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Why use a VPN for remote employees?

By
Katrina Boydon
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History of VPN

The idea of using VPN for remote employees is not new. VPN dates to 1996 when a Microsoft employee developed the peer-to-peer (or point-to-point) tunnelling protocol, also known as PPTP. PPTP was a way of creating secure network between users by encrypting data and forming a tunnel over a LAN (local area network) or WAN (wide area network). Since then, the use of VPN for remote employees has become commonplace.

VPN for Companies

In the early days, using VPN for remote employees was not the objective. Rather, large companies and organizations needed a private and secure way to share information between offices in different locations worldwide. Crucially, filesharing and access had to be as if employees were located in the same office. VPN made this possible.

VPN for Remote Employees

Telecommuting, working from home, remote work or having a flexible workplace is an employment arrangement that allows workers not to commute to the office.  In the late twentieth century telecommuting gained popularity but was seen by most employers as a privilege. It also had many limitations around security and access to information. In the twenty-first century working remotely is widely accepted with companies employing individuals all over the world without having to purchase or rent office space. Thanks to VPN technology, dispersed employees working wherever they please can be done without putting company data at risk. There are many business and employee benefits to using VPN.

Business Benefits of VPN

  • Company data may be shared easily anywhere in the world
  • Data and information are protected within the VPN environment
  • Provides online anonymity
  • Allows a physical presence in multiple locations
  • Eliminates need for office space
  • Seamless integration with other employees and offices

Personal Benefits of VPN

  • Work from home
  • Saves on commuting expenses
  • Eliminates commuting time
  • Allows more flexible hours
  • Can work when infectious without putting co-workers at risk
  • Easier to balance work and life commitments

VPN for Remote Employees Summary

Over the last several decades, the adoption of the internet as a business tool has permitted unparalleled rapid communication and transfer of data and information. Without the confines of surface mail, the speed at which business can be done has increased dramatically. Telecommuting and remote employment is accepted as normal and even desirable. However, the ease of information and data sharing on the internet brings its own challenges. Without suitable security in place, proprietary business information is vulnerable to hackers and cybercriminals. VPN for remote employees is the solution.

Sources

  1. Virtual Private Networks: How They Work And Why You Might Need One
  2. VPN’s for Remote Workers: A Beginners Guide for 2019

How relaxed should you be in an online job interview?

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If you have the good fortune of scoring a virtual job interview in the middle of a pandemic, the initial euphoria of potential employment may soon be replaced with anxiety over what to wear – as well as putting your home life on display for a potential employer.

And with good reason. Social scientists have found that traditional interviews – without set questions or scoring metrics – are poor predictors of job performance.

When this happens, interviewers make subjective judgments based on irrelevant information, like physical appearance and nonverbal cues. Illegal stereotypes based on gender and race may also be at play.

And unfortunately, employment litigation has not succeeded in tamping down these practices. Although many companies were successfully sued in the early 2000s for making subjective employment decisions in hiring, pay and promotion, a Supreme Court ruling in 2012 made those claims nearly impossible to bring as a class action. As a result, companies have little incentive to ensure their interview practices relate to on-the-job performance.

That left job candidates focusing much of their energy on making a good impression instead of demonstrating important job skills. And that was before the pandemic, when applicants had the benefit of a neutral conference room as a backdrop. Adding the personal details of your home environment and quarantine companions to the mix – whether human or animal – doesn’t make it better.

My advice as an employment lawyer and law professor boils down to this: You are under no obligation to introduce your prospective boss into your home life through video chat. In other words, there’s no shame in attempting to recreate that conference room environment at home.

What should you wear?

Pants.

Definitely wear pants, even if you think they can’t see the lower half of your body, like the unfortunate half-dressed reporter on “Good Morning America” whose bare legs were exposed on national television. You wouldn’t want to be violating that workplace harassment policy right out of the gate.

Basically you should dress the way you would for an in-person interview, which may be varying degrees of formal depending on the industry and the role you are interviewing for. When I worked in a law firm, it was common for prospective lawyers to wear a suit to the interview, even though the office itself was business casual and people dressed however they liked when working from home.

If anyone in your social network currently works in the industry – or for the company – don’t hesitate to ask for their advice on what to wear.

How should I set up the camera’s background?

Traditional job interviews are a contest of wills between a candidate’s desire to conceal their true qualities and an employer’s efforts to suss them out, through not-so-subtle questions like, “What are your weaknesses?”

Ordinarily, you can expect a little help from the law in this regard, since companies shouldn’t be asking questions that hint at a discriminatory motive – like your religion or whether you have a disability. Some states also place restrictions on asking about criminal arrests and convictions before making a job offer.

Virtual job interviews upset the balance by revealing the contents of your home. This is fundamentally unfair in the interview concealment tug of war. It’s not like your boss, let alone a potential boss, would show up at your doorstep and demand to see your apartment – though Henry Ford used to send inspectors to do just that, in exchange for a pay raise if you passed the inspection.

You, dear prospective job applicant, are getting no such inspection bonus and therefore need not offer your interviewer a portal into your personal life.

That is why I use the “Drake method” for zoom meetings. I set up my laptop to point at a bare corner of wall, like Drake’s Hotline Bling video. That way, I reveal nothing about my questionable interior decorating and life choices.

Should I hide my children?

Certainly, you are under no obligation to voluntarily disclose your children’s presence – and your prospective employer really shouldn’t ask. Asking about children is often a proxy for gender discrimination, as mothers are disproportionately penalized for their status as parents.

