Today, all most everything is done through the internet. Whether it is login into a social media page, checking personal or work emails, online banking, and or 90% of the time doing online shopping. Ever since its public launch on April 30, 1993, the internet now compared to back then is like no other where billions of people are accessing information from all possible ends. And with an addition of an estimated 500,000 new users each day, the criminals who use to rob and steal from you in person, is now maliciously attacking you when you least expect it. The covid-19 pandemic became some form of rebirth for viral attacks and no I am not talking about the one that attacks your health, in stead this one attacks your wallet and all the valuable information it contains. Individuals and organizations sought out to boost their anti-virus protection after witnessing firsthand what cyber-attackers were doing to companies large and small since the start of the pandemic.
Over the last two years, the time has shown that it is very important to be protected from viral attacks via the internet. “An individual may suffer tremendous trouble, stress, and financial loss if a personal computer or company account is compromised (Vahid, F., 2019).” Some forms of viral attacks generated through an old school method using the PING commands. Ping of Death otherwise known as PoD is an attacked used frequently by hackers to disable or crash a PC or server. But the most common computer virus used out of the many in that span of two years was ransomware and none bigger than the one that took aim at the US government and its colonial pipeline that paid out a reported ransom of over 5 million dollars. “We saw more attacks of every kind, but the headline for 2020 was ransom attacks, which were up 150% over the previous year. The amount paid by victims of these attacks increased more than 300% in 2020 (Sharton, B., 2021).” Most attacks start from email spamming which has increased significantly leading business in a panic state. Simply gaining access through one’s email can lead to a nightmare for example like a healthcare institution. With access to thousands of medical records and personal information, healthcare organization are the most vulnerable for viral breached resulting in data held for ransom or sold on the black market. By clicking/downloading pictures and/or documents sent via email, the virus spreads quickly through a network producing a sluggish performance that leads to an ultimate system holt that will affect patient care and can lead to death. “Attackers are taking advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic and have launched a number of cyberattacks against health care organizations (He, Y., et al 2021).”
In a better light of things, reported attacks or breaches has declined in recent months as more and more organization are shifting back to coming on site rather than working from home. Managing the security structure and system with everyone in a building is far more batter than those working from home. If situation repeats itself by forcing many to switch back to remote working, then I have a few recommendations as followed targeting computer viruses and email spam.
• Change the structure of one’s password by mandating the length of characters to 16 instead of 8 while utilizing an array of symbols and numbers
• Provide the same antiviral software protection to all staff members of a healthcare institution who telecommute on their personal PCs from home.
• Perform vigorous scans on all incoming emails from outside sources and circulating emails within a network.
• Create a antivirus software specifically for email application and servers, that will quickly put an end-user account into a quarantine state isolated from the network when any threat is detected.
Reference
Vahid, F., & Lysecky, S., (2019). Computing technology for all. https://learn.zybooks.com/zybook/TEC101:_Fundamentals_of_Information_Technology_&_Literacy_(TED2219A)/chapter/6/section/8
Sharton, B., (2021). Ransomware Attacks Are Spiking. Is Your Company Prepared? https://hbr.org/2021/05/ransomware-attacks-are-spiking-is-your-company-prepared
He, Y., Aliyu, A., Evans, M., Luo, C., (2021). Health Care Cybersecurity Challenges and Solutions Under the Climate of COVID-19: Scoping Review. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8059789/
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