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2020: The Year the COVID-19 Crisis Brought a Cyber Pandemic

Ask almost anyone what the top global story was for 2020, and they will likely start with the COVID-19 pandemic. But there is much more to this story.  

2020 will also be remembered as the year that security events exploded and cyberincidents transformed society in numerous ways. Consider this small sample of headline stories:

• Bizjournals.com: “Cyberattacks on the rise during the Covid-19 pandemic“
• Government Technology: “How Is Covid-19 Creating Data Breaches?“
• BBC: “Coronavirus: How the world of work may change forever“
• Interpol.int: “INTERPOL report shows alarming rate of cyberattacks during COVID-19“
• Techxplore.com: “Ransomware surge imperils hospitals as pandemic intensifies“
• PR Newswire: “Top Cyber Security Experts Report: 4,000 Cyber Attacks a Day Since COVID-19 Pandemic“
• ZDNet: “COVID-19 pandemic delivers extraordinary array of cybersecurity challenges“
• Maritime Executive: “Maritime Cyberattacks Up by 400 Percent“

The magnitude (breadth, depth and height) of this overall online set of Internet trends has revealed many positive benefits. For example, numerous people are enjoying the quality of life benefits received in the move to working from home.

Going further, some experts argue that technology has been a silver lining during this pandemic, since so many communication, business and personal interactions moved online without significant outages or business impacts for 80 percent of the economy (excluding travel, hotels, restaurants, etc.). In a sense, cyberspace has stepped up to the challenges brought by COVID-19 in ways that did not (and could not) happen during the last major pandemic in 1918. 

But the negative cybersecurity impacts of these online changes have led many experts to summarize the combined events this year as a growing “cyber pandemic.” In this year-end perspective, (Read more...)