Coronavirus pandemic| Amidst remote working, technology poses unusual challenges

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Suresh Prakasam had never before participated in a video meeting during his 30-year career as a marketing executive. So amidst the coronavirus (COVID-19) lockdown, when he was required to do client meetings over video, little did he know that his work laptop had an auto camera mode for e-meetings. He turned up shirtless for one such discussion and has since not been able to face clients.

COVID-19 has led to companies mandating remote working for employees. However, to ensure business continuity all physical meetings, conferences and daily briefings are now being converted into electronic ones. But this is not devoid of its unique challenges.

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On April 2, miscreants hacked into industry body Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC)'s second post-COVID-19 viewership insights conference hosted via popular video conferencing app ZOOM.

The hackers took host control and posted abusive messages on the participants' chat window. There were over 600 participants logged in to the conference. The miscreants also defaced all slides and played random videos leaving the organisers red-faced.

At a pan-India appliance dealer e-meet held in the third week of March 2020, a participant was not aware of how the screen-sharing function worked. When he proceeded to share his work system with 80 other people in the event, they were shocked to find objectionable content on his device being broadcast publicly. The concerned person had to immediately excuse himself from the conference.

While privacy concerns about using applications like ZOOM and Houseparty have crept it and doubts about end-to-end encryptions are being posed to experts, there have also been some hilarious consequences reported during the use of some such platforms.

Group video chat platform Houseparty recently denied concerns pertaining to Netflix, Spotify and PayPal being hacked into through the usage of this application. Houseparty said that its users are safe, no passwords are collected and went a step ahead to announce a $1 million reward to anyone who could provide the company information on who was spreading rumours about it being hacked.

Meanwhile, users of some of these popular applications are still struggling to navigate them.

A multimedia company that had a Friday games evening in office for all employees thought that shifting this to a group chat medium would be a good option. However, what they did not realise is that a bug in the software being used kept the user's mic switched on even after they exited the application.

"We had someone signing off and then verbally abusing his colleague which was relayed to the entire team through the technology platform. It was an embarrassing moment for all of us and hence we have decided to suspend all such informal video chats," said a member of the company's human resource team.

Corporate employees are still working their way through these applications, while this looks like a golden moment for hackers. Since access to official meetings or e-seminars is through a simple login and pass-code, it is not too difficult to break into the system.

Chief information officers (CIO) of companies say that these hackers could not merely be someone who is bypassing the system for his/her thrill, but could also be business rivals trying to gain confidential information. However, CIOs also admit that they are forced to use video platforms due to the remote working conditions.

With India and the rest of the globe still reeling under the effects of COVID-19, it would still take a few more weeks for companies to resume regular operations. Till then, there is a high likelihood of several such electronic fiascos being repeated.

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