Articles about COVID-19

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, remote working has added a new dimension to the security, compliance, and digital transformation demand landscape. Now, more than ever, it is increasingly important for organizations to embed security solutions and processes that reduce complexity and massively increase the automation of killer manual tasks.

Last month, our team at New Net Technologies had the opportunity to host a virtual panel on securing digital transformation and what COVID-19 means for cybersecurity as we continue to navigate the growing remote workforce. The panel, which consisted of several security experts, focused on the topic of redefining security in a post-pandemic world. The session kicked off with the question, 'Have you noticed a more compliant workforce?'.

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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.

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The US Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has recently put out a warning concerning a surge in activity from the group behind the Emotet trojan.

Emotet has been around for some time and has mostly been associated with banking trojans, but this year’s upsurge in activity has seen it branch out into other areas.

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A new survey of 600 enterprise IT security professionals from seven countries and 19 industries looks to generate an understanding on how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the industry.

The study from CyberEdge reveals some surprising -- and less surprising -- insights into the changes that have taken place and the challenges they've presented.

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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.

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The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many more organizations to adopt remote working. This in turn has led to a boom in the use of tools like Teams and Zoom to help employees communicate.

Securing those tools though presents some serious challenges ensuring that, for example, they aren't used, inadvertently or on purpose, to leak sensitive information.

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While a vast majority of organizations have transitioned to remote work during the COVID-19 outbreak, only a third of IT security professionals described that transition as 'smooth' in a new survey.

The study from OneIdentity shows 62 percent of respondents say that cloud infrastructure is more important now than 12 months ago and 31 percent attribute this shift directly to COVID-19.

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They're all likely to be part of your password according to a new survey from security.org which asked 750 Americans to share their password strategies and security habits.

It reveals some worrying trends, 45 percent of Americans are using passwords that are eight characters or less, with only 15 percent using strong password generators.

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The switch to remote working has left many organizations lagging in productivity and revenue due to the deficiency of their remote access solutions.

A new report from Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) provider Perimeter 81 reveals that 19 percent of IT leaders surveyed say they often or always experience network performance and latency issues when using legacy remote access solutions while an additional 43 percent say they sometimes do.

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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.

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While the pandemic disrupted business, the great remote migration made believers out of many decision-makers. Despite having to implement sweeping changes very quickly, the long touted benefits of remote working proved real and it’s obvious many aspects will remain in place for good.

Software companies already had employees who were quite familiar with working remote and maintaining productivity. Yet, while these companies were generally in a better position to adapt to the "new normal," their sales teams were impacted just like those in any other industry -- perhaps even worse. After all, they deal with complex technology that traditionally has required a lot of face-to-face time to educate prospects. No-touch software sales is tricky business, particularly when prospects are accustomed to hands-on experiences and trials. That said, software companies need to rethink their strategies and procedures.

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The latest annual Cybersecurity Report Card from threat intelligence specialist DomainTools shows security breaches among those surveyed have remained essentially unchanged from last year's report at 16 percent.

Yet almost 60 percent of organizations detected a moderate to a dramatic increase in cyber attacks during and following the pandemic, which points to a rise in the overall breach prevention success rate.

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A new report from Thycotic reveals that 58 percent of IT security decision makers say their organizations plan to add more security budget in the next 12 months, and almost three out of five believe that in the next financial year they will have more security budget because of COVID-19.

More than three quarters (77 percent) of respondents have received boardroom investment for new security projects either in response to a cyber incident in their organization (49 percent) or through fear of audit failure (28 percent).

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New research out today finds that 36 percent of companies weren't prepared to support the large-scale and abrupt transition to a remote workforce forced by COVID-19 measures.

The study, from managed cloud provider Navisite, of more than 100 executives and IT professionals in the US reveals that, as a result, 51 percent experienced IT pains during the transition process, with 29 percent reporting that they are still facing issues.

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The rise of remote working and the growing complexity of securely managing multiple types of end user devices has seen 77 percent of businesses intending to increase spending on identity and access management solutions.

A study by ESG Research, sponsored by directory platform JumpCloud, finds an additional 20 percent plan to keep their IAM spending at existing levels, and 49 percent of respondents say they plan to consolidate IAM controls, using fewer security vendors.

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