Coleman Technologies Blog

The COVID-19 pandemic is the first time many of us have had to deal with this level of threat, and now that businesses start to re-open in an attempt to stagnate a recessionary dive in the economy, there is a lot of ground to cover. Today, we go through the considerations you need to make, and the actions you need to take, to keep your business clear of COVID-19, and what steps to take if the virus makes its way into your business. 

Mitigation

Understand Requirements

While stay-at-home orders may be lifted, there are many other regulatory bodies and authorities that will put forth various restrictions for the sake of public health. Whether imposed by federal, provincial, or local governments, or tailored to a particular industry that has specific requirements for their operations, it is critical that these directives are followed to the letter.

In the current situation, this becomes especially important in terms of the standards assigned by the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Protection (CDC). Make sure you take the time to check for additional requirements applicable to your business’ industry, in addition to what applies to all businesses.

Compliance to ADA Rules

Many workplaces may consider testing for COVID-19 before allowing access to a business’ premises by anyone, which itself will require a few decisions to be made (how these tests are administered, who administers them, and the type of test to be used) and for these results to be protected as medical information.

The Americans with Disabilities Act and other assorted laws also outline that these tests are only permitted if there is doubt that an employee can perform their job without posing a threat to themselves or their coworkers. While this standard was deemed to have been met by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, any updates could potentially change whether or not this screening is allowed. Check with your legal counsel before proceeding with these protocols.

Office Cleanliness

From your workplace to the employees to work there, you need to do everything you can to encourage a cleaner and healthier environment. Provide a few reminders pertaining to basic hygiene practices around the workplace, and make sure that it is cleaned and disinfected properly. Keeping the HVAC systems well-maintained and the office well ventilated also helps.

Social Distancing Adoption

Of course, we can’t discuss mitigating COVID-19 without bringing up social distancing. While many businesses are notorious for their close-quarter layouts, shared resources, and even their displays of etiquette, these need to be adjusted to maintain the recommended six feet (or more) of distance between people. Stagger shifts and enable telework, put up barriers and mark off boundaries, and discourage in-person meetings.

Safety Protocols and Precautions

It will also be necessary for you to put new rules and procedures in place to better ensure that your workplace is contributing as little risk as possible for your employees. This means that you will need to assign someone the responsibility of overseeing that all workplace processes are compliant with safety regulations. You will also need to be prepared to provide as many protections as possible for your employees, handle your staff and their potential absences in accordance with the law, and (as we’ll cover below) properly deal with an employee who becomes symptomatic.

Reaction

Understanding the Threats

Opening your business up in the time of a pandemic--especially one that has killed over 80,000+ of your countrymen--is unfortunately the situation many business owners are currently dealing with. It is important, then, to understand the threat that you, your staff, and your customers are under from COVID-19. 

Dealing with Employee Concerns

The first thing you should understand is that there is going to be a wide disparity of opinion amongst your employees. You will see people who are happy to be back to work and you will see people who resent you for re-opening your business before a vaccine has been found, and every option in between. Depending on the makeup of your staff, there will likely be some heated political debates that surround these opinions. Regardless of how outspoken your employees are, you need to be the person to take the action necessary so that the more anxious members of your workforce can do their jobs effectively. 

One of the best things you can do for workers returning to work after a layoff is to be prepared. Having masks, gloves, disinfectant soap, sanitizer, will ease fears, but as was mentioned earlier, you will need to have a policy dedicated to cleaning and sanitizing every surface you can. This type of effort has shown to mitigate COVID-19 transference as many alcohol-based products kill the virus before it can be transferred. 

COVID-19 does not have a vaccine, so it’s important that testing take place. A major problem is that testing hasn’t been made available, so if you have employees who can (and have been) doing their jobs from home, you will want to keep them home. If employees cannot do their jobs from home, as is true in many manufacturing and retail establishments, it is essential that the employees you bring back all have clean bills of health. The last thing you will need is a positive COVID-19 case shuttering the doors of your business. 

