Coronavirus has disrupted daily life for so many around the world in a shockingly short span of time. Lifestyles have shifted. A new normal, albeit a panic-stricken one, has set in. One-third of the global population is under lockdown to slow the spread of coronavirus. Many organizations have adopted temporary work-from-home measures to keep themselves up and running.

Fear, uncertainty, and doubt are powerful emotions, and time and again, hackers attempt to leverage these for their own gain. As the coronavirus develops into a worldwide pandemic, hackers are taking advantage of the fear many of us feel to spread malware. We’re seeing an abundance of coronavirus-themed phishing, business email compromise (BEC), malware, and ransomware attacks targeting different industries, especially in the health sector.

The COVID-19 outbreak has brought businesses around the globe to their knees. To survive, organizations across verticals are rolling out work-from-home policies. And for effective remote working, it’s imperative to employ VPN connections, as they serve as a conduit for workers to access business-critical data remotely. But when valuable VPN bandwidth is consumed by trivial activities, business-critical applications can run on only meager bandwidth, which translates to lost productivity.

With coronavirus (COVID-19) wreaking havoc across the globe, its disastrous effects are felt in the IT world, too. The lack of a complete work environment, as well as communication issues in development and production, will likely cause a total slowdown in every industry’s growth. Remote work is now mandatory in almost every enterprise.

The global corporate landscape is on the brink of a complete premises lockdown in light of the COVID-19 crisis. Service disruption is inevitable, and enterprises’ business continuity plans are being put to the test. Despite this challenge, it’s heartening to see companies across nations take quick steps to ensure the health and safety of their employees during these trying times.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a physical sciences laboratory and a non-regulatory agency of the United States Department of Commerce, recently released their guidelines for password security. Some of them are contrary to what we’ve come to believe are good password policies. Our IT security expert will talk more about these guidelines in our upcoming webinar. Let’s take a look at what some of them are.