For example, an experimental study by Stanford Professor Shelley Correll suggested that participants gave lower ratings – and offered less pay – to female applicants who listed their membership in the parent-teacher association on their resume. By contrast, male applicants with children were offered higher salaries in the experiment than their childless peers.

Does this mean that men should roll out their kids for an “accidental” cameo appearance to enhance their stereotypical role as family breadwinner? Not necessarily.

A study by business professor Erin Reid suggests that men preserve their privileged status in part by concealing the child care work they actually perform. In her interviews with 115 workers at a consulting firm, one man said he was able to perform his consulting duties without anyone realizing that he was also taking care of his son – and downhill skiing – five days a week.

This elaborate ruse speaks both to the discrimination that men fear for revealing their child care obligations and to the strength of the default assumption that women are the primary caregivers.

So parents, if you’re inclined to shove a device and a lollipop in the general direction of a child who might blow your cover, don’t feel guilty – you’re not the only one trying to pass for a productive employee these days.

  • Elizabeth C. Tippett is Associate Professor with the School of Law, University of Oregon, US.

What you really need to know about Zoom security

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The video conferencing app Zoom gained about 2 million new users in the first two months of 2020 – and that was before the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic. With so many people now relying on video conferencing for contact with their friends, family and colleagues, it’s no wonder Zoom has seen a significant increase in its company stock price. But the firm has also attracted some negative press recently for issues related to its privacy and security.

I worked in the video conferencing industry for 10 years. During this time, I started a PhD on whether such systems meet the needs of organisations that have to communicate under adversarial circumstances, such as international NGOs and opposition groups under oppressive regimes. My near-finished research shows that Zoom has indeed had plenty of problems, but is far from the only platform with security and privacy issues.

A number of issues with Zoom have attracted public attention, most notably call hijacking or “Zoom-bombing”. Calls that are not set to private or password-protected can be accessed by anyone who inputs the nine- to 11-digit meeting code, and researchers have shown how valid meeting codes could easily be identified (something Zoom now says it prevents).

Zoom has also recently had to make changes to its iPhone and iPad apps to stop Facebook being able to collect data about users. And last year it was forced to fix a problem that could have allowed websites to turn on Mac users’ cameras without permission.

Another issue, recently highlighted by The Intercept, is that Zoom claims its calls can be encrypted, but doesn’t use the kind of end-to-end encryption that many people have come to understand as standard for private communication services. Messages or calls sent with end-to-end encryption are effectively locked with the receiving user’s public key that anyone can access, but can only be unlocked by the user’s private key. This system is used by messaging apps such as WhatsApp to ensure only a message’s recipient can read it – not even the app’s provider has access.

Zoom instead uses the AES-256 ECB method of encryption, which shares the key used to encrypt calls with Zoom’s servers around the globe. This potentially gives them full access to the audio and video streams, although the company has stated no user content is available to its employees or servers once encrypted.

Researchers have also found that encryption keys even up on Zoom servers based in China (where the company has development sites) even when no Chinese participants are in the call. This opens the possibility that the Chinese government, famed for its control of internet communications in the country, could eavesdrop on calls. Zoom has now started offering paying customers the ability to opt out of having data routed through China or other regions.

While Zoom has developed measures or options to at least partly address all of the issues highlighted – and said it will freeze the development of new features for 90 days so it can focus on improving security – the litany of problems that have already been identified should provoke serious thought among its users. On top of this, Zoom’s privacy policy is arguably not user-friendly. By downloading the app, you essentially grant the company permission to do with your personal data whatever they want.

The problem for anyone looking for a more private system is that many of Zoom’s competitors have their own similar security issues. For example, Microsoft’s Skype and Teams services also use forms of encryption that give the company control over the keys.

Alternatives

So what are the alternatives? The most secure options are arguably those that use end-to-end encryption and are built with open-source code because it can be publicly reviewed to check it doesn’t have any hidden problems.

Signal is a messaging app that falls into this category and also provides video calling from smartphones, but not desktop video calls or video conferencing with multiple parties. Jitsi is also open source and provides end-to-end encrypted video calls via a web browser, and is working on doing the same for multi-party video conferencing.

If these options don’t suit you, then there are things you can do when using Zoom or other video calling services that have potential security issues to maximise your privacy and safety.

  • Enforce encryption by default and makes sure it’s end-to-end if possible
  • Lock and password-protect meetings
  • Unauthenticated users should be held in a waiting room so the organiser can check their identity before admitting them to the call
  • Make sure a meeting host monitors the participants list and ensures no unknown participant joins
  • Be careful with meeting recordings and get consent from the participants
  • Be aware that audio-only participants calling via a regular phone dial-in option will “break” the encryption
  • Be careful with file and screen-sharing capabilities. They could accidentally disclose sensitive information or be used to spread malicious programs.

In response to the issues raised in this article, a Zoom spokesperson said:

“Zoom takes user privacy, security, and trust extremely seriously. Zoom was originally developed for enterprise use, and has been confidently selected for complete deployment by a large number of institutions globally, following security reviews of our user, network and datacenter layers.

“During the COVID-19 pandemic, we are working around-the-clock to ensure that businesses, schools, and other organizations across the world can stay connected and operational. As more and new kinds of users start using Zoom during this time, Zoom has been proactively engaging to make sure they understand Zoom’s relevant policies, as well as the best ways to use the platform and protect their meetings.”

Could Covid bring in a new era of working from home?

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NetworkTigers discusses a new era of working from home thanks to Covid.

When a magnitude 6.3 earthquake struck Christchurch, New Zealand, on February 22, 2011, the capital city’s central business district was leveled — and hundreds of essential government workers suddenly found themselves working from home, scrambling to figure out how to get their jobs done without access to the office.

