Published 30 May 2020

The chief constable of Derbyshire Constabulary, Peter Goodman, has voiced concerns about what firms may find when their workers return to sites, many of which have been effectively abandoned for more than two months.

On the National Police Chiefs’ Council, Goodman is the National Lead for Cyber Crime and for Serious and Organised Crime, making him the country’s most senior cybersecurity officer in the police force.

Goodman was updating the Security Awareness Special Interest Group (SASIG) in a briefing when he made his remarks. He said:

“One of our concerns in the UK is the number of businesses that have been abandoned during the last seven weeks. I don’t mean that in an irresponsible way, because people have not been able to go to work, they have not been able to see what is going on in their digital space at work as effectively, because IT specialists have been off, cybersecurity specialists have been off, whole premises have been closed down. We are just a bit concerned about what people might get back to when they do finally get back to work permanently.”

He added that police forces are preparing for businesses to make more requests of them as they shift back toward more conventional working models, although the UK government has urged employers to continue allowing staff to work from home whenever possible for now. As workers return to offices in the coming months, probably in limited numbers to start with, Goodman fears that many organisations may have remembered to lock the front door only to leave a back door into their networks wide open. He therefore expects that many may find malware sitting on their systems waiting for them.

The government has recommended that people return to work where possible if they cannot work from home, and services have been ramped up on the rail network and especially Transport for London. Social distancing requirements make public transport problematic, however, preventing any large-scale return to work. The true scale of the cybersecurity situation will likely only become clear over the coming weeks or months.

On returning to work, many organisations may not even realise they have been compromised. Indeed, cybercriminals may be hiding dormant in their networks, waiting for a wider reopening of systems before moving laterally through the network to deploy malware such as ransomware. Other threat actors may have compromised endpoints and are now waiting for them to reconnect to their corporate networks, then elevate the attack. It’s therefore recommended for any organisation returning to work to sanitise all its endpoints and monitor its systems for any evidence of compromise.

Ensuring network security has been challenging for many organisations during the pandemic, but at Pro-Networks, we can help relieve the burden through our network management services. With our remote monitoring and management tools, we can quickly detect any events that require attention and monitor for threats, keeping your organisation secure regardless of whether anyone is in the office or not.

 

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