Now that we’ve witnesses deaths and economic destruction wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic, it should be easier to understand — and prepare for — the devastation that a massive cyberattack could inflict, said Check Point CEO Gil Shwed during his company’s second-quarter 2020 earnings call.

“There are more voices that are calling to take action and get ready for a cyber pandemic that will come,” Shwed said on the call with investors. “Now that we’re all much more aware of the implication of the pandemic, we have to realize that a cyber pandemic can expand much faster than a biological one. A single patient can infect not two patients in a matter of days but hundreds of additional computers in a matter of minutes or seconds. Part of our job and opportunity now is to elevate the level of readiness of the world to address a cyber pandemic.”

In addition to e-criminals, nation states escalated their cyberwarfare attacks during the pandemic. A Check Point report published yesterday and covering the first half of 2020 found these nation-state attacks surged as countries sought to gather intelligence on or disrupt rivals’ handling of the pandemic. This extended to targeting health care and humanitarian organizations such as the World Health Organization, which reported a 500% increase in attacks. And more recently the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada have accused Russia and China of attempting to steal COVID-19 vaccine intellectual property.

Cybercriminals will take advantage of any type of natural disaster or business upheaval. They use these moments to find flaws in security postures —  entry points to steal money and data. But the coronavirus presented a particularly attractive opportunity. It allowed hackers to tap into global fears about the pandemic and also uncover vulnerabilities in the newly remote workforce and their often-unsecured devices accessing corporate assets.

The Check Point report found COVID-19 related phishing and malware attacks increased from fewer than 5,000 per week in February to more than 200,000 per week in late April. Also, in May and June, as countries started to ease lockdowns, threat actors stepped up their non-COVID-19 related exploits. This resulted in a 34% increase in all types of cyberattacks globally at the end of June compared to March and April.

And almost 40% of people working from home used computers that lacked basic security controls, Shwed said.

“The attack surfaces and customer exposure is now much bigger and broader than it used to be,” he added. “The work-from-home environment creates a huge risk — there are more entry points, hundreds or thousand times more remote uncontrolled sessions, unmanaged computers that are accessing the network, and in many cases are also accessing critical systems that were not accessible before.”

Additionally, cybercriminals use increasingly sophisticated attack methods to inflict maximum financial and reputational damage. IBM’s latest security report found cloud breaches cost companies, on average, $50,000 in less than an hour.

Shwed pointed to one major Microsoft Windows DNS server vulnerability that Check Point researchers found and Microsoft patched last week. It’s a 17-year-old bug, dubbed SIGred and tracked as CVE-2020-1350, and it received a CVSS severity score of 10 out of 10. Microsoft called it “wormable,” meaning that it can spread via malware between vulnerable computers without user interaction.

“Almost every enterprise is exposed to SIGRed, which attacks the DNS Window servers and is accessible from the outside, not just from the inside,” Shwed said. “In my career, I haven’t seen many vulnerabilities like this one. I urge you to check with your IT teams to make sure they’ve taken the steps to patch and block this attack vector. It is critical.”

However, he added that Check Point gateways can block this attack.

Expanded threat landscape and larger attacks usually translate to more business for security vendors, and that was certainly the case during Q2. Check Point’s second-quarter earnings beat expectations and the company reported $506 million in revenue, which represented a 4% increase year over year. Meanwhile, operating income hit $253 million representing 50% of Check Point’s revenue for the quarter.

The company’s product and security subscription revenues reached $287 million, a 6% increase year-over-year. And its subscription revenues grew 10% year over year to $164 million. Software update and maintenance revenues increased to $219 million.

“This quarter, we had strength in financial services, health care, and technology verticals with significant increase in transactions over $1 million,” said Check Point CFO and COO Tal Payne, who added that COVID-19, in part, drove these larger deals.

However, Shwed said future financials remain uncertain. While Check Point’s Q2 proved lucrative, “we see high levels of volatility and uncertainty” because of the pandemic.

“The economic situation around us is bound to affect our business at one point or another,” he said. “There are some factors that can drive increased business activity in cyber, such as the increased dependence on the network, the increasing cybersecurity risk, shifts to cloud and more, but there are also factors that can be quite negative, such as the overall economy and the fact that the unemployment and reduction of personal spend around the world will translate to different levels of business activity. The corona pandemic has showed us that the rate of change and the assumptions we make can change overnight.”

Check Point execs did not provide third quarter or full-year guidance.

Still, investors liked what they heard and Check Point shares rose in after-hours trading Wednesday night and on into Thursday.