Some encountered technical difficulties, others had trouble managing teams. But most found the pros outweighed the cons, and agencies held on to remote work options.

“It was immediate telework,” says Kate Lister, president of Global Workplace Analytics, a consulting firm near San Diego that helps companies set up work-from-home polices. “And once it was over, they did not go back.”

Covid and a new era of working from home

Lister and other experts wonder if Covid-19 will have a similar, but wider-ranging, impact. So do the millions of people now working from home — pecking away on laptops at kitchen tables, logging onto online servers, and pushing their kids and pets out of view during Web meetings.

Lister’s (virtual) talks with companies are jam-packed, she says, with some attracting more than 1,500 people in recent weeks. Before Covid, it was “unheard of” to get even 300 attendees at a typical seminar, she says.

But the chaotic nature of the Covid-19 work-from-home experience might make it hard for scholars to assess how well it’s actually working for companies and workers — or predict its likelihood to remain a big factor in workplaces moving forward.

“There’s so much noise right now,” says Bradford Bell, an organizational psychologist at Cornell University who has studied companies’ transitions to permitting mobile work. “How would you evaluate the effectiveness?”

Assessing and understanding the merits and pitfalls of remote work is a problem that’s persisted for decades. Overall, the practice has expanded, if slowly. A 2016 survey conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management found that the percentage of American companies that offered telecommuting benefits had increased from 20 percent to 60 percent over the preceding 20 years. But that same year, a Gallup Poll reported that less than half of US workers spent any amount of time working remotely.

More recently, Gallup research revealed that the percentage of American workers who had worked from home doubled in the weeks between mid-March and early April 2020, to more than 60 percent. Three-fifths of people working from home said they’d like to keep doing so once the crisis is over.

Historically, advocates touted remote work as a perk companies could offer to attract and retain talented employees, as a strategy to save money on real estate, or as a preparedness measure to assure things keep chugging along during emergencies. But even as technology advances like computing and broadband access made the mechanics of working from home easier, many businesses remained skeptical of the practice — clinging to what’s familiar, and a belief that unmonitored employees won’t get anything done.

Famously, Yahoo abolished its work-from-home policy in 2013, arguing that keeping workers in the office promoted better collaboration and innovation. Retailer Best Buy followed suit a week later. More recently, the Trump Administration has rolled back telework privileges for federal workers. Even today, when social distancing has made going to the office impossible, some observers have focused on the difficult aspects of working from home: isolation, ergonomics, losing a routine.

“Why have organizations resisted? Often, it’s a simple answer: It’s how they’ve always done things,” says organizational psychologist Frederick Morgeson, of Michigan State University, editor of the Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior.

“Managers don’t trust their employees,” Lister says. “They’re afraid that if they’re untethered, they’ll be out on the golf course or going to a movie or sitting on the sofa eating bonbons.”

The research reflects a more nuanced reality. Remote work is seldom all or nothing; many people work at home only some of the time. It can increase productivity. A 2007 meta-analysis in the Journal of Applied Psychology looked at 46 studies of telecommuting involving 12,883 employees. It found that remote work had positive effects on work-family balance, job satisfaction and performance — but that “high-intensity telecommuting” of more than 2.5 days per week harmed relationships with coworkers.

A 2017 look at research on alternative work arrangements, including remote work, in the Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior identified similar benefits. It also documented challenges for remote workers, including feeling lonely, isolated or not respected by colleagues; an increase in work-family conflict due to longer hours and blurred boundaries; and, in some cases, a tendency among workers who are encouraged to maintain work-life boundaries to “be less likely to extend themselves in crunch times, possibly increasing the workload of non-telecommuting coworkers.”

Fast forward to today, and Covid-19 has created a vast, if imperfect, natural experiment for scholars to further study remote work, on a mass scale. Gallup is doing its new polling; Lister’s firm, Global Workplace Analytics, is conducting an online survey aimed at helping employees develop better policies for telecommuting looking ahead. Bell has been talking with companies affiliated with the program he directs at Cornell, the Center for Advanced Human Resource Studies, to find out what kind of data they’re now gathering about remote work. He hopes to analyze it later on, once conditions normalize.

Ravi Gajendran, an organizational psychologist at Florida International University who coauthored the 2007 review in the Journal of Applied Psychology, says that he is “scrambling to find ways to collect data.” His past work has examined the importance of employee autonomy in the most successful telework arrangements (it’s crucial), and the interplay between job type and remote working success (the more complex the task, the bigger the performance boost telecommuting provides).

Organizational psychologists Kristen Shockley of the University of Georgia and Tammy Allen of the University of South Florida are heading up one of the first academic efforts to learn from the virus response. With funding from a rapid response grant from the National Science Foundation, the pair will survey companies between late April and early June to better understand what factors predict a successful transition to remote work.

Most research has compared telecommuters with non-telecommuters, Shockley says, but she and Allen want to look at how experiences vary within fully mobile populations (such as workplaces in the age of Covid-19). Is the nature of the organization what matters most, or the type of job the worker is doing? Does the technology a company employs make a difference — e-chat, versus phone, versus videoconferencing via Zoom? (Shockley, who is teaching from home with a young child in tow, finds the latter “depleting” because, she hypothesizes, it requires face-to-face interaction without the usual full array of social cues.)

“We don’t have any research out there at all about the adjustment to remote work, I think because most people who have been doing it wanted to,” Shockley says. “It’s a different situation than being forced to do it.” When there isn’t personal motivation driving the decision to work away from the office, who has an easier time with it, and why?

After the dust has settled, Gajendran believes the Covid-19 experience will swing the pendulum back toward companies allowing more remote work — on a limited basis, at the very least.

