Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) groups and cyber criminals are looking to exploit the circumstances around the COVID-19 crisis. In particular, there has been a significant rise of scams pretending to be legitimate requests from official HM Government departments, targetting individuals and businesses. The aim is usually to obtain sensitive exploitable information such as logins, bank details or personal data. Often there may be an attempt to get the user to run malware on their PC, tablet or phone.
This wave of attacks uses the COVID-19 pandemic themes directly to create urgency and attract attention as well as indirectly – trying to exploit the lockdown and remote working situation in home environments where cyber security barriers are usually lower than at work. Falling for these scams would add significant hardship to an already difficult situation caused by the pandemic.
Please contact Agile Cybersec if you would like your cybersecurity arrangements reviewed, particularly in the view of home working, or if you think you may have been a victim of a cyber scam and need technical assistance to identify and eradicate any malware and secure your equipment.
Further details and downloadable materials on this topic are available in the full advisory article at the National Cyber Security Centre website.