Greetings from Portsmouth, New Hampshire!
We are wrapping up our third week of working from home, and I think we are settling into the new normal. My kids are settling into distance learning, and I’ve rediscovered my love for history, science and art through them. We are also making our way through Netflix, listening to audio books and trying to convince our senior dog that the mischievous puppy we recently adopted is a lovely addition to the family. So far, he doesn’t believe us.
While we are all hopefully finding our groove at home, COVID-19 is firmly in our minds in spite of limiting the amount of news we read. Just this week, Johns Hopkins revealed that globally, more than 1 million people have tested positive for the virus and there are approximately 255,000 confirmed cases in the U.S. And that number is changing by the hour. Additionally, the U.S. Department of Labor revealed yesterday that 6.6 million Americans filed for unemployment insurance last week. These are staggering numbers to comprehend, and if I’m being honest, they are also anxiety-inducing. A friend recently shared the following suggestion that hit home with me that I thought I would share with you: “We are at a point that we need to accept our anxiety rather than try to work through it.” It seems a bit more manageable put that way.
Enough of that for now. Let’s talk privacy. We continue to work on increasing our virtual offerings for you to help you do your jobs, including this recent web conference on the privacy and security issues with COVID-19, particularly in the health care space. We've also compiled global privacy updates in our IAPP Resource Center on COVID-19 Guidance and Resources. Additionally, we are publishing a COVID-19 news roundup each day in the Daily Dashboard. Frankly, there's so much information coming out, we thought it better to present these in bullet points for easy review and access.
With so many working and learning from home, there has been an uptick in the use of virtual conferences. In a sure sign of changing times, I accidentally interrupted my teen’s class Zoom meeting and it was just as awkward as if the situation had been reversed. If you haven’t heard yet, Zoom is a virtual conferencing app that has exploded in popularity over the last few weeks. There have been some privacy and security concerns with the app, and earlier this week Zoom Founder and CEO Eric Yuan apologized to users for the privacy issues and froze feature updates for 90 days to address the issues (see below).
Wrapping up, I hope you are all staying safe, and as my colleague Ryan Chiavetta said last week, please check in on friends and family. A short conversation is all it takes to turn someone’s day around right now.