Government officials have warned of new Coronavirus scams currently targeting workers who have been laid off or had reduced working hours because of Covid-19.
The fraudsters are attempting to deceive people who have applied for any of the new special welfare payments available to such workers.
There has been a large increase in domains registered over the last 2 weeks with “corona” or “Covid-19” in the domain name and it is likely that a number of those domains will be used to try to dupe email users too.
The total volume of phishing emails and other security threats relating to the Coronavirus now represents one of the largest cyber-attack types based around a single theme that we’ve seen in a long time, and possibly ever.
Data from artificial intelligence endpoint security platform SentinelOne shows that from February 23 to March 16 there was an upward trend of attempted attacks with peaks at 145 threats per 1,000 endpoints, compared to 30 or 37 at the start of that period.
As always, the advice is to be “cyber aware” and treat all unsolicited emails as potentially harmful.
Stay vigilant for malicious emails regarding remote access and fake websites aimed at ensnaring unsuspecting remote workers.
When working from home or out of the office, make sure you are using a virtual private network (VPN). If you have any doubts – just stop what you’re doing and check with your tech support team.
For more information around IT Security, have a look here: https://bits.ie/security/ – and feel free to give us a call. We’re here to help!
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