Hi Members,

We don’t have a training or informational video for you this week, but we would still like you to use your phone and computer to avoid a computer virus and help the Australian government remove restrictions.

With so many more employees working remotely the hackers have taken the opportunity to prey on individuals while businesses are adapting to these new working environments.  Before COVID-19, 47% of the Australian workforce did NOT have working from home experience.  We are all searching the web to get information on government assistance and personal finance assistance.  The increased use of the internet, in a home cyber security setting, while looking at newly developed websites for COVID-19 assistance is the perfect incubator for a hacker to steal personal or company information.  Since the start of the COVID-19 there have been over 16,000 domains registered that relate to COVID-19.  Some of these 16,000 domains are sold into the darknet.  The ACCC is monitoring scamming reports and have seen a spike during a two week period in March when the Australian Government was announcing stay home orders. 

So, what do we do?  Please consider implementing three easy steps:

1. If you have an Apple Watch or other wearable device, consider linking that to a Guest Network in your business rather than the primary network.
2. Use two factor authentication where possible and certainly with financial systems.
3. Change your password.  Change it today and then plan on changing it again on a monthly or quarterly interval.  Password complexity is not as important as password length.  Pick some random, but common references to make a password longer and easy to remember.  “CranesLiftBigStuff” is an 18 digit password with upper and lower case letters.  To make it more secure add a number and a symbol – “CranesLift8ig$tuff”.  Passwords should be 12 digits or longer to make the number of combinations difficult for bots to solve quickly.

It’s not all bad news.  I want to leave you with a positive note. The health impact of COVID-19 on Australians has been very low when compared to the rest of the world.  It seems that the actions taken in March have helped to minimise the strain on ICUs and now drive-thru testing is being used to continue to track the volume of infected population.  This will also give us the ability to understand how many of us are asymptomatic.  The recent news is saying that a Swiss test is 99% accurate for determining the presence of anti-bodies.  This will enable virologists to better understand the R0 value of COVID-19 and risk of future outbreaks or second waves.

I think all of us want to get kids back to school, ourselves back to work and have some of our freedoms restored to enjoy our community and country.  It was clear over the weekend that the Government is using the COVIDSAFE app as a decision-maker for relaxing stay at home requirements.  The more people download the app the easier it is for contact-to-contact transmission to be determined and notifications to be sent.

Watch this quick video and download the app to help the government ease current restrictions and get our economy restored.  The government website for COVIDSAFE has more information.

We all use Google Maps or Waze that shares our information to get traffic and travel times, how much more important is sharing when we might have been exposed to a potential health risk. Download the app today.

Stay Safe,

Brandon

Brandon Hitch

Chief Executive Officer