A new era of working from home may be overstating it, but in the aftermath of the pandemic companies may continue to allow employees to work from home.

“This is going to change the conversation,” he says. “You’ll have a larger swath of employees who are going to say, ‘We did it then, we can do it again.’ … And managers are going to find it harder to say no.”

But he and others caution that the ultimate success of remote work in the future will depend on decisions that companies and managers won’t make until after the crisis has abated — when they can be far more deliberate about their practices.

“Typically, a company will take six months to a year to roll out a program like this,” taking special care to choose the right technology and the right security and the right HR policies and management practices, Lister says. “Here, people are thrown into the deep end of the work-at-home pool.”

For remote work to really take off, Gajendran adds, businesses are going to have to reinvent and recommit to those kinds of systems, no matter what comes of the strange work conditions created by Covid-19.

“Telecommuting is like any work arrangement or any work practice,” he says. “If the ecology is set up right, the practice can be successful.”

  • Eryn Brown is a writer and editor in Los Angeles. This article originally appeared in Knowable Magazine.

How to avoid Internet congestion during lockdown

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The current health crisis has led to a rise in the use of digital services. Telework, along with school closures and the implementation of distance learning solutions (CNED, MOOCs, online learning platforms such as Moodle for example), will put additional strain on these infrastructures since all of these activities are carried out within the network. This raises concerns about overloads during the lockdown period. Across the Internet, however, DNS server loads have not shown a massive increase in traffic, therefore demonstrating that Internet use remains under control.

The Internet is a network that is designed to handle the load. However, telework and distance learning will create an unprecedented load. Simple measures must therefore be taken to limit network load and make better use of the Internet. Of course, these rules can be adapted depending on the tools you have at your disposal.

How do telecommunications networks work?

The Internet network functions by sending packets between machines that are connected to it. An often-used analogy is that of the information highway. In this analogy, the information exchanged between machines of all kinds (computers, telephones and personal assistants, to name just a few) is divided into packets (small and large vehicles). Each packet travels through the network between a source and a destination. All current networks operate according to this principle: Internet, wireless (wi-fi) and mobile (3G, 4G) networks etc.

The network must provide two important properties: reliability and communication speed.

Reliability ensures accurate communication between the source and the destination, meaning that information from the source is transmitted accurately to the destination. Should there be transmission errors, they are detected and the data is retransmitted. If there are too many errors, communication is interrupted. An example of this type of communication is e-mail. The recipient must receive exactly what the sender has sent. Long packets are preferred for this type of communication in order to minimize communication errors and maximise the quantity of data transmitted.

Communication speed makes real-time communication possible. As such, the packets must all travel across the network as quickly as possible, and their crossing time must be roughly constant. This is true for voice networks (3G, 4G) and television. Should a packet be lost, its absence may be imperceptible. This applies to videos or sound, for example, since our brain compensates for the loss. In this case, it is better to lose a packet from time to time – this leads to communication of lower quality, but they remain usable in most cases.

Congestion problems

The network has a large overall capacity but it is limited for each of its components. When there is very high demand, certain components can become congested (routers, links and servers). In such cases, the two properties (reliability and speed) can break down.

For communications that require reliability (web, e-mail), the network uses the TCP protocol (TCP from the expression “TCP/IP”). This protocol introduces a session mechanism, which is implemented to ensure reliability. When a packet is detected as lost by its source, it is retransmitted until the destination indicates that it has arrived. This retransmission of packets exacerbates network congestion, and what was a temporary slowdown turns into a bottleneck. To put it simply, the more congested the network, the more the sessions resend packets. Such congestion is a well-known phenomenon during the “Internet rush hour” after work.

If the source considers that a communication has been subject too many errors, it will close the “session.” When this occurs, a great quantity of data may be lost, since the source and the destination no longer know much about the other’s current state. The congestion therefore causes a wastage of capacity, even once it is over.

For communications that require speed (video, voice), the network instead uses the UDP protocol. Unfortunately, routers are often configured to reject this kind of traffic in the event of a temporary overload. This makes it possible to prioritize traffic using sessions (TCP, email, web). Losing a few packets in a video or voice communication is not a problem, but losing a significant amount can greatly affect the quality of the communication. Since the source and destination exchange only limited information about problems encountered, they may have the impression that they are communicating when this is not actually the case.

The following proposals aim to limit network load and congestion, in order to avoid a situation in which packets start to get lost. It should be noted that the user may be explicitly informed about this loss of packets, but this is not always the case. It may be observed following delays or a deterioration of communication quality.

What sort of communications should be prioritized in the professional sphere? Professional use must prioritise connection time for exchanging e-mails or synchronising files. But the majority of work should be carried out without being connected to the network, since for a great number of activities, there is no need to be connected.

The most crucial and probably most frequently used tool is e-mail. The main consequence of the network load may be the time it takes to send and transmit messages. The following best practices will allow you to send shorter, less bulky messages, and therefore make e-mail use more fluid:

  • Choose thick clients (Outlook, Thunderbird for example) rather than web-based clients (Outlook Web Access, Zimbra, Gmail for example) since using e-mail in a browser increases data exchange. Moreover, using a thick client means that you do not always have to be connected to the network to send and receive e-mails.
  • When responding to e-mail, delete nonessential content, including attachments and signatures.
  • Delete or simplify signatures, especially those that include icons and social media images.
  • Send shorter messages than usual, giving preference to plain text.
  • Do not add attachments or images that are not essential, and opt for exchanging attachments by shared disks or other services.
  • When it comes to file sharing, VPNs (for virtual private networks) and cloud computing are the two main solutions. Corporate VPNs will likely be the preferred way to connect to company systems. As noted above, they should only be activated when needed, or potentially on a regular basis, but long sessions should be avoided as they may lead to network congestion.

