Chinese narrative control in the time of pandemic

June 8, 2020

In the second week of December 2019, Wuhan had its first case of novel coronavirus. By the month end, it was located to have originated from the open meat market. On 30 December 2019, an ophthalmologist, Dr Li Wenliang, warned others about the outbreak of Covid-19. In a private message...

Hospitals too need to be saved from viruses

May 28, 2020

Large volumes of sensitive health data are generated during the interactions of individuals with healthcare providers. This information includes patient records, lab results, medical images, and other sensitive and confidential information like status and progression of serious illnesses. It is imperative to keep this data secret and protected from unauthorised...

Pandemic, pandemonium and social media platforms

May 21, 2020

Ubi Jus Ibi Remedium! For every wrong, law provides for a remedy. Except on the Internet. What began as innovation in the 1990s has now become a world stage for people of all kinds — suppressed populations under dictators, revolutionaries and marginalised groups, to paedophiles and terror propagandists, scamsters and...

Financial cybercrime rides the Covid-19 wave

May 15, 2020

Amidst worldwide lockdown across the world, physical and cash transactions have been virtually ruled out. Even when the economy is going down, digital transactions have been on the rise. This is overstraining the banking and financial systems. It is presenting opportunistic cybercriminals a chance to defraud and loot unsuspecting prey....

Privacy and security of video-conferencing apps

May 6, 2020

The pandemic struck suddenly, before the world could fully comprehend its import, humanity went into a paralysis. Life across the globe came to a standstill. Governments, corporates, families and individuals had to suddenly adapt to new modes of communication, transaction and service delivery. In this mayhem, the online and digital...

Aarogya Setu doesn’t invade our privacy

April 29, 2020

Four weapons have emerged in our fight against coronavirus. The World Health Organization (WHO) calls them testing, isolation, tracing and treatment. These weapons work at different stages and have limitations of their own. The only way to flatten the curve and save precious lives is to get ahead of the...