Mirai botnet 20x more likely to be found on home networks than corporate ones

With greater numbers than ever working remotely due to the coronavirus crisis, there's increased focus on the security risks posed by home networks.

New research from BitSight, based on analysis of over more than 41,000 organizations, reveals that networks used to work from home are 3.5 times more likely to have malware present than the traditional corporate network.

Mirai is observed at least 20 times more frequently on corporate-associated home networks than on corporate networks, while Trickbot is observed at least 3.75 times more frequently.

While 13.3 percent of companies had at least one observation of a malware family on their corporate network for the families observed, 45.0 percent of companies had at least one observation of a malware family on their corporate-associated home networks.

Exposure of services is a problem too. More than 25 percent of all devices on work from home networks have one or more service exposed on the internet. They are also four times more likely to have remote management functions exposed.

The research comes on the heels of BitSight's latest offering, BitSight Work From Home -- Remote Office, which enables organizations to discover and monitor security issues on remote offices and networks, helping users to reduce the risk that their networks and data will be compromised.

"Company security risks are rising sharply as a massive workforce suddenly accesses sensitive resources from anywhere," says Stephen Boyer, chief technology officer at BitSight. "Addressing cyber risk to the remote workforce has become the primary concern for security and risk professionals. Through our latest innovations, BitSight is helping organizations of all sizes tackle this critical priority immediately."

You can read more detailed findings on the BitSight blog.

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