Most shared disks can also be synchronized locally in order to work remotely. Synchronization is periodic and makes it possible to work offline, for example on office documents.

Don’t overload the network

Social media will undoubtedly be under great strain. Guidelines similar to those for e-mail should be followed and photos, videos, animated GIFs and other fun but bulky content should only be sent on a limited basis.

Certain messages may be rejected by the network. Except in exceptional circumstances, you should wait for the load to ease before trying again.

Advertising represents a significant portion of web content and congests the network without benefits for the user. Most browsers can incorporate extensions (privacy badger) to delete such content automatically. Some browsers, such as Brave for example, also offer this feature. In general, the use of these tools does not have an impact on important websites such as government websites.

Television and on-demand video services also place great strain on the network. When it comes to video, it is preferable to use TNT (terrestrial network) instead of boxes, which use the Internet. The use of VoD services should be limited, especially during the day, so as to give priority to educational and work applications. And a number of video services have limited their broadcast quality, which significantly reduces bandwidth consumption.

Cybercrime and security

The current crisis will unfortunately be used as an attack tool. Messages about coronavirus must be handled with caution. Such messages must be read carefully and care must be taken with regard to links they may contain if they do not lead to government websites. Attachments should not be opened. The Hoaxbuster website and the Décodeurs application by the Le Monde newspaper can be used to verify whether information is reliable.

At this time in which online meeting systems are extensively used, attention must be given to personal data protection.

The website of ARCEP (France’s regulator for telecom operators) provides guidelines for making the best use of the network. To best protect yourself from attacks, the rules for IT security established by the French cybersecurity agency ANSSI are more important than ever.

  • Hervé Debar is professor and head of the Networks and Telecommunication Services department  of Telecom SudParis, France. Additional reporting by Gaël Thomas, Gregory Blanc and Olivier Levillain. This article first appeared on TheConversation.

Five ways to protect connectivity during Covid-19

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COVID-19 has dealt a shock to our world. Large swathes of the global population are living under some restrictions and enforced distancing. We are learning to live differently – to learn, socialize, shop, worship and collaborate differently. And we are doing all of this online.

The role of digital connectivity in our lives has grown over recent years, but never have we been so acutely aware of how critically we depend on it. From getting the latest information and health guidance, to supporting health services, adapting supply chains and sourcing equipment from across the globe – we depend on the ability to connect across distance.

However, we are also learning that we cannot take this connectivity for granted. Critical challenges require immediate action to ensure operational continuity and to ensure availability to the people who need it as the COVID19 wave continues across the globe.

The increased demands on our global networks have been dramatic. The use of both video-calling and streamed entertainment services have surged – Zoom has reported a 20-times growth in daily participants. Voice calls in some countries have tripled, and the use of communications apps have doubled.

The sudden shift to everyone living their lives online has led to unprecedented congestion and strain on critical ICT infrastructure. We also see challenges emerging with access and affordability across many countries.

Addressing global internet inequalities

Beyond the immediate COVID-19 response, there is a deeper and more lasting lesson. While it is true that many are only just realizing how much we depend on digital connectivity – it is only true for those who are connected to the internet. Currently, this stands at 53% of the world’s population. Many countries are now starting to face their COVID-19 wave without the luxury of the connected information systems that most if not all readers of this article take for granted.

Never before will the gap between those who are connected and those who are not be so dramatically – and tragically – felt. This tragedy may prove to play out hardest amongst the 47% of the world’s population that are not connected and do not have access to basic information and opportunities.

How to increase connectivity

We urgently need rapid private-public collaboration to make sure that we can connect the people who need to be connected. To support this, the World Bank, ITU, GSMA and World Economic Forum have developed an accelerated collaboration to identify immediate priorities for private-public collaboration that can be taken by governments in partnership with the private sector today.

These five priorities are being shared globally, will form the basis of a joint meeting between industry, ICT and finance ministers in April and will catalyse sustained collaboration between the public and private sectors to increase internet access beyond the current crisis.

1. Promote network resilience

Governments should ensure the continuity of the digital industry supply chain by streamlining customs and logistical processes and classifying network equipment as essential infrastructure. . They should also facilitate emergency access to additional spectrum resources as necessary during the crisis, expedite approvals of new sites and installations and allow voluntary infrastructure sharing and dark fiber provisioning when necessary.

For example, countries including the US, Ireland, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Panama, Brazil and South Africa have provided spectrum relief for operators to provide additional network coverage and capacity.

2. Ensure access to digital services

Governments must promote the smart and responsible use of network resources by the general public during times of crisis without generating systemic distortions. They can do this by authorizing the distribution and purchase of pre-paid mobile services in essential commercial premises for the 5.7 billion customers lacking access to such facilities.

For example, Chile has worked on a “solidarity plan” for affordable internet access in partnership with the private sector. Egypt has offered free SIM cards to students and has committed to bear the costs of providing a 20% increase in all subscribers’ monthly downloads. And Thailand has designed a public assistance scheme for mobile users so that they can register for 10 free gigabytes of data usage.

3. Support compliance while providing connectivity

Key to preventing the spread of coronavirus is supporting the pre-purchase of broadband internet access for government officials and other targeted groups under home-based work to ensure operational continuity of government services as well as support operators’ finances at a time of crisis. For example, many countries have supported teleworking for public servants, including Nigeria.

