Insurers and brokers have embraced working from home of course, but have you ever considered the router that your employees are using may be too easy to hack? GDPR, client confidentiality and brand reputation are on the line – literally – every time your employees take a phone call or open a customer email. So this investigation by Which/ magazine is worth reading;
Households across the country are using their home broadband more than ever.
But many are unaware that old equipment provided by internet service providers (ISPs), including EE, Sky, TalkTalk, Virgin Media and Vodafone, could be putting them at risk of hackers spying on what they are browsing online or even directing them to malicious websites used by scammers.
Which? investigated 13 old router models and found more than two-thirds, nine of them, had flaws that would likely see them fail to meet requirements proposed in upcoming government laws to tackle the security of connected devices. The legislation is not yet in force and so the ISPs aren’t currently breaking any laws or regulations.
The consumer champion’s lab testing identified a range of issues with the routers. These security risks could potentially affect around 7.5 million people, based on the number of respondents who said they were using these router models in Which?’s nationally representative survey.
The problems uncovered by Which?’s lab tests on the old router models that failed were:
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Weak default passwords, which in certain circumstances could allow a cyber criminal to hack the router and access it from anywhere;
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a lack of firmware updates, which are vital for both security and performance;
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a local network vulnerability issue with the EE Brightbox 2. This could give a hacker full control of the device, and for example allow them to add malware or spyware, although they would have to be on the network already to attack.
The survey also suggested that 2.4 million users haven’t had a router upgrade in the last five years.
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