Shocking statistics have been unveiled by Darktrace showing that the proportion of attacks on those working from home rose from 12% pre lockdown to 60% during lockdown. This is in part due to workers having to work from home using systems which are unfamiliar to them. The attacks range from preying on anxieties around coronavirus, malicious attempt to reset VPN accounts and fake chat on corporate messaging systems as well as phishing and spoofing scams.
Lockdown hasn’t stopped the achievements for the team here at Clark Integrated Technologies. We’ve reached the finals of the Scottish Rural Awards 2020.
We’ve been recognised for our work helping rural businesses stay on top of the technology challenges which non city-based firms can face due to their location.
The Scottish Rural Awards are designed to celebrate the best businesses delivering solutions to rural areas, ensuring they remain competitive whilst still retaining their place within the countryside of Scotland.
For some firms, enabling staff to work from home has become a rushed necessity. However, now we’re almost two months into the ‘new normal’, it’s come clear to even the most reluctant business managed, that this model can work across many sectors.
Thanks for all your support during this period, we want to reassure all our clients and our partners that the whole team at Clark Integrated Technologies are fully operational and working remotely at this time to help and support your IT needs as usual. We have had full remote working capability for many years, delivering over 90% of all support to you with virtual hands. Many of you have told us that the ability to work remotely has been embraced and are keen to make this part of your ongoing operations. it has been invaluable to meet the challenges of modern day working. We provide continuity of service to all our clients across all our business throughout the current challenges and are looking beyond as we come out of Lockdown to a New Normal economy to Revive and Prosper post COVID-19.
In some areas of the UK, burglary has fallen by 37% as more of us work from home during the pandemic and shoplifting has fallen by more than 50% as fewer shops are open.
When it comes to passwords and internet security, sometimes the simpler solutions are actually the best.
Let’s take a closer look at how to truly safeguard the information you value most.
We are often told how essential it is to create numerous complex passwords, and that they should be used uniquely across all our internet applications. The logic behind this decision may seem flawed, but it is rooted in real fears.
However, in practice, having too many passwords can be a terrible headache – not to mention a potential security risk. What if you forget your vital passwords? What if you write them down and misplace the note? What if someone else finds your passwords and accesses your accounts?
Advice for many years has been to simply memorise your passwords instead of storing them. People have been told that storing passwords in any form is inherently a high-risk activity.
While we encourage the use of password managers (alongside recommendations from the National Cybersecurity Centre (NCSC), interest in this tech has remained low. Yet the recommends a refreshed approach to passwords. Would it work for you?
NCSC suggests that established thinking around password creation is flawed, because it expects the end-user (us) to memorise numerous lengthy passwords.
Instead of taking this approach, it may make more sense to instead opt for three ‘random’ words – strong enough to work on many different platforms, and to not be guessed by aspiring hackers – but not so obscure that you can’t remember them, either!
The strategy is informed by real-world customer behaviour, making it a little more grounded and practical in scope.
Key areas to consider with this approach include:
Of course, no password solution is entirely failsafe. There is always the possibility this approach could be seen as weaker than completely randomised password approaches, though the NCSC argues this is not entirely true.
Instead, the randomisation and length of the passwords could in fact be considerably stronger and more targeted than some passwords that are traditionally considered as efficient, but are actually incredibly easy to guess and exploit.
To find out more about the topic, head for the official National Cyber Security Centre website. Get practical help with your cybersecurity by contacting our expert team.