4. Leverage e-health, telemedicine and big data

Governments can help leverage telemedicine, digital services and apps to foster e-health and support healthcare systems, especially in areas in need of remote medical care. They can ensure a close dialogue between national authorities and operators on the use of mobile data insights to monitor the outbreak while adhering to strict, relevant privacy guidelines.

For example, Pakistan has worked with mobile operators to deliver SMSs to subscribers containing COVID-19 related health information, and Cote d’Ivoire has worked with mobile operators to develop a public health information resource offered via websites and an app.

In the US, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the US established a $200 million COVID-19 Telehealth Program that aims to help healthcare providers purchase telecom, broadband connectivity, and devices necessary for providing telehealth services. The FCC also established the Connected Care Pilot Program to provide up to $100 million of support from the existing Universal Service Fund (USF) to help defray health care providers’ costs of providing connected care services and to help assess how the fund can be used in the long-term to support telehealth.

5. Ensure institutional frameworks are fit for purpose

Governments must also support information communication technology (ICT) and telecom ministers to develop emergency action plans and address relevant bottlenecks preventing private sector investment and universal access.

Internet for all in the post-COVID-19 world

Beyond pandemic response, most people now believe that we will exit this crisis with changed expectations, behaviours and norms. We will get back to work, rebuild and create new businesses. We will still face major existential challenges in the form of climate change and related sustainability issues. Knowing in practice what large global disruptions look like, we will take up sustainability challenges with fresh fervour – with big data and analytics playing a critical role in our science-based efforts and digital platforms playing a critical role in distribution collaboration and innovation.

Across all our goals – as individuals and as humans collectively – we will all rely on digital even more in our lives.

Unless we rapidly tackle the challenge to bring high-quality universal internet access to all we will not be able to build inclusive economies. We will not be able to bring our full resources to bear to tackle future pandemics or climate change. And we will not be able to give young people globally access to the wealth of human knowledge so that they can learn, innovate and lead in the future.

We must act urgently to ensure that we keep our global connective lifeblood of information flowing to tackle our current crisis. But we must also make sure that we sustain that urgency to extend access to all.

  • Derek O’Halloran is Head of the Shaping the Future of Digital Economy and New Value Creation with the World Economic Forum (WEF). This article was first published on the WEF’s Agenda news channel.

HPE opens its patents for fight against coronavirus

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Since the Venetian Patent Statute of 1474, patents have been used to incentive innovation. By granting their owners an exclusive right to stop others from exploiting their inventions, patents provide a competitive edge.

However, in times like these, cooperation is more important than competition.

That’s why I’m delighted to announce that Hewlett Packard Enterprise is opening up our treasure trove of patented innovations to accelerate everyone’s response to the health crisis we face. Today, we signed the Open COVID Pledge, which grants free access to all of our patented technologies for the purpose of diagnosing, preventing, containing and treating COVID-191.

HPE’s patented assets are already helping organizations around the world to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. Here are a few examples:

  • Researchers around the world are using our supercomputing and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to advance diagnosis or treatment of COVID-19, including through the COVID-19 High Performance Computing Consortium. As a member of the consortium, we provide supercomputing software and applications expertise free of charge to help researchers port, run, and optimize essential applications.
  • Our Wi-Fi technologies and location-based services are essential for quickly establishing pop-up clinics and hospitals, such as the ferry GNV Splendid, which was transformed into a floating hospital, moored in Genoa, Italy. These technologies can give doctors online access to patient medical records and help them locate essential instruments.
  • Cryo-electron microscopy is a breakthrough technology with the power to shorten the time to drug discovery and development. Our integrated HPE Apollo compute and storage systems remove bottlenecks when moving data from the microscope to analytics, thanks to faster data transfer technologies, optimized storage, and better integration of compute, storage, and analysis functions within the system.

With the Open COVID Pledge, organizations are now free to use these and other HPE technologies without worrying about HPE’s patents. They are free to use and combine HPE technologies with their own technologies to create breakthrough solutions to combat COVID-19.

HPE has a rich heritage of sharing its intellectual property and technology to advance the way people live and work, and this patent pledge reflects our continuing commitment to those principles. We hope other innovators will join us in this pledge. That’s the way we’ll beat this pandemic.

  • Brett Alten is Chief Intellectual Property Counsel, Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

How businesses can benefit now “change is the new normal”

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NetworkTigers discusses how “change is the new normal” and how businesses can benefit from this shift in perception by embracing adaptability and innovation.

This year was doomed to become shaky.

No one fully foresaw the extent of the COVID-19 crisis. Business has been disrupted and will not necessarily go back to normal. Instead, the current disruption has changed and continues to change the business landscape as we know it.

How can business leaders react to the challenges, reassess what they do, reconfigure their companies and reinvent their activities to adapt to the disruption and prepare for the new normal?

The implications of climate change, new technologies, digitalization, demographic changes, artificial intelligence, and financial and political uncertainties have moved many of us. We saw a significant event coming, but the pandemic has likely taken it at least one level up from our expectations.

Some companies may have advanced their digitalization capabilities in the past few years. These companies are likely experiencing, at least in the short term, only a moderate impact due to the global pandemic. By shifting their operations to remote work via online conferencing and communication tools like Zoom and Slack, most projects continue.

Companies in industries heavily affected by the restriction of physical movement (hotels, airlines), however, and those less prepared for technological changes (many retailers, for example) are seeing their operations shattered.

When crises first hit, companies need to react to immediate challenges and threats. At that point, it’s important not to lose sight of doing the right thing. Businesses must remain true to their vision, be empathetic to stakeholders, make quick decisions and adjust those decisions, if necessary, frequently and transparently on the basis of new information in order to adapt quickly.

