Working from home users at risk of COVID-19 ransomware attacks

The COVID-19 pandemic has intensely impacted the world where many would find themselves working, studying, communicating, and performing other essential needs within the cyberspace. The pandemic has presented many obstacles and challenges for everyone around the world. Due to the outbreak of the COVID-19, many organizations are choosing to adopt a working from home approach to keep their employees safe as well as to reduce the spread of the virus. However, the pandemic has indeed forced many people to work online which would also attract many cyber-criminals. Cyber-criminals would see the pandemic as a golden opportunity to exploit many working from home users. The cyber-security concerns derived from working from home would include having weak security control measures and the possibility that one may encounter a ransomware. Ransomware is one of the dangerous yet popular malware choice used by cyber-criminals as it has the capabilities to lock users out of the files until they forward the demanded ransom to the extortionist. The COVID-19 pandemic has seen a great surge in ransomware usage which can present many challenges for working from home users. The aim of this paper is to discuss an overview of ransomware, issues and challenges with ransomware, ransomware attack vectors, and existing defense mechanisms and control gaps. However, most importantly, here we will also present working from home users a mitigation model against ransomware.