Coronavirus: A Threat to Your Staff, Cyberthreat to Your Operations

COVID-19, or coronavirus, has been a major global health concern over the past couple of months. At this point, it is clear that this disease could have serious impacts on the workplace. We wanted to provide a brief rundown of good workplace and network health practices, as well as a few pointers on how you can handle health-based employee absences.

How to Maintain Productivity with Your Team at Home

With today’s technology, an employee who is home sick doesn’t necessarily mean that you will be sacrificing that employee’s productivity. We now have many ways that your team can work effectively from home, still contributing to your organizational agenda without exposing their coworkers to their illness.

Equipping Your Employees

Remote access solutions, paired with virtual private networking technology, can allow your employees to securely continue their work from home, safely accessing the applications and data their tasks require through an encrypted connection. As collaboration will certainly be necessary, you will want to be sure that your employees are also equipped with the communication tools that facilitate this collaboration as well.

Network Protections

You will also want to thoroughly secue your network infrastructure to help prevent threats like phishing attacks and other methods from being successful. Prepare for a potential breach or implement emergency business continuity policies and procedures (including contact information for your employees), to help mitigate a worst-case scenario.

Coronavirus as a Cyberthreat

Unfortunately, coronavirus requires you to keep an eye on your network security, particularly if you operate within the healthcare industry. Hackers and cybercriminals have taken advantage of the widespread concern that the disease has caused. For example:

• Scammers have phished healthcare providers with updates that appear to have come from the World Health Organization or hospitals local to their area, but actually introduce keyloggers into their systems.
• Those involved in the medical supply chain have been targeted with emails referencing the coronavirus that install malware to steal information.
• Ransomware has been introduced into consumer systems by promising information about COVID-19’s spread.

While the current climate may not make it easy, these emails and other threat vectors can be overcome through the same best practices that foil other cyberthreats. In addition to comprehensive digital protections, training your employees to spot these threats will be crucial.

Employee Awareness

Finally, make sure your employees are on the lookout for any suspicious activity that could be a cybercriminal’s attempt to us the coronavirus as a means to an end. Not only should your employees know how to spot these attempts, but they should also know the proper procedures for reporting and handling them.

Is the coronavirus scary? At this point, it is safe to say that it is, but does it have to interrupt your business operations entirely? Not if you are properly prepared.

For more assistance in preparing your business for any kind of disaster, reach out to the professionals at CTN by calling (610) 828-5500.

What is COVID-19?

For more information, go to https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html.