The actions by Air Canada illustrate this principle very well. Air Canada laid off 16,500 employees as a fast and direct response to a reduction of their flight schedule due to the decline of demand and border closures for non-residents. Recently, the federal government communicated the details of a wage subsidy package. Right after, Air Canada announced it was immediately rehiring most of their people based on the 75 per cent wage subsidies promised by the government.

In disruption, operational challenges need solutions, cash management and liquidity need to be adjusted for the changes in demand and communications and leadership must be expanded into the digital space.

If companies haven’t been online before, they likely are now. In a fast-changing marketplace, aggressively pushing new solutions into the market may help some companies. Many business issues resulting from disruption due to worldwide efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19 will need quick fixes and solutions. They are also the beginning of new problems.

Next, businesses must reassess not only their plans for the year, but also on a longer-term basis. The exercise may reveal important insights. Resilience is valuable in crisis. However, just bouncing back from such a consequential worldwide event is not enough. We will likely see long-lasting changes on both the demand and supply side.

Short term, we may see the gin distillery in town producing hand sanitizers as is happening in Toronto or the maker-space at the local university 3D-printing protective equipment as we’re doing at the University of Guelph. This is a good moment for businesses to assess their capabilities and how they can be used to meet immediate needs or can be leveraged, upgraded or complemented with new technologies or partners.

Over the long term, finding and pursuing new opportunities will drive change. Companies may now serve new, different customers. They may need to get out of their comfort zones and learn new skills.

And in an online world, data strategies and analytics matter. Writing skills are as important as presentation skills. Cybersecurity becomes a strategic concern. Whatever the changes needed, change will become the new normal.

It’s critical that companies continuously move in the right direction as the pandemic shutdowns continue. Businesses that have change ingrained in their culture are likely to do better in uncertain times.

A crisis like this brings new opportunities and should be a trigger to explore new directions. A recent study shows that sustaining innovations developed during a crisis often yields a positive impact in the long run as opposed to organizations that cut back innovation budgets.

Governments will invest more over the coming years to help mitigate the impact of COVID-19. How they direct this spending, whether it’s aimed at restoring the old economy or triggering market changes, will have an impact on a business’s outlook as well.

We are likely entering a time in which people change consumption patterns. Fitness solutions for home, home entertainment, people-tracking and data security, new health-care equipment and online education solutions, to name just a few, will be in higher demand.

All of these developments create many new opportunities for businesses.

Felix Arndt is John F. Wood Chair in Entrepreneurship, University of Guelph, Canada. This article originally appeared on The Conversation and is republished with permission by NetworkTigers, your source for high-quality new and used network equipment.

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Cisco commits $2.5bn for customers and partners

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Cisco commits $2.5bn for customers and partners with its new Business Resiliency Program.

Cisco is continuing its global commitment to help customers and partners navigate an evolving landscape with the introduction of a new Business Resiliency Program.

Offered through Cisco Capital, the vendor financing business within Cisco, and designed to help mitigate financial challenges resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic, this program includes $2.5 billion in financing to provide organizations with access to the solutions they need to keep their businesses running and productive, their employees safe and support their communities during these unprecedented times.

“Cisco’s customers and partners are under enormous pressure to keep their businesses connected while remaining productive and secure,” said Chuck Robbins, Chairman and CEO of Cisco. “Whether it’s technology, financing or helping those most in need, Cisco is committed to working together to fight this pandemic on every front.”

Cash flow is a top concern for Cisco customers and partners in the current environment. The new Business Resiliency Program offered by Cisco Capital includes an up-front 90-day payment holiday and allows a customer to defer 95 percent of the cost of a new product or solution until 2021, which in turn protects their business and increases their existing cash flow. Starting in January 2021, customers would then make a monthly payment based on the total financed amount and the remaining term of the financing. All Cisco solutions are eligible for this program, including hardware, software and services as well as up to five percent of partner provided services, such as installation.

The program also offers support to Cisco’s 60,000 partner ecosystem. The Business Resiliency Program will help partners provide an additional solution to better serve customers, without any change to their own financial situation, in this challenging business environment. It will accelerate their sales cycles and allow partners to offer their customers payment solutions to better manage their cash flow.

“Cisco Capital’s goal is to make it easier for customers and partners to acquire the technology they need to keep their businesses running and productive. Their success is our priority,” said Kristine A. Snow, SVP and President, Cisco Capital. “The new Business Resiliency Program is designed with this in mind and will help address some of our customer’s most pressing concerns.”

In addition, Cisco Capital is supporting customers and partners through Cisco Refresh, the Cisco certified remanufactured product portfolio, to help with budget constraints. Cisco Refresh offers a wider range of products and further discounts and promotions to help customers and partners receive competitivity priced, pre-owned products quickly and easily. Cisco Refresh solutions are also eligible for the Business Resiliency Program where 95 percent of the cost can be deferred until 2021.

“This is a valuable offering by Cisco” said Will Townsend, Senior Analyst, Networking Infrastructure, Moor Insights and Strategy. “Through my countless discussions with organizations, balancing cash flow while maintaining robust network operations is critical given the impact of COVID-19. I continue to be impressed with Cisco’s proactive strategy to enable its customers, partners, employees and the community overall to maintain productivity in these trying times. The Business Resiliency Program is another example of the company’s overall effort.”

The Business Resiliency Program from Cisco Capital is part of Cisco’s overall commitment to supporting customers, partners and communities through the Covid-19 pandemic. Cisco recently committed $225 million in cash, in-kind, and planned-giving to support both the global and local response. This includes technology and financial support for non-profits, first responders and governments. Cisco is also empowering customers and partners with its free Webex and Security offers enabling them to stay securely connected and productive during this time.

