Articles about Coronavirus

In May, the United States hit a 14.7 percent unemployment rate and more than 20 million jobs lost since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is the highest level of job loss to hit the U.S. since the Great Depression. While things have improved since then, with the Bureau of Labor Statistics reporting an unemployment rate of 7.9 percent for September 2020, the economy remains in an uncertain position.

While many industries have been hit hard by the COVID crisis, from airlines to restaurants to live music venues, the pandemic and its economic reverberations have touched every business in some way. A litmus test is the tech sector. What was once a booming part of the American economy is now struggling with the same challenges as every other industry.

Continue reading →

A few weeks ago I wrote a column about helping our children cope with distance learning as we hide from COVID-19. Since then I’ve watched the progress of my own children -- Cole (16) and Fallon (14) are still at home -- and I’ve spoken to friends and teachers all over the world. It isn’t going well. In fact, the whole distance learning experience has been a disaster that will ultimately result in this academic year being forever assigned an asterisk to separate it from every other academic year, before or after.

I hope your experience is better, but I doubt that is the case. And the fact that people aren’t generally saying what I am here is because there’s lag in the system and the teachers and school administrators, frankly, don’t want to admit just how bad things are. But shit will shortly hit fans all over the world, I assure you, and the impact will last for years to come.

Continue reading →

COVID-19 has highlighted the need for change in the healthcare industry. When the pandemic eventually subsides, medical systems will emerge with the knowledge of where they need to improve. AI in healthcare can and will address many of these issues.

Medical AI is nothing new, with 89 percent of healthcare executives reporting that AI is already helping them. Now that healthcare improvement is a more prominent issue, the adoption of this tech will only increase. The post-COVID medical world will rely on these technologies. Here are five ways healthcare organizations will use AI to improve after the pandemic.

Continue reading →

Many countries are in the process of rolling out "track and trace" mobile apps to make it easier for people to determine whether they have been in contact with anyone who has contracted coronavirus. Now Google has added a new layer to Google Maps that shows local information about COVID-19.

The optional layer shows a seven-day average of new COVID-19 cases for whatever area of the map you are looking at, and Google says that the aim of the new feature is to enable people to "make more informed decisions about where to go and what to do".

Continue reading →

With all due respect to Donald Fagan -- front man for beloved jazz-rock duo Steely Dan -- I don’t think we have to wait until "California tumbles into the sea" before we all agree that the idea of a traditional university education is now anachronistic. With COVID-19 disrupting and, in some cases cancelling, in-person learning at leading institutions, many higher-ed students are realizing they can get the skills and knowledge they need without ever stepping foot on campus. In fact, some are discovering that life in "Virtual-U" is better -- easier, more productive, less stressful -- than the real thing.

Case in point: My daughter, who was attending an Ivy League women’s college until the Coronavirus sent her and her classmates packing in the middle of their Spring semester. Since then, her school has cancelled on-campus classes for the Fall, forcing their nearly 3,000 students online. And while time zone differences (Mauritius is 9 hours ahead of the U.S. East Coast) make for some odd virtual classroom hours, she is definitely enjoying the freedom from stress and worry that were part of her traditional, campus-based education experience: Finding food she can eat/tolerate in the cafeterias; fighting for shared bathroom space in her dorm; and dealing with catty, College-aged girls and all the drama that that entails.

Continue reading →

Contact tracing is being touted as the best way to keep the novel coronavirus under control and avoid yet another country-wide shutdown, at least until a vaccine can be developed. The process has many benefits and was seen as integral to the success in staunching the spread of COVID-19 in a few different cities in Asia. However, there are quite a few hurdles to overcome in the process of implementing successful contact tracing efforts in the United States.

For starters, manual contact tracing requires a large workforce as well as time and money. Apps, on the other hand, can be implemented quickly and for a relatively low cost.This option seems simple and unproblematic enough at first glance but, upon further inspection, poses a threat to the privacy of any and all users. Despite their promise of aiding in the eradication of COVID-19, If left unregulated, contact tracing apps put your personal information at risk and open up potential abuses of that information for decades to come.

Continue reading →

Back in March, at the height of the nationally imposed lockdown, Health Secretary Matt Hancock promised a solution in the form of a coronavirus tracing app that would see us all out of lockdown safely. Although the much-touted NHSX app was said to be at the heart of the strategy to contain the spread of Covid-19, months later, it was ditched due to security concerns, forcing the Government to change tack to work with tech giants Apple and Google on a new app, shifting its strategy to work with human tracers instead.

With measures easing and life now the most 'normal' it has been for quite some time, the newest iteration of the app is still yet to be released. It is clear that even in the midst of an international health crisis, the public sector has defaulted to looking only to big vendors to provide technical solutions -- and to its own detriment.

