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![Figure 2: COVID-19 Malware and Phishing Vesting Sites [24]](profile/Noor-Jhanjhi/publication/341324625/figure/fig2/AS:892740820803584@1589857406397/COVID-19-Malware-and-Phishing-Vesting-Sites-24_Q320.jpg)
p>World Health Organization declared COVID-19 as a pandemic after the breakout in the city of Wuhan, China. The disease has negatively affected the global economy and daily life. Most of the countries around the world have imposed travel restrictions, locked down, and social distancing measures. In the current situation, Information and Communicati...
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The social distancing practices triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic have caused a huge growth in the use of online technologies to support remote work, resulting in a sharp rise in computer crimes, privacy breaches and service disruptions across the globe. Cyber attackers are taking advantage of COVID-19 anxiety to launch email scams, misinform and...
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... Employees daily working environment has changed at unprecedented levels due to the COVID-19 crisis, resulting in multiple cybercrimes (Ramadan et al., 2021). Prior research studies have mentioned an immense increase in cybersecurity challenges during the crisis (Eian et al., 2020;Khan et al., 2023;Pranggono & Arabo, 2021;Ramadan et al., 2021). Also, these studies have reported phishing attacks, spam messages, ransomware, malicious attacks, and browsing applications as major cybersecurity issues during this crisis. ...
Australia's Higher Education and Research Sector (HERS) must adopt digital resilience strategies to tackle cybersecurity challenges and manage major crises effectively. In this study, we have developed a digital resilience framework to mitigate these cybersecurity issues. Our findings suggest a range of keystone factors for crisis management, such as implementing cybersecurity awareness programmes, providing cyber support, redefining roles and responsibilities, implying risk management tools, partnerships with external security organizations, introducing policies, reconfiguring technologies, adopting new technologies, and evaluating current changes to combat these issues. These keystone factors will help achieve digital resilience and significantly minimize cybersecurity issues in HERS, not only during the current major crisis but also in the future. This research offers valuable theoretical and practical contributions that can be applied beyond the context of the recent crisis.
... There has been evidence in the extant literature that the global systems have recurrently been attacked and millions of United States dollars have gone down the drain through persistent attacks by cybercriminals [12]. It was also established, that stock markets around the world and every segment of the global economy have been severely affected, while phishing, malware and ransomware (techniques of social engineering, adopted by cybercriminals) have dealt a great blow to financial service industries across the world [13]. Given the various incidents of cyberattacks and threats around the world, the South African banks have taken pre-emptive measures to embark on a frequent drive to educate their clientele concerning fake emails and phishing [14]. ...
Cybersecurity has become a growing concern globally, following this era of unparalleled resources, power relations and technological evolution. Technological vulnerabilities have led to massive data breaches in recent years and research has highlighted potential uses of artificial intelligence to engineer more powerful cyber-attacks thus revealing new hardware weaknesses. Cyber-attacks pose a threat to critical infrastructure thereby compelling countries to intensify their national security testing for cross-border partnerships. South Africa, however, is lagging in terms of readiness and capacity building against various forms of cyber-attack. Currently, the country has the world’s third-highest number of cybercrime victims. By the same token, there is evidence that the South African Banking Risk Information Centre (SABRIC) loses over R2.2bn annually to cyber-attacks. In October 2019, two seemingly separate syndicates of hackers threatened to close the finance and local government sectors at a time when South Africa was struggling to recover from its previous economic recession. Taking insights from the existing literature, the study demonstrates that the level of awareness of cybersecurity among the South African populace is very poor, while the legislations put in place have done little to alleviate the trends and shield the general population from cyberwarfare. With growing legislation focussing on cybersecurity, the study contends that there is also the need for diverse professional and academic institutes to deliver hands-on educative services to the society through research-led activities to ensure South Africa is resilient to the growing threats. Given the borderless nature of cybercrime, South Africa should start intensifying efforts to incorporate the Joint Cybercrime Action Taskforce (J-CAT) alongside the local laws and necessitate the establishment of police-oriented learning centres, where citizens can be educated on the dangers of cybercrime and its devastated impacts on national development. With the drive towards digital economy and advanced global technologies, there is the need for further consolidation of South Africa’s cybersecurity system with a view to ensuring the safety and security of national infrastructure, society, and global economic relations from malicious online crime spree. Until these are done, the storm is not yet over
... There has been evidence in the extant literature that the global systems have recurrently been attacked and millions of United States dollars have gone down the drain through persistent attacks by cybercriminals [12]. It was also established, that stock markets around the world and every segment of the global economy have been severely affected, while phishing, malware and ransomware (techniques of social engineering, adopted by cybercriminals) have dealt a great blow to financial service industries across the world [13]. Given the various incidents of cyberattacks and threats around the world, the South African banks have taken pre-emptive measures to embark on a frequent drive to educate their clientele concerning fake emails and phishing [14]. ...