Additionally, there are still options for employers if they do have staff members who have been exposed to the COVID-19 virus in some way. Many businesses have been taking their employees’ temperatures as they come in to work to ensure that they aren’t running a fever, which of course is one of the telltale symptoms of COVID-19. Employers can dictate when their staff comes back to work, but in many states, there are regulations in place to protect workers. Your decisions should be neutral and not based on age, race, pregnancy, or any other identifier. You will want to send “rehire” letters that provide wage notices and outline the onboarding process.

Dealing with Symptomatic Employees

If one of your employees starts to present symptoms, you cannot panic, but they must be separated from the other employees. You will want to send them home and direct them to speak with a doctor so they can get tested. You will then need to notify the rest of your staff that they may have been exposed. You will want to try and protect the identity of the symptomatic employee if possible, but more importantly, you will want to ensure that there is transparency if someone does end up sick. 

You must remember that many employees are entitled to leave under federal, state, and local rules put in place for all situations related to COVID-19. Under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, many people who have been exposed to COVID-19 or have other responsibilities that don’t allow them to get back to work, are eligible for paid sick leave.  

Dealing with a Lack of Demand

Finally, the hardest part of returning to work after the stay-at-home orders is that a lot of people are still extremely concerned about contracting the COVID-19 virus and will shelter-in-place much longer, or even until there is a working vaccine. That could be over a year away. Business owners need to be ready for a lack of consumer demand, especially in retail situations. While there are borrowing opportunities to help many small businesses get through these extremely lean times, recession will be a big problem for small business owners.

If you haven’t already, you will want to start looking at options to reduce your business’ spending. You should likely cancel any big projects you had in the pipeline and cut costs anyway you can. It’s unfortunate, but if you want to get your business through COVID-19 and through the resulting recession, you are definitely going to be asked to make some tough decisions. 

This is where Coleman Technologies can help. We can provide you with many cost-effective options that can work to maintain productivity, prioritize security, and cut costs by outsourcing parts of your business. If you would like to learn more about how we can help you see your company through this extremely tough situation, call us today at (604) 513-9428.

It’s true that there are a lot of businesses that rely on their workforce to show up every day. Many of these businesses were forced to shut down or operate at limited capacity during the pandemic but are just now getting up to speed. Outside of operations, there are a lot of administrative uses of technology, some of which involve protecting employee and customer information. Let’s get into some of the strategies that businesses can use to get the most out of their workforce at this time. 

Remote Operations

Ironically, until this whole COVID-19 mess is over with, the most prudent decisions are going to be made using technology that supports remote work, even if you’ve mandated employees to work at your place of business. Not only does it remove physical interaction of your staff to protect them from contracting potentially dangerous viruses, it protects clients as well.

This strategy includes the use of internet-based tools and substantial training initiatives. According to an IMB survey just over half of remote workers during the pandemic were actually trained to protect work-related resources, so making employee training a priority makes sense. 

Hybrid Operations

There’s a saying, “You have to crawl before you walk.” It means that you have to work up to something. If you already have a remote workforce and you are looking to get them to move back to the office or the workplace, you should start implementing a strategy that gets people in waves. The most important thing is to prioritize employee health during this time, as any COVID-19 outbreak could make it difficult for you to conduct business at all. 

In regards to the IT deployment, this strategy is probably the most resource intensive because you have to both be cognizant of your network security inside your business, while also keeping abreast of how your remote workers are using your computing resources. 

Onsite Operations

Getting back to “business-as-usual” will be nice, and if you can accomplish it now, that’s great. It’s just not a strategy many businesses can support at this juncture, especially if they feature open office spaces and shared bathroom facilities. IT management is simpler for IT administrators when everyone is in one location and on the same page. 

Regardless of what your plans are for your human resources, you need to ensure that everyone understands how to mitigate the numerous types of threats your business faces each day. To talk to one of our security professionals about your business’ situation, call us today at (604) 513-9428.

A Look at the Numbers

Before the pandemic hit, it was believed that roughly 5.2 percent of Americans worked out of their home. That’s about 8 million people, and that number is fairly recent, from 2017. By the end of 2019, we can estimate it was maybe between 5.5 percent to 6 percent.

