Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVIDrelated research that is available on the COVID resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. This study analyzed the Coronavirus COVID crisis from the angle of cyber-crime, highlighting the wide spectrum of cyberattacks that occurred around the world.
The modus operandi of cyberattack campaigns was revealed by analyzing and considering cyberattacks in the context of major world events. Following what appeared to be substantial gaps between the initial breakout of the virus and the first COVIDrelated cyber-attack, the investigation indicates how attacks became significantly more frequent over time, to the point where three or four different cyber-attacks were reported on certain days. This study contributes in the direction of fifteen types of cyber-attacks which were identified as the most common pattern and its ensuing devastating events during the global COVID crisis.
The paper is unique because it covered the main types of cyber-attacks that most organizations are currently facing and how to address them. An intense look into the recent advances that cybercriminals leverage, the dynamism, calculated measures to tackle it, and never-explored perspectives are some of the integral parts which make this review different from other present reviewed papers on the COVID pandemic. A qualitative methodology was used to provide a robust response to the objective used for the study.
Using a multi-criteria decision-making problem-solving technique, many facets of cybersecurity that have been affected during the pandemic were then quantitatively ranked in ascending order of severity. The data was generated between March and December , from a global survey through online contact and responses, especially from different organizations and business executives. The study recommends that it will continue to be necessary for governments and organizations to be resilient and innovative in cybersecurity decisions to overcome the current and future effects of the pandemic or similar crisis, which could be long-lasting.
Hence, this study's findings will guide the creation, development, and implementation of more secure systems to safeguard people from cyber-attacks. In times of crisis, an upsurge in cyber-attacks is usual. Take for instance, the global economic crisis in resulted in cyber-attacks as corporation capital declined and citizens became an easy target Ng and Kwok, , Thakur et al. Cybercriminals take advantage of social flaws, and thus, the coronavirus pandemic, also known as COVID, is no exception.