Continue reading →

"May you live in interesting times!" This is one of the expressions that has received a lot of airtime in recent months. Clearly as a society we weren’t prepared for a pandemic and all the collateral impact that has resulted. But spare a thought for the IT and security teams that have recently dealt with perhaps the "most interesting" times. Everything they knew and trusted about their environment changed overnight. Think: remote workers, new insider threats and challenges associated with shadow IT.

To be fair, shadow IT was already a problem before the pandemic; our research shows the typical organization is aware of less than 50 percent of the digital assets that exist in their environment. However, in their race to ensure access to data and systems needed while sheltering in place, many end-users (inadvertently perhaps?) added significantly to the shadow IT problem. All of this is occurring as attacks have escalated with adversaries trying to take advantage of the chaos. So, what’s a security team to do about it?

Continue reading →

The growth of coronavirus cases in a number of countries has led to talk about a second wave of the pandemic. According to WHO, disturbing news is coming from China, the US, Israel, South Korea, Iran and other countries. At the same time, privacy problems are arising with new force in COVID mobile apps.

It is a common opinion that Android app users don’t know how exactly their personal data and the information transmitted by the apps are actually used. Alarm signals of privacy breaking are coming from different places around the world. If you add to that the shortcomings and even errors on the part of developers -- the threat of unauthorized access to personal information increases even more.

Continue reading →

Thanks to advancements in technology, the need for human interaction -- when you shop for groceries, book a taxi, order a takeaway or watch the latest blockbuster -- has gone from necessity to nice-to-have, with self-service checkouts, apps to order cabs and kebabs, and streaming services all examples of automation that have everyday use.

Despite its influence on consumer behaviors, one of the perceived downfalls of automation is the limit it has on the reliance for humans to carry out certain tasks and jobs. A debate that has, and will, rage on for quite some time. But, with the current coronavirus pandemic, will automation become more of a necessity as we come to terms with social distancing and what life might be like in the future? Here we look at the role automation could play in the fight against COVID-19 and beyond.

Continue reading →

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the adoption of biometric technology across industries. From touchless payments at shops and restaurants to reduce the use of cash transactions to biometric-based contact tracing efforts, virtually every industry has had to readapt to meet the shift in customer and regulatory requirements.

The widespread adoption of biometrics was already underway when the coronavirus began to spread in early 2020. Now, companies are moving ahead with the installation of this technology to offer better safety, security, and efficiency to their customers. These three industries, in particular, are well-suite to see their operations advance as a result of biometric adoption.

Continue reading →

Despite the devastating recent outbreak of the novel coronavirus, phishing attacks continue to drag us and our businesses down. So how exactly do COVID-19 related phishing attacks work?

Cybercriminals have taken it upon themselves to wreak havoc and feed off the fears people have about the virus. Emails are being sent that ask their targets to open attachments containing information about the latest coronavirus statistics or news. Or, they claim to be from legitimate companies offering information about COVID-19.

Continue reading →

Addressing the challenges brought about by COVID-19 should not be the only concern of businesses. It is equally important to look forward to the next normal or the situation after the pandemic. Nobody knows when the virus outbreak will end, but just like many other global health problems in history, it will eventually reach a conclusion.

The end of the pandemic does not automatically mean that all businesses will return to profitability. There will be improvements, but success is never guaranteed without the companies doing anything to secure it. Normalcy during and after the pandemic is unlikely to be the same as what people think it is. There’s the concept of the new normal. Then, there’s the next normal. Some are also floating the idea of never normal.

Continue reading →

COVID-19 forced businesses across the globe to rapidly adopt remote work in order to adhere to social distancing and stay-at-home orders. For some companies, this transition was seamless, especially those that already implemented cloud and the necessary supporting tools within their organizations. Others struggled to adapt their workforces to this highly remote, cloud-first environment. In fact, 41 percent of enterprises have not taken any steps to secure access for their remote workers despite the fact that 65 percent enable personal devices to access managed applications.

To quickly support remote work, organizations were spurred to adopt cloud and allow employees to access the corporate network from unmanaged devices. However, cloud and BYOD environments call for specific security solutions, and organizations that failed to simultaneously implement the necessary controls also expose themselves to more risks, including insider threats. Even once stay-at-home orders are lifted and some businesses choose to return to the workplace, COVID-19 had such an impact on the way we work, making it likely that the following post-pandemic predictions may occur.

Continue reading →

In the past six months, COVID-19 has evolved from a speck on the world radar to a full-blown pandemic. While it has claimed the lives of many and shed a massive spotlight on some of the major issues in healthcare, it has also served as a catalyst for innovation.

As with nearly every element of the healthcare system, applications of machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) have also been transformed by the pandemic. Although the power of machine learning and AI was being put to significant use prior to the Coronavirus outbreak, there is now increased pressure to understand the underlying patterns to help us prepare for any epidemic that might hit the world in the future.

Continue reading →