The Pacific Council recently hosted a teleconference with Madinah Ali of Safe PC Cloud and Daniel Ives of Wedbush Securities, and moderated by Malia Mason of Integrum. They discussed how climate change disproportionately affects women.

Here are key takeaways from the call:

• The speakers agreed that this pandemic is an opportunity for all businesses to reinvent themselves. It is also a reminder to businesses to take security seriously.
• Tools like Zoom, Slack, and Google Hangouts are popular, but they’re mid-sized groups; they were not created to be used by 200 million users and don’t have the security infrastructures to support an entire country. Safer alternatives for your office are Microsoft Teams, Cisco WebX, and Go-To Meeting. All these companies must make investments in security if they want to continue to play in market.
• YouTube and Netflix have had to downgrade services since everyone is streaming. Nintendo and other tech companies have had to make changes due to increased online gaming. This is exposing a lot of cracks in tech systems.
• Everyone needs to support parents and children. Many don’t even have access to a computer or the internet. Train parents and give them resources so that they can in turn teach their children and keep them safe online. Ideal outcomes of this era would be getting the internet into rural areas, every child having a safe device at home, and parents providing proper education to continue to help their children.
• Ives said that although this is one of the most uncertain times we’ve seen for the stock market, tech stocks are holding up better than other industries. Part of that is due to the new work-from-home ecosystem.
• Ali said that although smaller companies are suffering more than bigger ones, those bigger companies are also laying people off, albeit silently. This will transform the healthcare industry and other industries.
• Although disaster recovery will create small changes, the speakers did not foresee massive game-changing alterations to our work culture. They are hoping for more flexibility and a better work-life balance following the pandemic.

Listen to the full conversation below:

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The views and opinions expressed here are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Pacific Council.