In recent years, many businesses had already begun planning for a gradual shift towards an increasingly remote workforce, yet fewer had implemented a mobile-first strategy, and some were still formulating strategies. At a gradual pace, IT administrators could handle a small percentage of remote workers and saw the management features of device enrollment programs and network security measures as enough to manage a few remote devices and cyber risks.

According to the Pew Research Center, last year, roughly seven percent of U.S. workers regularly enjoyed the option of working from home. Well accustomed to the nature of remote work, these individuals were equipped with stable internet connections, collaboration and communication tools, and security technologies that helped them excel from their home offices.

As if there wasn’t enough to worry about these days, cyber attacks have taken a sharp uptick since the COVID-19 pandemic began this year. From January to March, AT&T Alien Labs Open Threat Exchange (OTX) saw ​419,643 indicators of compromise (IOC) related to COVID-19, including a​ 2,000% month-over-month increase from February to March. Cybercriminals are taking advantage of the shift to remote working, increasing their volume of attacks by nearly 40% in the last month.

Recently, we learned the good news from industry analyst firm, Frost & Sullivan, that we received the 2019 Frost Radar Award for Growth, Innovation & Leadership (GIL) in the Global Managed Security Services (MSS) Market. Frost & Sullivan’s global team of analysts and consultants recognized our achievements in innovating and creating new products and solutions that serve ever-evolving customer needs.

Due to recent international events, there are likely millions of people in the United States and around the world who have just started working from home. There are a lot of office jobs that could move from the company’s workplace to employees’ homes-- accountants, web designers, application developers, network administrators, lawyers, clerical jobs, stock traders, data entry people, call center agents, tech support agents, and probably many other white collar roles.

It’s 2020 and our world is rapidly evolving. Many conferences and training programs have been cancelled, most of us are working from home, and it may seem like learning opportunities are scarce. If you are locked in your house due to COVID-19, what could you be doing to improve your cybersecurity & information security skills? Let me share a few ideas.

During the Investigation of a Web Server Attack alarm for a large multinational enterprise Customer, we conducted an Investigation that inevitably led to the customer isolating the system entirely. The sophistication of the Correlation Rules developed by the AT&T Alien Labs™ team recognized patterns that indicated an attack on the web server.

A shift has occurred in the bastion of corporate hierarchy in the last few decades that has fundamentally changed how organizations operate. This shift started about sixteen years ago in 1994 with Citibank/Citigroup. After suffering a cybersecurity incident, they created the role of Chief Information Security Officer (CISO); a role which has only grown in prominence since.

About the time that Bitcoin was becoming a household name in the cryptocurrency business, an associated up-and-coming technology called blockchain was making waves and being hailed as the next big thing. Then it all but disappeared from the pages of the tech journals and websites. In other words, the big splash never materialized. Looking back, the problem was that it was so new and revolutionary that nobody knew what to do with it yet.

I’m very fortunate in the COVID-19 situation. My job as editor of the AT&T Cybersecurity blog lends itself well to working from home. In fact, even before the virus I had the privilege to work from home some of the time – of course with a VPN and other security measures, on company equipment. The biggest impact has been personal for me. I miss my colleagues at work. I miss the in-person laughs and socializing.