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The Covid-19 battle for networking privacy and security

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NetworkTigers on the challenges of networking privacy and security following COVID-19.

If, before COVID-19, you were concerned about all the data that technology companies had about you, just wait. As stay-at-home orders push more professional and social activities online, it’s becoming harder to remain in control of networking privacy and security.

Look no further than Zoom, which suffered dual security and privacy crises in the past few weeks. Lawsuits alleging data sharing violations and hackers have descended on the software, which has led Google and school districts to ban Zoom for professional use.

I’m a researcher who investigates how these concerns affect the use of online platforms. The first thing to understand is that privacy and security are two different things, and they have different consequences for using videoconferencing platforms.

Privacy refers to individuals’ universal rights to control their data. Security is how that data is protected. One or both can be compromised when using popular videoconferencing tools, leaving personal information vulnerable.

For example, say someone signs up for a new videoconferencing platform using full name, email address and phone number. Ideally, the platform company would maintain both privacy and security, meaning the company wouldn’t share that person’s information outside the company, and would keep their system protected from hackers and viruses.

The most private platforms, like Signal and FaceTime, use end-to-end encryption to ensure that even the companies themselves do not have access to the contents of anyone’s communication. When such systems are kept secure, they are the best communication tools to use for networking privacy.

Alternatively, a company could compromise privacy but maintain security, meaning it would collect information about video calls and sell that data to a third party for marketing purposes. Many companies will include such conditions in their terms of service, which users rarely read.

However, companies have incentive to maintain security; they don’t want to be overrun with criminals or pranksters, which could damage their reputations.

Worst case is when a company surrenders both privacy and security, meaning they share personal information with third parties, and they fail to prevent data breaches. Offerings from these companies are the riskiest of all digital tools, and unfortunately, they’re all too common.

Here’s how some of the most popular video conferencing services stack up around networking privacy and security.

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Zoom’s most updated privacy policy states that the company “do[es] not allow third parties to use any personal data obtained from users for their own purposes, unless you consent.” However, Zoom is currently facing a lawsuit alleging that it violated this agreement and shared user data with Facebook. The company claims that this was a security, not a privacy, breach and that it was not compensated for data sharing.

Zoom has also come under fire for security flaws that have allowed “Zoombombers” to intrude on personal calls, often using profane or obnoxious content. The company admitted that it has fallen short on protecting users’ privacy and security and is working to fix the problems.

Microsoft Teams’ privacy policy leaves no questions. It explicitly states that it “collects data from you, through our interactions with you and through our products.” It is upfront about using this information to market to users, personalize their experiences and even participate in legal investigations. In other words, make no presumptions of privacy here – all personal data on the platform is fair game.

To differentiate its security from Zoom, Microsoft’s Teams has implemented dual-factor authentication, meaning passwords are not enough. Users need to also enter email or text codes to log in. The Microsoft family of software – though not Teams specifically – confronted a number of security problems this year, including a breach of its customer service center that exposed 14 years of information. The jury is still out on whether it’s a more secure alternative to Zoom.

Unlike Zoom and Teams, Webex offers hosts the option of end-to-end encryption, meaning only the sender of a message and its recipient have access to the data within. This is a strong privacy feature, but it’s elective and tends to limit the usefulness of the tool.

Webex is not immune to security breaches, but the difference between this company and their competitors is their transparency and quick patches. The platform actively maintains a public list of vulnerabilities, which documents how the company has resolved them.

Skype has a privacy problem. It shares user data with third parties, across the entire Microsoft family, and even with law enforcement when asked. In a benign effort to improve customer service, it allowed employees to access recordings of Skype conversations from their personal computers over a period of several years. Such tasks have since been transferred to a secure facility, but it doesn’t change the fact that if you’ve used Skype lately, your privacy has been compromised.

Like Teams, Skype uses dual-factor authentication but it was also likely compromised in the massive Microsoft customer service breach earlier this year.

Long before Facebook acquired WhatsApp, the video chat service provided end-to-end encryption on calls and messages. The privacy of chats here are, and always have been, protected.

However, WhatsApp suffered a very public security breach when Jeff Bezos’ personal messages were compromised by spyware and leaked. That was one of 12 vulnerabilities the platform faced last year.

Apple’s FaceTime also boasts end-to-end protections, and the company has upheld its commitment to privacy by refusing requests from the FBI to access user devices. It’s positioning itself as a steward of user privacy.

Like other services, FaceTime has been susceptible to occasional security hacks. In early 2019, users reported a security glitch in its group calls where recipients could hear and see callers before answering. The feature was disabled and patched, and the service has been without a major incident since.

Across all these platforms, people should use complex passwords, turn on enhanced security features, like the use of waiting rooms and channel moderation, and make sure conferences are restricted to intended guests. It’s also important to consider what can be seen on camera, like a loan statement pinned to a bulletin board or an envelope with a home address visible. Try videoconferencing in front of a neutral wall or using blurred or customized backdrops to keep the home environment off camera.

There’s still room in the market for more reliably secure, private videoconferencing systems. But in the meantime, not all communication requires the same levels of privacy and security. People might not care much if marketers or even pranksters crash their G-rated happy hours.

But confidential client meetings and remote health care consultations are another matter. The companies’ offerings and track records, outlined here, should help people choose the videoconferencing tool that best balances usefulness with privacy and security.

Elizabeth Stoycheff is Associate Professor of Communication, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, US. This article originally appeared on The Conversation and is republished with permission by NetworkTigers, your source for high-quality new and used network equipment.

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