Working from home in US sees increase in cyberattacks

Washington — The trend of Americans working from home during the Covid-19 pandemic is increasing risks for US companies as employees may be lax with their computer security, according to the executive selected to be president-elect Joe Biden’s top economist.

“We now are experimenting with an environment where companies have to massively disperse their workforces and operate on office networks remotely,” Brian Deese, named by Biden to lead the US national economic council, said in an interview broadcast Wednesday by Freakonomics Radio. “The risk of operating from home offices in terms of cyberattacks is exponentially greater.”

The amount of phishing attacks against these dispersed office networks has increased almost 100% in the first half of 2020, Deese said in the interview, taped in June but released now. Phishing is the use of phony e-mails that usually include an attachment that detonates malware when opened.

Deese, a BlackRock executive, also worked on Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign and joined his administration in 2009. He was part of the task force charged with restructuring the automobile industry following the financial crisis and later became deputy director of the US office of management and budget.

The radio interview was conducted by Freakonomics Radio for an episode on plastics that never aired and was released following Deese’s appointment.

According to a Pew Research Centre survey released this week, 71% of US workers who say they can work from home are doing their jobs from home most or all of the time. Teleworkers are relying heavily on video-conferencing services such as Zoom, according to the survey.

Bloomberg