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COVID-19, or coronavirus, has been a major global health concern over the past couple of months. At this point, it is clear that this disease could have serious impacts on the workplace. We wanted to provide a brief rundown of good workplace and network health practices, as well as a few pointers on how you can handle health-based employee absences.
Based on what is currently known about the coronavirus, Health Canada has some recommendations as to how to keep the potential impact of coronavirus to a minimum:
If you find that one of your employees is confirmed to have been infected with coronavirus, make sure that you inform their coworkers of their possible exposure while still maintaining confidentiality. These employees and those who are living with a sick family member should assess their risk of exposure using the Health Canada guidelines.
Unfortunately, coronavirus will also require you to also keep an eye on your network security, particularly if you operate within the healthcare industry. Hackers and cybercriminals have taken advantage of the widespread concern that the disease has caused. For example:
While the current climate may not make it easy, these emails and other threat vectors can be overcome through the same best practices that foil other cyber threats. In addition to comprehensive digital protections, training your employees to spot these threats will be crucial.
Of course, you should also maintain a comprehensive backup in case you need to recover from a successful attack.
With today’s technology, sending an employee home sick doesn’t necessarily mean that you will be sacrificing that employee’s productivity. We now have many ways that your team can work effectively from home, still contributing to your organizational agenda without exposing their coworkers to their illness.
Remote access solutions, paired with virtual private networking technology, can allow your employees to securely continue their work from home, safely accessing the applications and data their tasks require through an encrypted connection. As collaboration will certainly be necessary, you will want to be sure that your employees are also equipped with the communication tools that facilitate this collaboration as well.
You will also want to thoroughly secure your network infrastructure to help prevent threats like phishing attacks and other methods from being successful… as well as preparing for a potential breach or emergency with data backups and disaster recovery policies and procedures (including contact information for your employees) to help mitigate a worst-case scenario.
Finally, make sure your employees are on the lookout for any suspicious activity that could be a cybercriminal’s attempt at using the coronavirus as a means to an end. Not only should your employees know how to spot these attempts; they should also know the proper procedures for reporting and handling them.
Is the coronavirus scary? At this point, it is safe to say that it is, but does it have to interrupt your business operations entirely? Not if you are properly prepared.
For more assistance in preparing your business for any kind of disaster, reach out to the professionals at HUB Technology Solutions by contacting us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
What is COVID-19?
COVID-19, better known as coronavirus, is a respiratory illness that first appeared in Wuhan, China. On March 11, 2020 the World Heath Organization (WHO) assessed COVID-19 as a pandemic.
As of March 12, there are 138 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Canada, with no vaccines or specific antiviral treatments for the illness. Symptoms of the virus include fever, shortness of breath, and a cough, while those with complications from the virus can experience pneumonia in both lungs, failure of multiple organs, and death.
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