International IT security vendor Cyber-Ark, highlights the importance of secure and reliable technology for sharing health-related information between relevant authorities and health professionals in the face of swine flu.
Roy Adar, vice president – product management at Cyber-Ark, said: “The secure and rapid dissemination of information has been – and will continue to be – a central plan to health agencies’ IT strategies in dealing with the swine flu outbreak.”
Adar said security is of ‘paramount’ importance when dealing with all types of medical issues as medical professionals often are wary of using technology allowing patient details to flow outside their direct control. Cyber-Ark’s technology has been used by health professionals in the UK and Israel to, amongst other things, handle the swine flu outbreak.
“It’s interesting to note that, as details of the swine flu started to reach the newswires, Israel was able to quickly supply reliable and accurate details as opposed to rumours of its outbreaks to the relevant world agencies – and the media – in a timely and efficient manner,” said Adar. He attributed Israel’s success to its use of Cyber-Ark’s Inter-Business Vault system.
Swine flu spam
Another issue that has come with the swine flu is, as with other big news stories, that spammers and phishers have started using the swine flu as a new way to lure victims.
According to Symantec’s monthly State of Spam report, spammers use celebrities such as Madonna to help lure users to open emails with subject lines including ‘Madonna has Swine Flu’ and ‘Salma Hayek caught swine flu!’ topping a list of the most common subject lines used by spammers.
Rick Howard, director of intelligence at security intelligence provider iDefense, said: “It’s pretty far below the belt, but iDefense has identified a number of cyber criminals picking up on the growing panic over swine flu to create new ways to implement their scams. Over the next few months we expect to see growing numbers of malicious code attacks distributed via PDF files on the emotive subject of swine flu.
“Additionally, UK businesses should prepare for widespread remote worker contingencies. Abnormal volumes of remote working is likely to exceed VPN and other system capacity, resulting in reduced productivity and potential disruption of services. And it goes without saying that large numbers of remote workers open enterprise IT systems to a wealth of potential threats, yet further reinforcing the need for businesses to be well protected.”
Remote working
Several organisations will have business contingency plans in place in the case of a pandemic such as the swine flu, and these plans often include provisions for remote working, but not all companies are as prepared as they could be.
The issues around remote working are highlighted in the Work Wise Week 2009 on 12-18 May, organised by the UK Trades Union Congress (TUC), business lobby organisation CBI and the British Chambers of Commerce.
Roger Hockaday, director of marketing EMEA at secure mobility solutions provider Aruba Networks, commented: “With recent changes to flexible working legislation, fresh memories of this year’s snow day and the ever increasing threat of a global swine flu pandemic, the issue of remote working is well and truly under the microscope – and organisations would do well to adapt their existing policies accordingly.”
He said many businesses are “stuck in the dark ages” when it comes to remote access, and that the aim of the Work Wise Week 2009 is to focus on establishing long-term measures to cope with a sudden and unexpected inability to travel into the office at any given time.