Office Hours: Webroot and COVID-19 May 5, 2020


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Hello Webroot Community, 

I wanted to create a space for us to come together and discuss Webroot and COVID-19.

Consider this our office hours. 

In case you might have missed it, we created a page here where we’ll keep a running list of articles, blog posts, and other pieces of content about our COVID-19 response.

If you have specific questions on what we’re doing as a company during the pandemic and our tips for how you can stay cyber resilient in these uncertain times. 

 

Please add your questions below or join us Tuesday, May 5, 2020, at 1:00 PM - 1:30 PM MT.


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Welcome and thank you to everyone who’ll be joining us today. 

We’ve had some questions rolling in earlier from Webroot customers that I’ll be posting over the next 30 mins but if you have a question, please feel free to add to the conversation below. 

With that, we’ll get started. 

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Our first question comes from Mike C. 

Is Webroot going to give a discount to help struggling customers? 

 

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Is Webroot going to give a discount to help struggling customers? 

 

We already have a lot of renewal and extended free trial offers in place and I suggest you contact Webroot Customer Success who will be happy to help you out during this difficult period for us all. Webroot has always genuinely believed that your business success is what drives our success, these two things go hand in hand so we want to assist as much as we can. Send us an email CustomerSuccess@webroot.com or give us a call at 877-759-4415.

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 Athanasios M. wants to know about the effect COVID has had on the cybersecurity industry. 

How has COVID-19 affected cybersecurity? 

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A large part of the workday is now devoted to video conferencing. With that, we’ve seen an increase in ‘Zoombombing’ and the like. Kevin K. wants to know if we have any recommendations. 

What are Webroot's recommendations on virtual meeting services? Is there a more secure service you would recommend over the others?

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Like many of us, Russ S. is now working from home, shoulder to shoulder with his other family members. He wants to know how they can stay safe online at home. 

Still looking for a solution that forces/monitors safe search for major web browsers.... this becomes important as kids/families are all together using business laptops and other shared devices.

 

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How has COVID-19 affected cybersecurity? 

 

As to how Covid has affected cybersecurity? Well as per normal the scammers and criminals are looking to exploit the situation as much as they can. Phishing and Vishing are both up, as is a focus on compromising home routers and Internet Communications as a whole.

We’ve been focusing on increasing our defenses, making security training easier and relevant to working from home, Covid phishing templates and making available additional free technology through extended unlimited trials and other savings. For Webroot it is business as normal as we have everyone carrying on as normal and we are operating as normal, while also addressing the new threats and compromises, and making our responses even faster, if we can. 

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What are Webroot's recommendations on virtual meeting services? Is there a more secure service you would recommend over the others?

 

As for the meeting services question - I suppose we are addressing the widely publicized issues Zoom has been having and also addressing with remarkable speed. In fact there have been compromises reported across quite a few meeting and collaboration platforms.

Given Zoom’s positive approach I’d say they are a vendor that is being responsive so I personally (not as Webroot) would say they are a good way to go. But, of course, lots of our customers use Microsoft365 and Microsoft Team is what we use.

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Still looking for a solution that forces/monitors safe search for major web browsers.... this becomes important as kids/families are all together using business laptops and other shared devices.

 

Safe Search  - we can help, but right now only if the business endpoint agent is already installed on the device, or you have the ability to ensure all Internet traffic is routed via our DNS Protection service at the firewall or router.

By combining the Domain and URL filtering available makes setting up  safe search policy straightforward. Its really a routing issue and problematic as we always have dealt with remote users by using an agent.  

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COVID-19 has gotten many businesses to start thinking about their cybersecurity stack.

How much should a company budget for cybersecurity protection? - James C

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Christopher H. asks: 

Have you seen any increases of phishing attacks or people falling for phishing mail now they aren't necessarily in the "safe space" of the office? 

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How much should a company budget for cybersecurity protection? - James C

 

Oh my goodness that is a $million question!

It has to start with an understanding of the real data risks for your business and where they exist?

Much like medical coverage you could opt to protect and try to cover every risk but that would be both very, very expensive and wasteful as some risks are so low they are not even worth covering – meteorite insurance as I remember one CISO telling me about a product I tried to sell him earlier in my IT Security career.

Most companies come down to about 12-15% of their overall IT budget, but depending on the data being protected and its accessibility then it can be a little less.

The Analyst community, Forrester, and others have said less than 10% is not sufficient. They also showed that spend is not directly related to prevention or protection, even those spending lots are no necessarily better off. 

So my advice is simply pay to get and outside independent Security Audit done and then make a business call on how much you need to spend to do business today.

 

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Circling back to Mike C.’s question, here are the links to our current trial extensions: 

Announcing Trial Extensions Due to the Coronavirus Outbreak (Business) 

90 Day Webroot AV Trial  (Home)

 

 

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Have you seen any increases of phishing attacks or people falling for phishing mail now they aren't necessarily in the "safe space" of the office? 

 

On phishing and all types of scam the answer is simply, YES, there is a big uptick in Phishing as home devices in particular are even less protected than office devices. Phishing, Vishing, Smishing all types of scam are increased right now.

 

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We’re just about at time.

Thank you to @GeorgeA for stopping by and answering questions today! 

If anyone has any additional questions, be sure to stop by next Tuesday at 1:00 PM MT or add your questions here and we’ll do our best to answer all of them.

Until next week, stay safe.