SMEs appear ill-prepared for greater risks of cyberattacks as online workforce rises

Cybersecurity may not be top-of-mind for smaller companies facing looming recession, say specialists

Published Tue, Jul 28, 2020 · 09:50 PM

Singapore

SMALL and medium-sized enterprises face greater risks of cyber attacks and data breaches than they realise, as more of their employees work from home during the pandemic.

Cybersecurity firm Trend Micro told The Business Times that in Singapore, it had blocked 23,000 phishing e-mails and almost 12,000 malicious URLs related to Covid-19 in the first half of the year. This was on top of the number of attacks the firm typically blocks, it said.

"It's most likely that threat actors took advantage of the rising number of Covid-19 cases as a lure to victimise users who wanted more information," said Trend Micro's vice-president for South-east Asia and India, Nilesh Jain.

Meanwhile, Singapore-based cybersecurity firm Polaris Infosec, a member of the Innovation Cybersecurity Ecosystem at Block71 (ICE71), said the number of attacks passing through its network more than doubled in the first half of the year compared to the…