The need for continuous research on domestic violence could be more espoused by the exponential increase in domestic violence, such that characterized the global reign of corona virus. Domestic violence cases have been on the rise in South Africa since 1994; and despite the existence of legal protections and statutory instruments that attempt to hinder domestic violence, there continues to be prevalence of violent behaviours across different families. Indisputably, the outbreak of coronavirus has created myriads of consequences for justice system in South Africa and the world at large. Due to the outbreak, the South African government announced a lockdown to mitigate the spread of the virus. Nonetheless, within a span of one week of the lockdown, the South African Police Services (SAPS) reported a shocking rise in the number of gender-based violence cases, which was approximately reported as 89000. The lockdown primarily suggests that victims be locked with the perpetrators for a period until it is deemed safe to end the lockdown. Using a systematic review of the empirical literature, the paper provides a quadripartite criminological perspective (comprising differential association theory, classical theory, frustration-aggression theory and social bond theory) on the rise of domestic violence during the outbreak of the virus. It further explores the aftermaths of COVID-19 on criminal justice system in terms of dealing with diverse cases of domestic violence in the Republic. Factors pertaining to issues of access to justice system during the lockdown, poor police response and victim reporting, sense of helplessness by victims, delayed justice, as well as victim support, system are significantly evaluated
... One of the reasons for this recent difficulty in detecting phishing emails, has been a significant use of COVID-19 themes for phishing and online fraud. Malicious attackers have taken COVID-19 as an opportunity to launch attacks for financial gains and to promote their evil intents... and many people are falling prey to phishing attacks [25]. As Interpol [20] reported, there were 907,000 spam COVID-19-related messages and 48,000 malicious URLs detected between January and April, 2020. ...
Phishing attacks are on the increase. The fact that our ways of living, studying and working have drastically changed as a result of the COVID pandemic (i.e., almost everything being done online) has created many new cyber security concerns. In particular, with the move to remote working, the number of phishing emails threatening employees has increased. The 2020 Phishing Attack Landscape Report (Greathorn: 2020 Phishing attack landscape. https://info.greathorn.com/report-2020-phishing-attack-landscape/, 2020) highlights a sharp increase in the frequency of attempted phishing attacks. In this paper, we are interested in how the phishing email attack has evolved to this very threatening state. In detail, we explore the current phishing attack characteristics especially the growing challenges that have emerged as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper documents a study that presented test participants with five different categories of emails (including phishing and non phishing) . The findings from the study show that participants, generally, found it difficult to detect modern phishing email attacks. Saying that, participants were alert to the spelling mistakes of the older phishing email attacks, sensitive information being requested from them and any slight change to what they were normally used to from an email. Moreover, we have found that people were not confident, worried and often dissatisfied with the current technologies available to protect them against phishing emails. In terms of trust, these feelings alerted us to the increasing severity of the phishing attack situation and just how vulnerable society has become/ still is.
... Although this technology helped in keeping family, friends and employees connected and in work, they increased privacy risks. Zoom, for example, has seen a tremendous reaction as security specialists, privacy groups and lawmakers warn that Zoom's default configurations are not safe [4]. A recent consumer survey showed that apps like Google Meet, Microsoft Team and Zoom capture more data than users realize [5]. ...
In late December 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced the outbreak of a new type of coronavirus, named the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), also known as COVID-19. The deadliness of the virus has forced governments and countries to socially isolate their populations, causing a worldwide impact on the economy. Pandemic management has stressed health systems to work beyond their limits, adding more to the tragedy of losing millions of lives. As a natural response to such disasters, intelligent systems have been developed for various reasons related to virus detection, tracking and control. The social lockdown created a record level of online platforms and applications being used to resume professional and educational activities in a virtual environment. This has triggered an unprecedented growth in cybercrime. This paper presents the effects of the pandemic on computational intelligence and cybersecurity.
... Large funds have been set aside to secure information systems and deal with security lapses in organizations [6]. Many activities have been done to combat data breaches; however, they still occur, as evidenced by the recent Zoom data breach [7]. Zoom experienced a boom during the COVID-19 pandemic as many meetings were held remotely so as to keep social distance. ...