We can simplify this and say one out of every 20 American workers worked from home before the pandemic.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only a mere 29% of Americans can actually work from home. That takes into consideration jobs that simply require a person to be at the workplace, like many in the food industry, delivery, construction and many more.

At the time of writing this, I have yet to find solid statistics for the number of Americans working from home right now, but there is a general consensus that it’s somewhere around one in five to one in three. 

That falls right in line with what the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows, and we’re talking about the whole of the United States - things are going to feel different in different states and different areas.

How is the Internet Holding Up?

Back on topic, up to a third of all workers are now doing their jobs from home, plus kids of all ages are taking classes and doing their homework online, on top of the normal traffic that we see everyday. I’m talking about Netflix and other streaming services, online video games, YouTube and social media; all of these services are seeing a huge swing in traffic as more people are stuck at home.

Netflix’s usage, which is normally about 15% of all global Internet traffic, has hit all-time highs, and ISPs are seeing record-breaking amounts of Internet traffic all in all. Thankfully, many ISPs and mobile carriers have loosened or temporarily lifted data caps that would have otherwise caused massive expenses for users trying to work from home (Interestingly, these data caps were supposedly in place to ensure the service functions well. It turns out that in general, the service can still work as intended without them. Let’s hope service providers don’t revert back to the old ways after all this is over).

All that said, it’s not perfect for everyone. Rural users with limited access to broadband are still struggling, and in larger, more populated areas where the infrastructure might be a little older have been bumping into frustrating downtime. Still, all in all, a large part of our workforce is able to get things done effectively while maintaining quarantine, and that’s huge.

Cybersecurity is More Important Than Ever

Here’s the thing; being able to stay in business and keep your customers happy and your employees safe during this trying time is a big deal. That said, you can’t do all of that without also understanding the additional risks you might be opening up to. This isn’t meant to sound like doom and gloom - I want businesses to survive and strive. I want to hear success stories. I want business owners coming out of this with a new perspective on how they operate their business, trust their employees, and bolster their bottom line.

This could be a renaissance for the modern office, shifting the paradigm to normalize a remote workforce. Suddenly, you have fewer expenses, happier employees, and everyone can wear comfy pants more often. Or, maybe we’ll all decide we miss working together in the office so much and never look back. Either way, I digress...

Your business might not be able to see how this all turns out if you don’t secure all those new endpoints. Everyone who is working from home on a personal device just opened up a new weakness in your IT’s armor, especially if you aren’t providing the proper means of accessing company data and applications.

Ensuring that your users are able to work securely is going to be critical, because the last thing you need to deal with is additional downtime or data breaches.

Coleman Technologies can help review your needs and provide the right solutions to ensure your remote workforce can effectively do their jobs without risking your data. If you need help or advice, give us a call at (604) 513-9428 to get started.

On July 3rd, the Tony-winning Broadway musical was released on Disney+, meaning that history buffs and theater nerds alike don’t have to Wait for It. Even better, you can now watch Hamilton with all your friends. We Know, it’s pretty cool, especially since you don’t all need to be In the Room Where it Happens. Let’s go over how you can arrange that in this song-title-pun-filled blog.

Making Use of a Disney+ Watch Party

What is a Watch Party? Simple: it’s where you virtually gather with your friends and family to simultaneously stream a movie or show together, despite being in different locations. Many services, like Amazon Video, added this feature to help people make it through social distancing during the global COVID-19 pandemic without telling anyone to “Meet Me Inside.”

Hosting a Hamilton Watch Party

To enjoy this theater production of the life and times of Alexander Hamilton along with your socially distant friends, there are a few things that will be required of all participants.

Disney+

Naturally, everyone who wants to watch will need an individual Disney+ account. Unfortunately, the free trial offer for Disney+ is no longer offered. After all, once the second season of the Mandalorian was announced, they knew they could say “You’ll Be Back” to all their subscribers (we’ll see how the $30 rental for the live-action Mulan impacts this).

Subscribing only requires a quick visit to https://www.disneyplus.com/. You may also want to check online for any promotional codes that may be currently offered.

