Research has revealed that many businesses (31%) struggle with daily cyberattacks and new protection challenges caused by remote working in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.  

Acronis, a global cyber protection company, surveyed 3,400 global companies and remote workers during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and found as many as 92% said they had adopted new technologies to enable remote working, including workplace collaboration tools, privacy solutions and endpoint cybersecurity.  

According to the Acronis Cyber Readiness Report 2020, hackers target remote workers using phishing, distributed denial of service (DDoS) and videoconferencing attacks with as many as 43% of the cyberattacks aimed at small businesses. 

Many companies (39%) said they had experienced a videoconferencing attack in the past three months as workers increasingly relied on apps such as Zoom, Cisco Webex and Microsoft Teams. Malware attacks, including ransomware, have also increased during the pandemic, with 31% of companies reporting daily cyberattacks and half targeted at least once a week, while phishing attacks are occurring at unprecedented high levels.  

Specifically, healthcare industry representatives reported “securing remote workers” as the single top concern during the pandemic. Approximately 70% said they had increased their IT costs in the past three months and 68% of healthcare industry representatives reported purchasing new devices after having switched to remote working. Perhaps, as a result, the authors concluded, as many as 63% of healthcare industry respondents reported feeling better equipped to work remotely now compared to before the pandemic. 

“The cyberthreat landscape has changed dramatically during the past few years and in the last six months in particular, said Acronis CEO Serguei Beloussov. “Traditional stand-alone antivirus and backup solutions are unable to protect against modern cyberthreats. Managing data protection across the company networks and new devices using a stack of different solutions is expensive, time-consuming, and complicated. The lack of integration also creates gaps in the organisation’s defences that cybercriminals are exploiting.”