01 April 2020

VIRTUAL PLATFORM: 98-Minute Mesa City Council "Study Session" Tue 03.31.2020

ZOOM, the virtual platform deployed by the Mesa City Council, has come under scrutiny over issues and concerns over privacy and security for city employees and their "work-from-home" contracts.
Any way you look at it, the enterprise footprint just grew and radically changed in a 24 hour period.
COVID-19 is our new common watering hole, and malicious actors are manufacturing phishing attacks, devilish spear-phishing campaigns, rogue applications and more. Regular, short, routine communications to remind people of the basics, to gain a pulse on the organization and to provide clear policies are essential.
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Security And Privacy In A Brave New Work From Home World

from the security-from-home dept

We have moved to a radically remote posture, leaving a lot of empty real-estate in corporate offices and abandoning the final protections of the digital perimeter. For years, we’ve heard that the perimeter is dead and there are no borders in cyberspace. We have even had promises of a new and better style of working without being bound to a physical office and the tyranny and waste of the commute. However, much like the promise of less travel in a digital age or even the total paperless office these work-life aspirations never had a chance to materialize before COVID-19 forced us to disperse and connect over the Internet. This has massive implications on corporate culture and productivity. More immediately, the surge in use of remote work capabilities has consequences from a security and privacy perspective that cannot be ignored. . . 
From a security perspective, the basics are critical - High on the list are concerns about misinformation, weaponized information and social engineering. While companies can’t control machines that they don’t own, they have to try to get the most secure endpoints they can and ensure identity integrity. This means emphasizing what channels are appropriate or not for employees and their families for information: news networks, websites and the like . . .
Which brings us to the most difficult of topics: privacy.
Did employees bring notes and data home before the office closure? 
Are they creating IP and data protected by privacy laws and regulations as they continue to do business? 
Who is in the immediate environment physically? These are some of the critical questions. In some cases you may never know the answers to these questions or you may not have a right to know the answers but must appreciate others’ living situations and assume some worst case scenarios. . . ."
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Video Conferencing via Zoom with presiding officer Hizzoner John Giles going right off to asking the City Manager, "Mr. Brady how would like to proceed?" if there's any doubt who is in control while nothing is noted about public participation
Two chiefs are online - Fire/Medical Chief Mary Camelli and Police Chief Ken Costa.
Police Chief Costa's presentation starts 30 minutes into the video - at 33 minutes the city manager and mayor break in, and then turn over the discussion to deputy city manager Natalie Lewis 39 minutes in, joined by the new director of Housing & Community Development Michelle Albanese  (who used to be a grant writer for the City of Scottsdale)...discussion with council members, with D1 Mark Freeman chiming in at one hour - asking about public facilities acquisition? - and everyone struggles on from then
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PLEASE NOTE: Most of the presentation is already public knowledge with the added caution that the source of projections used by the city was not identified. Furthermore, every model might have its flaws
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Hear a presentation, continue discussions, and provide direction on COVID-19 impacts, responses, and the City's future actions, focusing on Public Safety and community resources. 
 Hear a presentation, discuss, and provide direction on updates on 
> recent federal legislation
> federal and state funding allocations, 
> process updates and 
> considerations for Mesa resulting from the effects COVID-19
with a focus on available federal funding options including allocating available CDBG funds toward serving Mesa’s homeless, low-moderate income families, elderly, and other at-risk populations. 
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KJZZ reported yesterday that Maricopa County does not know the number of patients hospitalized
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Council Study Session 03.31.2020


Great Virtual Meetings — Center for Purposeful Leadership
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