Tech security experts warn remote,hybrid workers against rising phishing attacks
By Cynthia Ezekwe
Experts in the technology industry have warned remote and hybrid workers against new vulnerabilities which surface from cyber attacks in the form of phishing.
Phishing, they explained, comes in the form of fraudulent emails that aim to obtain personal information of victims, such as credit card details and sensitive data like usernames and passwords.
The experts also noted that the majority of the attacks will be persuasive, more personal in nature and target specific employees of the company, hitting commonly used business communication services and apps, such as Slack, Teams, ClickUp and ProofHub.
Commenting on the spreading attacks of phishing,Sundaram Lakshmanan, chief technology officer at California-based security company,Lookout, said: “We see attackers steering away from targeting official work emails to ensnare their victims. They are finding more success by sending targeted social engineering campaigns to personal accounts of employees through text messages and third-party messaging apps such as WhatsApp.’’
Jaspreet Singh, a senior research scientist at Trellix security company based in California, observed that weaponised phishing attacks are on the increase across commonly used business communication services and apps.
According to Singh, phishing has been traditionally managed by anti-phishing toolbars and email security protections, but in near future phishing may scale beyond email and messages, spreading across communication channels in a much stealthier way.
Morey Haber, chief security officer at Boston-based security firm Cybereason, also noted that attackers will lean more on their powers of persuasion than on their malware kits as they step up social engineering attacks in the cloud.
Haber further disclosed that a single fake social media profile, leveraged in the right way, can allow a threat actor to impersonate a trusted vendor.
The experts also cautioned individuals on the global adoption of fifth-generation(5G) wireless network connectivity, stating that its fast data transfer poses a higher risk of cyber attacks.
Speaking on this, Paul Baird, chief technical security officer at Qualys, a California-based cloud security firm said: “As 5G’s regional adoption accelerates, faster data transfer on mobile devices will make them as attractive to threat actors as to consumers.”