The global economy is in turmoil. The novel Covid 19 syndrome or Coronavirus has plunged the world order in chaos and uncertainty. If the stock markets are any barometer then we stare at troubled times ahead. With trillions of dollars wiped out in the stock markets due to rising uncertainty, an economic slowdown looks impending While the tourism and travel industry and event management sector is likely to take the biggest hit, the impact of the virus will certainly have a cascading effect on other industries as well in terms of revenue and productivity. The travel restrictions, work-from-home directives by governments and offices and the general pessimism surrounding the virus means we will have to brace for unemployment and layoffs. As a cyber security proponent, ARCON fears that cyber crime, which is already rising at an alarming rate, will intensify. Online scams, targeted attacks, privileged account abuse, insider threats to corporate data among many other types of sophisticated attacks could cripple already struggling global companies.

So what can be done?

While there is no panacea of physical crimes, (of course better policing can curb it), online threats can be definitely nipped in the bud by robust cyber security posture. At times when work from home trends is likely to continue for an extended period of time, employees' access to critical applications and data assets will require more scrutiny. Unauthorized access to critical IT assets from third-party will also rise. Corporate boards will have to take more proactive actions to safeguard data privacy and data integrity. Access to critical data should not just be given with multi-factor authentication but also on ‘need-to-know’ and ‘need-to-do-basis’. Security and Risk Management will have to be more vigilant on risky behavior profiles, especially when office staff is accessing servers remotely. ARCON recommends that enterprises will have to invest in highly effective IT security solutions like Privileged Access Management and User Behavior Analytics to keep bad actors at bay. These robust security solutions helps enterprises in the following ways:
  • Formulating a centralized policy to authorize end-users access to applications
  • Applying the principle of least privilege to protect & securely process confidential data
  • Implementing a granular level access control over end-users
  • Securing third-party access to IT systems
  • Recording sessions of all critical/privileged activities in an IT environment
  • Capturing audit logs of every critical session to identify anomalies

ARCON is a leading enterprise risk control solutions provider, specializing in risk-predictive technologies. ARCON | User Behaviour Analytics enables to monitor end-user activities in real time. ARCON | Privileged Access Management reinforces access control and mitigates data breach threats. ARCON | Endpoint Privilege Management mitigates risks arising out of endpoints. ARCON | Secure Compliance Management is a vulnerability assessment tool.