Amid the pandemic, organizations look to protect their brands

Introduction

Organizations have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic in different ways. While some brands have thrived, such as those offering products and services needed during the lockdown (i.e. online shopping and delivery, home entertainment, video conferencing), others were not as fortunate. It’s estimated that the pandemic resulted in the permanent closure of some 200,000 US establishments, which is more than the 600,000 that fail annually. [1] This shouldn’t come as a surprise: A Fed study said barber shops, nail salons and other personal service providers were hit the hardest. Your local full-service restaurants and clothing stores may also have shuttered over the past year.

Digital Technology, a Stabilizing Force

If companies were not sold on a digitally transformed enterprise before, they surely must understand its value today. Digital transformations facilitated the mass shift of employees from traditional offices to home offices. As a result, employees were able to continue to sell, and to expand their enterprises’ market reach. For digitally connected, cloud-optimized corporations, business growth continued despite an overall dip in global economic revenue, estimated at $16 trillion. [2]

However, organizations also discovered a huge downside to being digitally connected; the losses from heightened cyber crime during the pandemic. In a 2020 report, the FBI described receiving more than 28,000 cyber crime complaints from businesses and consumers alike. This breaks down to more than 500 serious incidents per state in the US. Reported financial losses exceeded $4.2 billion. [4]

Check Point and the Cyber Pandemic

Long before the coronavirus outbreak, Check Point warned of an impending cyber pandemic, where organizations would be exposed to more advanced and dangerous Gen-V cyber attacks. This became true as targeted ransomware, phishing, and data and infrastructure breaches accelerated. In the SolarWinds attack, over 18,000 companies and government offices downloaded a Trojan virus that utilized a backdoor to compromise a given organization’s assets, both in the cloud and on premise. [3]

Check Point Software also learned important lessons from its customers on how its security proved essential to securing their organizations in the elevated cyber attack landscape.

This has led to two new awareness campaign, titled “Check Point Is Cloud Security” and “Check Point Is Remote Workforce Security.”

Two New Check Point Awareness Campaigns

The new “Check Point Is” campaigns were created with input from customers, partners, and employees. Below is a sample of the ads in this brand awareness campaign, emphasizing two key security solutions that helped prevent cyber attacks during the pandemic: