In countries around the world, a growing number of phishing and smishing (fraudulent SMS messages) schemes are targeting both these homeworkers and consumers. This includes Belgium, where the number of incidents is rising.

There is a greater need for security awareness everywhere. For example, while certain schools in a country might use VPN connections for their students, others simply put everything online. SMEs are also highly vulnerable in this context.

The problems are further multiple when homeworking parents and home studying children share a PC, or the homeworker must use a personal device to carry out professional activities.

Furthermore, the unavailability of broadband, especially outside the cities, creates additional challenges in many countries, While this certainly isn’t a new problem, colleagues in India and Indonesia, for example, are reporting that homeworking, home education/eLearning, telemedicine, etc., are simply not an option for many people, due to the lack of coverage and speed.

These suboptimal situations open up new ways for criminals to defraud people and businesses.