A Browser Plugin

Everyone also needs to install a Chrome browser plugin. There are some exclusive to Disney+, while others allow you to host watch parties via Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, and Prime Video as well. If you’re hosting, pick the one that works for you and make sure everyone has it installed ahead of time so there aren’t any delays. If you only care about doing a watch party with Disney Plus, you can use the Disney Plus Party plugin. If you want to host watch parties with Netflix, Prime Video, YouTube, and Hulu as well, you can check out Vemos.

These plugins will let you synchronize your video with the rest of the watch party and chat with one another. Add the plugin to the top of your browser and create an account.

Once that’s accomplished, you can start up Disney+ in your Chrome browser and start the movie. Then you can click on your new plugin and select the option to host. You’ll be prompted to name your viewing room. Meanwhile, the rest of your party will need to have installed the plugin, created an account, joined a movie, and entered the name of your room. That Would Be Enough for everyone to participate.

Then, as the host, you have the power to start the movie and have it play to everyone’s device. You can pause it so that people can Take a Break without asking “What’d I Miss?” or you can play the entire production Non-Stop.

Fair warning—some of these group viewing applications are only free for a set number of hours each week. Make sure you pick one long enough to view the whole thing, so nobody starts asking What Comes Next?

With any luck, this will allow you and your friends to watch Hamilton and keep everyone Satisfied.

Want more handy technology tips and tricks? Consider Coleman Technologies Your Obedient Servant. Each week, we update this blog with more tips and best practices, along with a Hurricane of useful technology information. With our help, you don’t have to feel Helpless when it comes to your business’ IT. We can be your Right Hand Man, just give us a call at (604) 513-9428.

Let us know, how did we do with the song title puns? One Last Time, don’t forget to subscribe to our blog!

The Cozy Bear Threat

According to the National Cyber Security Centre, a government security organization based in the United Kingdom, a hacking group known as “APT29” (also referred to as “the Dukes” or “Cozy Bear”) has actively targeted the research centers conducting research into developing a COVID-19 vaccine. These claims have been supported by both the United States’ National Security Agency and Canada’s Communications Security Establishment.

In fact, the National Cyber Security Center released a report that outlined the attack that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency also endorses.

This report describes the use of various exploits in conjunction with spear phishing attacks by APT29. Both tactics give APT29 access to carry out the rest of their attacks, which often involves deploying malware known as WellMess or WellMail.

On a side note, some of these exploits have been patched, so make sure you’re also up to date on your patches as well.

Many experts also share the opinion that Cozy Bear has struck before, and that the current threat needs to be taken very seriously as a result. It is believed that APT29 was responsible for the 2016 intrusion into the Democratic National Committee’s systems, as reported by CNN. The group has also been linked to assorted attacks on healthcare, energy, governmental and diplomatic organizations, and think tanks in the past.

What is Spear Phishing?

Phishing is a form of hacking that targets the end user, rather than using software vulnerabilities, to gain access to a system. Spear phishing is a more direct form of phishing. Instead of sending a generic message to massive groups of potential targets to see who takes the bait, spear phishing is specifically directed to an individual with access to key data and resources.

While APT29 may not target your organization as a part of these efforts to steal research, it is nevertheless critical that you and your team can recognize a potential phishing attack and mitigate it before it causes significant problems. While the following is by no means a comprehensive list of warning signs, it is a good place to start educating your team:

• Always check the details. Many phishing attacks can be identified by close-but-no-cigar “From” addresses. When in doubt, try looking up the email address that sent an email.
• Proofread the message. While legitimate messages can contain terrible spelling and grammar mistakes, and attackers can more and more effectively mimic professional communications, many phishing messages can be rife with errors.
• Double-check. If possible, don’t be afraid to confirm that the email is legitimate by reaching out to the supposed sender (through some non-email form of communication) to confirm that they sent the message.

For more assistance in dealing with phishing attacks, reach out to us! At Coleman Technologies, we’re motivated to help prevent a phishing attack from impacting your operations. Give us a call at (604) 513-9428 to learn more.