E-Business
HP Wolf Security Report Reveals Perfect Storm of Cybersecurity Risks that Threatens Hybrid Workplace
HP Inc. yesterday released its latest HP Wolf Security report: Out of Sight & Out of Mind, a comprehensive global study highlighting how the rise of hybrid work is changing user behavior and creating new cybersecurity challenges for IT departments.
The research shows that a growing number of users are buying and connecting unsanctioned devices outside of IT’s purview. It also highlights that threat levels are rising, with attackers increasingly successful at bypassing defenses and tricking users into initiating attacks through phishing. All of this is making IT support more complex, time-consuming, and costly than ever.
The report combines data from a global YouGov online survey of 8,443 office workers who shifted to Working from Home (WFH) during the pandemic, and a global survey of 1,100 IT decision makers conducted by Toluna. Key findings include:
- New Shadow IT buying and installing endpoints with security out of mind: ‘Shadow IT’ typically refers to non-IT departments deploying software beyond the purview of IT. This shadow is now spreading, with individuals procuring and connecting devices without being checked by IT. 45% of office workers surveyed purchased IT equipment (such as printers and PCs) to support home working in the past year.
However, 68% said security wasn’t a major consideration in their purchasing decision, while 43% didn’t have their new laptop or PC checked or installed by IT, and 50% said the same of their new printer.
- Phishing becoming increasingly successful: 74% of IT teams have seen a rise in the number of employees opening malicious phishing links or attachments on emails in the last 12-months. 40% of office workers surveyed aged 18-to-24 have clicked on a malicious email with almost half (49%) saying they have done so more often since working from home.
Of office workers that clicked or nearly clicked a link, 70% didn’t report it to IT – 24% didn’t think it was important, 20% cited the “hassle factor”, while 12% had a fear of reprisal or being punished.
- Increase in devices being compromised fuels growth in rebuild rates: 79% of IT teams report rebuild rates increased during the pandemic. Rebuild rates directly correlate to the number of endpoints that require wiping and reimaging because they have been compromised, which implies more attackers are successfully breaching outer defenses. The real figure could be higher still: 80% of IT teams worry that employee devices might be compromised and they don’t know about it.
“People often don’t know if they have clicked on something malicious, so the real numbers are likely much higher,” comments Ian Pratt, Global Head of Security for Personal Systems, HP Inc. “Threat actors don’t always announce themselves, as playing the ‘long game’ to move laterally and infiltrate higher-value infrastructure has proven to be more lucrative. For example, by using cloud backups to exfiltrate sensitive data in bulk, encrypting data on servers, then demanding a multi-million-dollar ransom.”
Pratt continues: “It shouldn’t be this easy for an attacker to get a foothold — clicking on an email attachment should not come with that level of risk. By isolating and containing the threat you can mitigate any harmful impact, preventing persistence and lateral movement.”
With threats rising, it’s becoming more difficult for IT teams to deliver security support. 77% of IT teams said the time it takes to triage a threat has increased in the past year, while an estimated 62% of alerts relating to the endpoint are false positives, leading to wasted time. With IT teams tied up dealing with alerts, it’s becoming harder for them to onboard employees and identify threats:
- 65% of IT teams said that patching endpoint devices is more time-consuming and difficult due to the mass shift to home working, while 64% said the same of provisioning and onboarding new starters with secure devices.
- As a result, IT teams estimate the cost of IT support in relation to security has risen by 52% in the last 12-months.
- 83% of IT teams said the pandemic has put even more strain on IT support because of home worker security problems, while 77% of IT teams say homeworking is making their job much harder and that they fear teams will burnout and consider quitting.
“As IT continues to grow in complexity, security support is becoming unmanageable,” Pratt concludes. “For hybrid working to be a success, IT security teams need to be freed from spending hours provisioning and fielding user access requests so they can focus on tasks that add value.
“We need a new security architecture that not only protects against known and unknown threats, but that helps to reduce the burden to liberate cybersecurity teams and users alike. By applying the principles of Zero Trust, organizations can design resilient defenses to keep the business safe and recover quickly in the event of a compromise.”
HP is helping organizations to secure the hybrid workplace by delivering endpoint security that provides teams with greater visibility and management tools. With HP Wolf Security organizations benefit from robust, built-in protection from the silicon to the cloud, and BIOS to browser.
HP Wolf Security provides the ideal support for securing the hybrid workplace – for example HP Sure Click Enterprise reduces the attack surface by rendering malware, delivered via email, browser or downloads, harmless through threat containment and isolation.
HP Wolf Security enables teams to deliver defense-in-depth and enhanced protection, privacy, and threat intelligence, gathering data at the endpoint to help protect the business at large.
National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) has announced the restoration of its National Identification Number (NIN) verification services nationwide.
This, according to the commission, follows the completion of a system maintenance exercise.
In a statement issued on Friday, the NIMC confirmed that all previously disrupted services have resumed.
“NIMC wishes to inform the general public that the recent technical maintenance has been completed and all services have been restored,” the statement read.
