Dr. Bob Baxley, CTO, Bastille examines two aspects of how Covid-19 will impact the workplace. The RF complexity of our workplaces will change as workers return based on the devices they bring, and the devices that they may be asked to wear. Adversaries will attempt to use the confusion to defeat existing security systems and protocols. In large workplace environments and campuses, the assumption that an infected worker has interacted with all workers is likely wrong, and technology to assist with contact tracing in the workplace will become prevalent. Security professionals can leverage existing tools and add others to help them identify breaches and help their organization with contact tracing in the event of a new infection.
Presenter: Dr. Baxley is CTO, Bastille and former Director of the Software Defined Radio Lab at Georgia Tech, during the webinar he will provide updates on how to use Bastille for contact and zone tracing as well as how to use Bastille to mitigate the unforeseen new threats from other contact tracing technologies.
Workplace Contact Tracing
While phone apps from Apple and Google offer phone proximity tracking, they specifically avoid location tracking for privacy reasons. Public health officials have decried the Apple/Google emphasis on privacy over contact discovery, saying that the design will be “essentially worthless” for public health purposes. Employers bear responsibility for the health and safety of their workers and in that context location history is very important. If your employer decides to rely on the Apple/Google proximity tracking system, then Bastille can tell you what percentages of the phones on your floor are using the application. Bastille through its DVR capability can track a particular phone or other RF device assigned to a user and map out that device’s pattern of life within a facility to help with contact tracing. Pattern of life tracking also makes deep surgical cleaning more efficient, by highlighting the zones in which a device associated with an infected person has been present. In addition, Bastille can provide historic patterns of life throughout buildings to demonstrate where infected people have been to warn others who were there shortly after e.g. in a conference room or kitchen. Traffic pattern data and dwell times at locations can also deliver information about building layout or areas which may present issues for social distancing.
Covid-19’s Implications for RF Security
When workers return, adherence to RF security policy will not be their primary concern. Adversaries will attempt to take advantage of the confusion. For example, in order to accomplish one-click ease of use, some applications install software to bypass the security aspects of the operating system…and these bypasses stay in the operating system even when the application is not in use. That’s a whole new attack vector for the bad guys. What’s the chance that your workers have used their corporate laptop with software that creates backdoors during their Work From Home period? Leveraging these sorts of vulnerabilities, attackers could take advantage of Bluetooth, BLE and Wi-Fi radios on the laptop to compromise your security. Further, the newest “medical wearables” are devices designed to help with contact proximity tracing. Most have not been designed around security. Their radios could be compromised or just used to obfuscate a rogue device. Security professionals will need to re-think which devices are authorized and how they operate in an environment which may be not as quiet as the day before the shelter-in-place orders began. Of particular interest will be devices which are behaving one way on entrance to a facility, and then change their behavior after going inside.
Learn how to use Bastille’s RF detection and location technologies to:
Contact Trace Throughout Buildings and Campuses
Monitor Social Distancing Policies
Evaluate Staff Rotation Tracking
Manage Security in the Covid Aware Workplace
Detect & Authorize New Devices (including Covid-19 Tracing enabled devices)
Understand percentage uptake of the Apple/Google exposure tracking app
Increase Facility Up-Time
Reduce Cleaning Time & Costs
Who should attend?
Covid-19 Response & Facility Teams
Operations
Physical Security
Cyber Security
Speaker:
Dr. Bob Baxley, CTO at Bastille and former Director of the Software Defined Radio Lab at Georgia Tech
