As more and more people are currently working from home because of the Coronavirus pandemic, cyberattacks have become more commonplace, and are even affecting even NASA employees and contractors it seems.
Office of the Chief Information Office
The space agency’s Office of the Chief Information Office has noticed a significant growth in malware attacks, a virtual doubling of email phishing attempts, and roughly a doubling of agency devices trying to access malicious sites in recent days.
NASA personnel
The data is suggestive that NASA personnel are clicking at double the rate as normal on malicious links sent in email and text messages. However, the mitigation blocking mechanisms that NASA has in place can help to reduce damage caused by accessing these links, but it is still vital that employees are trained to recognise phishing attempts for what they are.
Working from home
Since the sudden transition to working from home, many IT departments did not have the time to formalise practices for maintaining the security of organisation networks. Staff working from home must be aware of phishing attacks and should try to keep all their operating systems & devices current, as well as keep personal emails & messages quite separate from those used for work.
