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Cyber Crime Aware During COVID-19
August 29, 2020
The past few weeks have seen many more of us working from outside our office wall. With this digital change comes new cyber threats. Here’s some tips and tricks to keep your data secure:
Keeping data safe from loss
- Home systems tend to be less secure, and there’s a danger that people will forward confidential data to computers or printers without up-to-date virus protection. Few people think to change the default password on their wi-fi router but, when they don’t, anyone who can receive the signal is able to log on and potentially access the data passing over the network.
The risks of counterfeiting
- Hackers are becoming increasingly skilled at creating counterfeit invoices, or changing the payment details on authentic documents, in an attempt to divert money to their own accounts. In the office it’s easy to walk over and check with someone but at home these systems can break down. It’s ok to pick up the phone and ask someone to verify the transaction.
Make staff training a priority
- If you are attacked, the most important thing is to recover quickly, and that means incidents should be reported immediately. Your team must feel absolutely confident they won’t be punished if they made a mistake.
It’s worthwhile reminding your team to:

- be on the lookout for phishing emails, particularly those related to COVID-19
- follow the same protocols to sensitive data as you would in the office
- ensure personal device security settings are set to an equivalent level as work devices
- refrain from connecting to public WiFi
- keep work devices for work only, and refrain from using for personal or family use.
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