doubling in the number of cyber attacks per day, with most cyber attacks involving phishing, DDoS, videoconferencing, use of weak services and malware.

The phishing campaign is the most disturbing attack, as it reached its peak during this pandemic. Although fewer people are affected by malware, the problem is even more acute in India, where malware reports are almost twice the global average.

In addition, 39 percent of the organisations surveyed were attacked via videoconferencing. Among them, Canada, India, Switzerland and the United Kingdom are the most affected countries.

Thematic phishing emails and malicious coronavirus websites with useful information about COVID-19 have become a major threat to businesses. Moreover, according to the Seqrite report, 400,000 new ransom attacks were identified between April and June 2020.

In most cases, these cyber attacks have managed to access a remote system using vulnerable services.

Why is India so vulnerable to cyber attacks?

Growing use of the Internet and mobile technologies – INTI’s Aayog report indicates that India ranks third in the world in terms of the number of Internet users after the United States and China. Due to the exponential growth in the number of internet and mobile phone users, the number of cyber attacks in India and the rest of the world has increased significantly.

Ignore – internal security threats Companies are more concerned with ensuring business continuity through uninterrupted operation than with filling gaps in their external infrastructure. When confidential data is transferred between different departments without proper control and registration, it becomes difficult to detect the flaws of an attack.

Counteracting external threats – With increasing external threats, an organization cannot be 100% prepared. Few Indian companies support security measures such as web application firewalls to monitor external threats and stop cyber attacks when they occur.

Vulnerabilities detected during remote operation – The main vulnerabilities occurring during a sudden transition to remote operation are weak authentication methods, insufficient monitoring and open servers (DNS, VPN, RDP, etc.).

In addition, many employees are generally not aware of personal hygiene online. Through this work, employees around the world can access their personal e-mail and social networking sites on their official computers.

In general, with the merging of private and professional life online, cyber-attacks can easily take place via unprotected personal accounts.

Lack of expertise in cloud technology – To ensure easy access to data from any device, anywhere, many companies have adopted cloud technology.

However, you do not have sufficient internal resources to manage and secure the API, SaaS or containers. The proliferation of poorly configured cloud architectures will inevitably open the door to attackers.

Pandemic landscape requires modern protection

Here are some golden tips to keep you out of these recent cyber security incidents:

• Train your employees in safety principles
• Pay attention to the attachments, links or texts you receive by e-mail, especially if the subject refers to KOVID-19.
• A reliable teleworking policy
• Use only reliable sources, such as legitimate websites, to obtain the most up-to-date information.
• Do not disclose your financial or personal information via email or phone calls to strangers.
• Promote the use of office equipment for official purposes only.
• Do not use passwords between different accounts and applications.
• Back up and save your data separately
• Use of multi-factor authentication
• Update your stack with cloud-based WAFs such as AppTrana, a next-generation cyber security suite that includes vulnerability assessment, virtual patching, zero false positives, DDoS attack prevention and more.

Conclusion

In the area of cyber security, cyber criminals are at the forefront of training, while security experts monitor the improvement of preventive measures. However, with the advent of advanced technologies, this scenario is beginning to change.

The next generation of threat monitoring and forecasting tools goes beyond a rules-based system to detect cyber threats and identify potential threats safely and quickly.

With sufficient national awareness of cyber security and a good policy, companies must be able to deal effectively with cyber threats in the future.

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