People working from home need to be on alert for phishing scams during the coronavirus outbreak.

That is the warning from Deloitte, which it says has seen an increase in phishing attacks.

Its risk advisory team has noted an uptick in scams amid the increase in employees working from home in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Phishing happens when scammers try to harvest data using fake login pages.

Colm McDonnell is head of risk advisory at Deloitte.

“In light of measures being taken regarding the COVID-19 outbreak, in particular the mass increase of employees working remotely or from home, we have become aware of an uptick in phishing scams.

"Over the coming days and weeks more people will be logging on remotely to their company VPNs, who previously may never have.

"As these people might be unfamiliar with the portal page or MFA, they may be more susceptible to rogue e-mails from third parties masquerading as genuine company IT, VPN provider or MFA provider."

Deloitte recommends that companies to issue a screen-shot guide of all the steps involved in the remote access process - as well as the e-mail addresses and phone numbers of IT.

Companies should also remind staff  not to click on links from unexpected or external e-mails.

"Additionally with most teams working remotely, the element of isolation may be exploited by phishing attempts, as people aren’t physically around to raise a query, " he added.