Articles about COVID-19

The first United States case of COVID-19 was reported on January 20. Since then, the U.S. has become the epicenter of the novel coronavirus pandemic with more than twice as many confirmed cases as any other country in the world. The disease has led to lockdowns and quarantines on a scale never before seen in the U.S. as well as significant impacts on the economy and job market.

For employees and workplaces, these shifts could reverberate far into the future, potentially transforming virtually every aspect of hiring and employment.

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Remote work is the future. Remote work is our new reality. Even though Gartner predicted that by 2020, half of the US workforce will be working remotely, no one could have anticipated it to become ubiquitous given the COVID-19 outbreak. The once-familiar 9-to-5 office environment as we know it has changed dramatically, and now, nearly everyone has been forced to work from home for the foreseeable future. This change is also expected to become permanent for many companies given the various benefits this model provides.

This rapid global transformation has forced the largest amount of people to work remotely in history. With millions of people connecting to their corporate networks from their homes, network infrastructure is being taxed like never before, creating new issues of internet overload and skyrocketing VPN usage.

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Nothing in our lifetimes has prepared us for what's happening in our world today. We've certainly had our share of major catastrophes in the past 100 years -- both natural and man made -- but nothing matches the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. We are living in a time when fundamental assumptions about how our societies function are being thrown out and re-written with blinding speed.

The degree of global disruption is unprecedented in scope and scale, and we're still in the early phases. Given the confluence of medical, social, political, and economic factors, we have not yet reached the peak of the impact, and the world we'll inherit as the storm tide recedes will be significantly changed, and changeable. This is not to suggest that "the end is nigh" or that all changes wrought by the pandemic will be bad. But the undeniable truth is that we are experiencing an unexpected and extreme test of our AI technologies and their ability to automate and improve our ability to make good decisions quickly in increasingly complex situations. With respect to AI, we are entering an especially critical phase.

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In the global marketplace, people can work practically anywhere and anytime, and that’s something we’re seeing a lot of right now thanks to COVID-19. Virtual teams cut across the boundaries of time, space, culture, and sometimes even organizations.

Packed with solid advice, interviews and case studies from well-known companies who are already using virtual teams in their business model and their lessons learned, Virtual Teams for Dummies provides rock-solid guidance on the essentials for building, leading, and sustaining a highly productive virtual workforce. It helps executives understand key support strategies that lead virtual teams to success and provides practical information and tools to help leaders and their teams bridge the communication gaps created by geographical separation -- and achieve peak performance.

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With the current pandemic leading to many more people working from home, we could be looking at a permanent shift in working patterns over the longer term.

But the question many people are asking is can the internet cope? Tech education site Computer Science Zone has created an infographic looking at the effect of more remote working on the internet.

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It's not unusual for phishing attacks to focus their efforts on major events. The end of the tax year is always popular as are major sporting occasions. The latest lure of course is the current COVID-19 pandemic.

The problem for IT admins is how to protect against a sudden deluge of threats and spam messages while ensuring that important legitimate communications aren't accidentally blocked.

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Over the weekend, Microsoft post an article on its Azure blog announcing that there had been an astronomical 775 percent surge in the use of its cloud services. Despite the massive increase in traffic, the company added, uptime was good. But the blog post wasn't entirely correct.

Since we published a story about the claims, Microsoft has contacted us to say that it had not been "was not as clear as they intended to be with the previous statement". The company has provided updated stats explaining what it meant to say -- and it's rather different.

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Yes, I’m still predicting-away, though the pandemic is having some impact on the direction in which this narrative is going. Today’s column on startups and venture capital, for example, wasn’t even on my original list of predictions. Just as the financial markets will use this catastrophe for a reset, so, too, will Sand Hill Road, which has pretty much stopped investing and is now deciding, instead, who to kill?

The psychology of venture capital doesn’t work the way most people think. That’s because it is an industry based on failure: most startups -- the vast majority -- fail. That means most VC investment decisions are wrong. There is simply no way of getting around this fact. You can’t call yourself a VC if you don’t make investment decisions and you can’t make investment decisions without being wrong most of the time. So succeeding as a VC is not just a matter of finding good companies, but also avoiding bad companies and managing your portfolio for the greatest possible perceived total value.

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IT -- Information Technology -- grew out of something we called MIS -- Management Information Systems -- but both meant a kid in a white shirt who brought you a new keyboard when yours broke. Well, the kid is now gone, sent home with everyone else, and that kid isn’t coming back… ever. IT is near death, fading by the day. But don’t blame COVID-19 because the death of IT was inevitable. This novel coronavirus just made it happen a little quicker.

I mentioned the switch from MIS to IT because that name change presaged the events I am describing here. Management Information Systems was an artifact of big business, where corporate life was managed rather than lived. Information Technology happened when MIS escaped into the wild. MIS meant office buildings and Local Area Networks while IT includes home workers in their pajamas which, frankly, describes me at this precise moment.

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This weekend, Microsoft has given an insight into the impact the coronavirus pandemic has had on its services. The company says that there has been a huge increase in Teams usage, and there are not over 44 million daily users.

In regions where there are isolation and home sheltering orders in place, Microsoft says that there has been a colossal 775 percent increase in usage of its cloud services. Despite the surge in demand, there have not been any significant service disruptions.

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The internet is currently straining under the pressure of millions of people around the world working from home or self-isolating because of the coronavirus pandemic. There is additional strain because of people using homeworking as a reason to using streaming video services and online gaming more.

Many tech companies have had to take steps to meet increased demand, with the likes of Netflix reducing video quality to cut back on bandwidth. Now Microsoft is asking that developers limit the updates released for Xbox games.

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Last week, software publisher IObit launched a giveaway site, making 50,000 licenses of its paid PRO products -- including Advanced SystemCare Ultimate and Malware Fighter -- available for free.

It did this in response to the coronavirus pandemic and to improve people's PC experience. Today it takes another step in helping those suffering from slower internet as a result of ever greater numbers working from home, by making Internet Booster PRO free for a limited time.

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The coronavirus pandemic has people around the world searching for information about what they should and shouldn't be doing, as well as news about the spread. But there is a lot of misinformation out there, and social media platforms are breeding grounds for such harmful content to spread.

Facebook has been taking steps to counter misinformation about COVID-19, not only on the main Facebook platform, but also on Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. Now the company is expanding its efforts to connect people with trustworthy information about coronavirus.

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New research reveals a concentrated drive to target workers now operating remotely as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak.

Phishing detection specialist RedMarlin used artificial intelligence tools and submissions to its CheckPhish.ai site to detect thousands of attacks by cybercriminals with the intent of penetrating networks and stealing corporate data.

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There are numerous technology companies that have agreed to offer their services for free as the world tries to tackle the coronavirus crisis, and others who have taken steps to reduce their strain on the internet. Tomorrow, #BuildforCOVID19 Global Online Hackathon kicks off, with many of the big names from the world of tech coming together to tackle some of the problems COVID-19 presents.

There are also numerous partners from the health community, including the World Health Organization, and the aim is to come up with software solutions that can be used to improve health and hygiene, help with social isolation, assist in education, and help businesses stay afloat.

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