How COVID-19 Has Changed Business Cybersecurity Priorities Forever

For much of this year, IT professionals all over the globe have had their hands full, finding ways to help businesses cope with the fallout of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. In many cases, it involved a rapid rollout of significant remote work infrastructure. That infrastructure was called into service with little to no warning and even less opportunity for testing. Needless to say, the situation wasn't ideal from a cybersecurity standpoint.

And hackers all over the world knew it. Almost immediately, Google reported a significant increase in malicious activity, and Microsoft noted trends that appeared to back that up. The good news is that the wave of cyberattacks unleashed by the pandemic peaked in April and has since died down. Fortunately, that's allowing IT professionals and network administrators everywhere to take a deep breath and take stock of the new security environment they're now operating in.

The trouble is, there's still so much uncertainty surrounding when – or even if – businesses are going to revert to their pre-pandemic operating norms. That new reality is upending many of the assumptions that IT planners made about what their cybersecurity priorities were going to be heading into 2020.

With that in mind, here are some of the ways that COVID-19 has reshaped the threat landscape and where the new cybersecurity priorities lay;
- An Externalized Attack Surface
- Workforce Threat Education Now Mission-Critical
- New Access Control Systems Needed

Any way you look at it, though, the IT community sure has its work cut out for it in the coming months. And when you consider that there are still four months to go in what's been a challenging year, here's hoping that nothing more gets added to their plates.

Full article on https://thehackernews.com/2020/08/covid-19-cybersecurity.html

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