The Restricted Movement Order imposed by the Malaysian government resulted in organisations that are not in the provision of Essential Services (the list of which were gazetted by the government) to temporarily close their operations during the entire period of the Order from 18 March to 31 March 2020.
This is unprecedented. Never in the modern history of the country, organisations were mandated to cease their business/operations. Businesses and organisations do close but the closures are planned ahead e.g., for long festivity periods like Hari Raya, Chinese New Year or Deepavali. Even then, these planned closures are normally for a period of between 2, being the mandatory public holidays to 5 days.
As short notice was given for this mandatory closure, a lot of organisations were unprepared and thus, might have overlook or temporarily stopped their regular maintenance /checking / updating / backing up their network.
Accordingly, our advice to a lot of these organisations - when you resume operations and the staff returned to work on Wednesday 1 April 2020, please do not start using your computer, server of infrastructure immediately.
Please do take some time to perform cyber hygiene health check before resuming and restoring operations back to normal. None of us has ever experienced a totally unplanned and sudden shutdown such as this. Thus, during this period of inactivity, you do not know what are `lurking' or `hiding' behind the network. Viruses / malware might have been sent to your network but these viruses/malware were unable to access the network as their `entry' is dependent on an unsuspecting user clicking on them.
Your natural reaction to restart everything upon going into the office could possibly `open the doors' for potential viruses/malwares that are lurking outside `waiting for entry' into the network.
It is similar to you leaving your house unattended for 2 weeks. When you returned after the 2 weeks, you tend to find spider cobwebs and dead insects etc at the entrance or inside the house for those who managed to `squeeze in'.
In cyberspace, these are the viruses / malwares that are just `parking themselves and waiting' to go in.
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