Prevent ATO Attacks During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID -19 pandemic has forced businesses around the world to rethink how they work. Government and health officials are encouraging employers to continue to allow employees to telecommute, and many are doing so.

Unfortunately, much of the switch to remote work has been in haste. While it would normally take months to develop a strategy to support a scattered workforce using SaaS applications like Office 365 and G Suite on unidentified public or private networks, IT managers have had to execute the same within mere weeks.

One way or another, IT leaders have had to deal with an unprecedented surge in the use of Office 365 and G Suite as a remote team collaboration tool and as a repository for sensitive and confidential data. Cybersecurity experts have called it a ‘deal with the devil’ since businesses have ignored the complexity of managing a remote workforce in favor of continued levels of productivity and minimal downtime. This has unfortunately created loopholes in data security.

Due to this, the risk factor tends to rise since many of them are first-time remote workers that are not well-versed in best practices with regards to protecting data stored in their Office 365 or G Suite account.

But wait! The picture doesn’t get any prettier.

In the wake of COVID-19, IT budgets have also seen a sharp drop. Gartner predicts IT spending will decline by 8 percent this year, dropping from $3.7T in 2019 to $3.4T this year.

It’s a nightmare scenario for Office 365 and G Suite administrators but the same can’t be said for cybercriminals.

Fear, uncertainty and weak data protection strategies have certainly opened up new opportunities for the criminal denizens of the dark web. One of these ‘opportunities’ is account takeover (ATO) attacks.

Account Takeover (ATO) attacks are one of the most effective ways for hackers to breach business data stored on SaaS applications like G Suite and Office 365.

ATO attacks involve cybercriminals stealing or buying credentials during third-party breaches and then reusing them to gain easy access into corporate systems to steal IPs, perpetrate business email compromise, gain access to financial accounts and commit other types of cyber fraud.

Deliver Robust Data Protection During COVID To Prevent ATO Attacks

IT professionals need a robust Office 365 and G Suite data protection strategy that scales without putting pressure on an already thin IT budget.

See an implementation time and cost comparison between Spanning and typical data protection platforms. Click the appropriate image below to download the full infographic.

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Spanning’s end-user functionality, easy-to-use yet powerful administrator capabilities and cloud-native benefits combine with simple and transparent pricing to provide the enterprise-class Office 365 and G Suite data protection at a fraction of the cost of complex and expensive data protection platforms like Veeam, Veritas, and SolarWinds.

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