Fortinet, a global leader in broad, integrated and automated cybersecurity solutions, advise Malaysians to be more vigilant while working from home using their personal devices during the Movement Control Order (MCO) period. Many are also using unsecured video conferencing apps for working meetings and social interaction. Additionally, stay-at-home children are sharing the devices to for remote learning while spending leisure time on multi-player online games, chats as well as streaming music and videos.
“Personal laptops and tablets are generally less protected compared to company issued equipment. Additionally, the devices are also being used for personal shopping and streaming entertainment, which makes them even more vulnerable to the malware being pushed by phishing attacks,” said Alex Loh, Country Manager for Fortinet Malaysia.
In Malaysia, CyberSecurity Malaysia reported that the number of cyber security incidents recorded MCO period surged by a whopping 82.5%. A total of 838 incidents were reported between the start of the MCO on March 18 and April 7. Of this total, 18% or 152 cases involved local companies, while the rest were home users and others. Most cases involved fraud such as scams, phishing or social engineering attacks related to Covid-19 topics as well as intrusion.
Fortinet’s FortiGuard Labs has discovered an enormous spike in coronavirus-related scams worldwide involving money transfer, shared riding service and credit card scams. Fortinet reminds Malaysians to protect their devices and home networks. Practise cyber social distancing and learn to recognize risks and keep a distance with the following key steps:
- Learn more about phishing attacks and avoid getting duped. Beware of malicious websites too
- Beef up cyber security at home – Make sure you enable additional security in home routers and wireless access points. When in doubt, contact your internet service provider to see what security services they provide and have them enabled.
- Request for corporate IT help – Insist on multifactor authentication and single sign-on, or scalable VPN termination and traffic inspection from corporate IT resources. This is to ensure only authenticated devices are allowed access
- Check for security tools – Ensure your email gateway is capable of detecting and filtering out phishing attacks and spam, and eliminate malicious attachments.
