Global Financial Regulator Says Working From Home is Promoting Cyber Attacks

The Financial Stability Board (FSB) claims that the sudden shift to working from home courtesy of the pandemic is a reason for increased cyber-attacks which have increased tremendously in recent times.

The FSB which is responsible for coordinating financial rules for is advising that financial companies may need to reinforce their defenses in the wake of rampant increasing cyber-attacks.

The regulator acknowledges that working at home which is also called remote working will be around for some time across the financial service industry and beyond in the report it tabled to the G20 ministers and central banks.

Most cyber frameworks did not envisage a scenario of near-universal remote working and the exploitation of such a situation by cyber threat actors. Financial institutions have generally been resilient but they may need to consider adjustments to cyber risk management processes, cyber incident reporting, response and recovery activities, as well as management of critical third-party service providers, for example cloud services” read the FSB report.

Movement restrictions since the pandemic set foot have become a norm around the world now, financial companies, just like other firms resulted to allowing their employers to work from home which resulted to an increase in cyber-attacks.

According to the report, cyber activities such as malware, ransomware and phishing increased from around 5,000 per week in February 2020 to 200,000 per week in April 2021.

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