The NIMC urged Nigerians seeking to enroll for NIN to visit the its official website to locate the nearest enrollment centers.
The agency also encouraged individuals to make use of its self-service portal for tasks such as data modification, including name changes.
To further ease the verification process, the Commission recommended downloading the NIMC NameAuth app (oath.app) from the Google Play Store or Apple App Store for quick and secure NIN authentication.
NIMC expressed appreciation for the public’s patience during the service disruption, which had impacted banks, telecom providers, and government agencies that rely on NIN verification for their operations.
Many businesses are overestimating their defence against cyber attacks, which creates a significant human risk blind spot. A new KnowBe4 report exposes a worrying disconnect between what leaders think about their cyber security readiness and what employees experience.
According to the KnowBe4 Africa Human Risk Management Report 2025, based on insights from cyber security decision-makers across 30 African countries, despite high awareness, a critical gap exists in turning that awareness into actual readiness and resilient behaviour.
Key findings from the KnowBe4 Africa Human Risk Management Report 2025:
Confidence vs awareness: While cyber security awareness is high, leaders express uncertainty about their workforce’s ability to act on that awareness. Many feel employees may overestimate their capabilities in recognising, reporting and mitigating threats.
The need for adaptive and personalised security awareness training: Many companies fail to personalise security awareness training to specific roles or risk exposures.
Widespread BYOD usage: A large percentage of employees (between 41% and 80%) use their personal devices for work.
AI policy development is lagging: Many companies (46%) are still in the process of developing policies for using AI tools in the workplace.
Regional variation: Southern Africa trains more, East Africa governs AI better and West/Central Africa sees the most human-related security incidents.
This gap is significant because Africa has become an attractive target to cyber criminals, especially those that launch AI-powered attacks. A LexisNexis Risk Solutions study found 60% of South African organisations have seen an increase in AI-facilitated financial crime – above the 56% global average.
Kehinde Popoola, regional manager and key representative for West and East Africa at Rubrik, said digital transformation is gaining momentum in Africa and companies are more exposed to cyber risk. The Rubrik executive adds that amid an increase in threats, it is crucial that organisations adopt an assumed breach mindset.
The KnowBe4 research shows that cyber security preparedness and the actual structures required to support secure behaviour seem misaligned.
The report highlights that just 10% of cyber security leaders are fully confident that staff would report a phishing attack or other cyber threat, despite rating employee security awareness of cyber threats at four out of five or higher.
There is also a significant perception gap between decision-makers and general employees in Africa regarding security awareness training, with 68% of leaders believing that training is tailored to roles, compared to only a third of employees feeling adequately trained.
KnowBe4 asserts that many organisations only conduct annual or biannual training that is too generic to effectively change behaviour, contributing to uncertainty about its effectiveness.
According to another report, the KnowBe4 African Cybersecurity and Awareness Report 2025, which focuses on end-user based responses, only 43% of African respondents felt confident in their ability to recognise a cyber threat, and just one in three believed their security awareness training was adequately tailored to their role. This comparison suggests the development of a dangerous perception gap in many organisations.
“There’s a disconnect here – between what leaders think is happening and what employees are actually experiencing,” says Anna Collard, SVP content strategy and evangelist at KnowBe4 Africa. “The data shows that without procedural and cultural follow-through, awareness simply doesn’t translate into readiness.”
“The continent’s cyber security posture may be more confident than it is truly resilient,” Collard adds.
Kaspersky has detected a rapidly escalating malicious campaign that has targeted over 1,100 corporate users since June 2025. The attackers pose as a legal firm and in their emails threaten recipients with lawsuits over alleged domain name patent violations, aiming to deploy malware.
Victims who opened and launched the attached files – that mimicked legal documents – had a Trojan installed on their devices, and the attackers could spy on the content of their screens. Organisations across healthcare, finance, and education sectors have been targeted.
The campaign began with 95 emails on June 11 and has since continued to escalate. Apart from claiming that the recipient’s domain name violates patented combinations of a major brand and threatening litigation, in the email the fake legal bureau also expresses the patent holders’ interest in acquiring the domain and offers getting acquainted with the details of the alleged violations by opening the attached archive with “documents”.
It is worth noting that the attackers, likely to avoid detection, attach an archive that is not password protected, and inside it includes another archive that is password protected and a file containing the password along with it.
After the user entered the archive password and clicked on the alleged legal document inside, a Trojan was installed on the device. The user saw a message displayed that read, “This document cannot be opened on this device. Try opening it on another windows device,” and simultaneously the Tor Browser was covertly downloaded and installed in the background.
Through it, the malware regularly sent snapshots of the user’s screen to the attackers over the Tor network. The malware also autostarts whenever the computer is restarted.
“This campaign is a sophisticated blend of psychological manipulation and technical deception, leveraging fear of legal action to coerce businesses into executing harmful files hidden in attached archives. Its rapid growth since June 11 underscores the urgency for organisations to bolster defenses.
Victims face the risk of losing their private data. Robust email security, employee training, and swift incident reporting are essential to counter this evolving threat,” comments Anna Lazaricheva, spam analyst at Kaspersky.
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