... There have been other serious data breaches on application systems that hold loads of clients' data such as Facebook [10,[14][15][16], Yahoo [17], and more recently Zoom [7]. The data breaches may indicate that different parties responsible for ensuring privacy are implemented cannot incorporate the necessary privacy protocols into applications they develop despite the existence of laws such as GDPR principles. ...
Previous research has been carried out to identify the impediments that prevent developers from incorporating privacy protocols into software applications. No research has been carried out to find out why developers are not able to develop systems that preserve privacy while specifically considering the General Data Protection Regulation principles (GDPR principles). Consequently, this paper aims to examine the issues, which prevent developers from creating applications, which consider and include GDPR principles into their software systems. From our research findings, we identified the lack of familiarity with GDPR principles by developers as one of the obstacles that prevent GDPR onboarding. Those who were familiar with the principles did not have the requisite knowledge about the principles including their techniques. Developers focused on functional than on privacy requirements. Unavailability of resourceful online tools and lack of support from institutions and clients were also identified as issues inimical to the onboarding of GDPR principles.
Blockchain technology has garnered considerable interest from academics and businesses. One of the primary reasons to keep track of customer satisfaction and adoption is that customers don't use the product or service enough. Identifying the factors that influence the use and adoption of blockchain technologies will help solve the adoption problems effectively. Many significant firms, like Google, Amazon, and others, will embrace blockchain technology. It will indeed be found in the future and revolutionise logistics and transportation. Even though the advantages of blockchain technology have been well studied in the financial sector, using blockchain technology can help decrease significant logistical challenges such as border delays, product damage, errors, and multiple data entry.
Purpose: The purpose of this research paper was to analyse the counterstrategies to mitigate cybersecurity challenges using organisational learning loops amidst major crises in the Higher Education and Research Sector (HERS). The authors proposed the learning loop framework revealing several counterstrategies to mitigate cybersecurity issues in HERS. The counterstrategies are explored, and their implications for research and practice are discussed. Methodology: The qualitative methodology was adopted, and semi-structured interviews with cybersecurity experts and top managers were conducted. Results: This exploratory paper proposed the learning loop framework revealing introducing new policies and procedures, changing existing systems, partnership with other companies, integrating new software, improving employee learning, enhancing security, and monitoring and evaluating security measures as significant counterstrategies to ensure the cyber-safe working environment in HERS. These counterstrategies will help to tackle cybersecurity in HERS, not only during the current major crisis but also in the future. Implications: The outcomes provide insightful implications for both theory and practice. This study proposes a learning framework that prioritises counterstrategies to mitigate cybersecurity challenges in HERS amidst a major crisis. The proposed model can help HERS be more efficient in mitigating cybersecurity issues in future crises. The counterstrategies can also be tested, adopted, and implemented by practitioners working in other sectors to mitigate cybersecurity issues during and after major crises. Future research can focus on addressing the shortcomings and limitations of the proposed learning framework adopted by HERS.
The effects of Coronavirus disease at a global level led the years 2020, 2021, and 2022. This global pandemic caused millions of organizations to shift to online workspaces to curb the rising numbers of contaminations. In doing this rapid change from physical to digital spaces, organizations were not adequately prepared for the aftermath. This included more sophisticated phishing attacks, directed scams, and taking advantage of poorly executed processes for the product supply chain. In this chapter, the authors will cover the events and the aftermath of security threats focusing on the onset of the pandemic.
COVID-19 pandemic also gave rise to cyber pandemic when the incidence of cybercrimes increased manifold all over the world. As the existing health infrastructure crumbled in the face of the severity of the COVID-19, so did the prevalent technical architecture, procedures, policies and practices of cybersecurity at various enterprises in the face of vigorous cyber-attacks. The strict lockdown(s) and quarantine protocols enforced during the pandemic affected the mental condition and human behavior adversely. Loss of lives and livelihoods further aggravated the mental condition causing so many people to become angry, anxious and paranoid. At the same time, the need for remote working increased the dependence on technology networks which proliferated immensely without due regard to cybersecurity architecture. Rapid pace of adoption of emerging technologies necessitated by lockdowns and the enhanced metal stress due to pandemic considerably increased the attack surface for social engineering-based attacks. In this paper we have carried out a systematic literature survey of the threat landscape both, during and post pandemic world in view of human behavioral changes. We have then recommended a mitigation framework incorporating necessary regulations at national level, policies and security culture at organizational level, procedures at operational level and training at individual levels to mitigate the risks associated with the changed threat landscape.KeywordsCOVID-19Mitigation frameworkCybersecurityRansomware attacksCrypto-currenciesMetaverseVulnerabilitiesInformation communication technologiesMachine learning
