Tag: COVID-19

Addressing Covid-19 is just the starting point. Microsoft and the WHO are also collaborating on a project that could drive improved health outcomes for everyone. The World Health Data Hub, for example, will use artificial intelligence to create a global information center for disease surveillance and knowledge sharing that could help further the SDGs by providing a targeted picture of disease patterns and sharing insight into where particular health issues most need attention.

“The problem with Covid-19 is that it has redirected so many resources in the world that there are other issues being neglected,” says Spelhaug. “Like tropical diseases that kill millions of people each year, and the world has taken their eye off it, because we need to focus on Covid-19, but we’re very interested to make sure that, in the communities that suffer from neglected tropical diseases, which are the poorest communities in the world, we are advancing the analytics and the understanding of the patterns that are emerging in these communities, so we’re focusing on that on the data platform.”

In low- and middle-income countries, millions of children continue to die from preventable illnesses each year, and metrics such as stunting – impaired growth and development stemming from poor nutrition, repeated infection and inadequate social stimulation – will be included on the World Health Data Hub when it is rolled out in 2021. The goal is for the platform to be a nerve center for scientists, governments and aid organizations to help target not just Covid-19, but also treat chronic physical and mental health issues.

“The World Health Data Hub truly has the ambition and the support to be a game changer,” says Dr. Asma. “We are restless. We know we can deliver. It is our responsibility – collectively – and we know we can’t do it alone.”

[READ MORE: 4 ways sharing data is improving our world]

The private and public sectors are increasingly partnering on global challenges. Alongside its WHO projects, Microsoft has recently been working with the World Food Programme on creating a digital identity for those – such as refugees – who don’t have the records needed to match them to the right food, medicine, support and services. It’s the kind of investment that has a multiplier effect, not just for the World Food Programme, but for every global aid organization.

Whether it’s in delivering food and medicine or battling disease, “we need to make sure that we’re taking a problem or opportunity-oriented approach,” says Spelhaug. “We’re not implementing technology for technology’s sake.”

“Covid-19 is a challenge, but also an opportunity,” adds Dr. Asma. “We were already trying to work out, over the past year, how we resolve the fragmentation, so that we can make data and create knowledge in a more structured, organized way [and] predict not only impending epidemics or pandemics, but also forecast where we will be in terms of scenarios, simulation, using AI and machine learning. There are so many possibilities that health has not really scratched even the surface of it.”

If tech can help global health concerns catch up after Covid-19, then the global ambitions for the SDGs – and our wider well-being – may yet be achievable. “What we’ve learned,” says Spelhaug, “is the impact we can have together when we frame the right strategic priorities.”

For more on Microsoft’s work with the UN, visit our UN Affairs page. And follow @MSFTIssues on Twitter.  

A population-level disease monitoring system that employs at-home self-swab kits is being expanded today, at no cost to participants, as part of an infection prevalence study in the San Francisco Bay Area. The system could have broader impact on testing not only for COVID-19, but for other diseases as well.

The service uses the Vera Cloud Testing Platform which continuously aggregates test results and data about symptoms submitted by volunteers to study COVID-19 prevalence in real-time across the region. The system is the result of collaboration by Stanford University with the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Gates Ventures, the University of Washington, Microsoft Research and other private and public institutions.

Vera is a scalable and low-cost “testing-as-a-service” platform that could also be used by public health departments and employers. With its sample self-collection kit and population health monitoring system, it can also be used on a broader scale to help with back-to-school COVID-19 testing for students and staff at schools and universities, an option not readily available today.

Its impact could extend to other types of testing in the future, such as for other viruses, new strains of flu, or to help monitor diseases, says Stephen Quake, Ph.D., the Lee Otterson Professor of Bioengineering and Professor of Applied Physics at Stanford University, and co-president of the Chan-Zuckerberg Biohub.

“What we’ve learned through this pandemic is that there’s a real mismatch between testing capacity and testing need. Certain parts of the country have more than enough testing capacity, and others do not,” Quake says.

Vera helps address that problem by providing a way for people to collect their own sample at home then mail them for testing to labs that can be based anywhere, he says.

To initially test the platform, Stanford Medicine has been conducting a pilot study known as CATCH – Community Alliance to Test Coronavirus at Home – for the past few weeks, and now is officially launching the full study to monitor the spread of COVID-19 in all 12 counties of the greater Bay Area, with the hope of securing up to 100,000 participants during the course of the flu season.

“We’re hoping that this can help address inequities in testing by reaching underserved populations who are often at the highest risk – people who work in essential occupations and may have difficulty accessing health care facility-based testing,” says Quake. Testing is free to those participating in the CATCH study.

Yvonne Maldonado, M.D., a professor of pediatric infectious diseases and of health research and policy at the Stanford School of Medicine, also a leader of the CATCH study and an advisor to the Vera team, says the platform’s compatibility with any type of COVID-19 test means it has the potential to be adopted by a range of organizations, well beyond the initial CATCH study.

“While the CATCH study uses the Stanford laboratory’s RT-PCT assay, you could use an Abbott test, or any other lab or test you want. The software platform allows you to link test results and monitor how infections are spreading through the overall population,” she says.

All Vera participant information and test results are securely protected, Maldonado says, although COVID-19 results are reported to public health departments as required by law. Vera – derived from the Latin word for “truth” – includes a customizable enrollment and testing system, a self-swabbing kit, and a secure participant portal for obtaining results and any other medical follow-up that may be needed.

Microsoft technology, including the Microsoft Healthcare Bot, Azure, Power BI, and Power Platform, was used to help create Vera and CATCH, which adhere to Microsoft’s policies on data and privacy, including during the COVID-19 pandemic. Microsoft’s commercial software engineering team helped scale SCAN’s epidemiology testing platform that Vera is based on. The Healthcare Bot is used by the Centers for Disease Control, as well as thousands of hospitals around the world, to help screen people for potential COVID-19 infection and treatment. Microsoft’s AI for Good program has been supporting the project team as they have scaled up their efforts.

“What’s exciting about Vera is the ability to track this pandemic in real-time to the degree possible, and give people who might not otherwise be reached access to testing,” Maldonado says. This real-time system also enables health care providers and public health agencies to implement more complex testing algorithms, including increasing testing rates as symptoms are reported, as well as programmatic epidemiological sampling plans, tailored to local exposures, demographics and other characteristics over time.

The researchers say the inspiration for Vera was work done earlier this year by the greater Seattle Coronavirus Assessment Network (SCAN), a program that receives funding from Gates Ventures and technical assistance from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and public health authorities.

SCAN uses an at-home kit that allows participants to collect their own sample with a simple swab within the front of each nostril — a far more gentle and less-invasive process than other COVID-19 tests which require a nasal swab to be placed all the way to the back of the throat. The CATCH study uses a similar self-swab method as SCAN.

SCAN grew out of the Seattle Flu Study, which in February detected one of the first documented U.S. cases of community transmission of COVID-19.

From SCAN, CATCH shares “the broader population-level epidemiological understanding of the disease,” says Vikram Dendi, general manager of Microsoft Health NExT. “Where is it breaking now? How is it spreading? How many people are symptomatic?

“Being able to do that by sending kits to your home is a very powerful way of ensuring that you can actually have a much better understanding of the pandemic, and also do it in a much more equitable way,” says Dendi.

COVID-19 disproportionately affects people of color as well as those in low-income neighborhoods. But it’s often these communities that have the least access to health care and the greatest barriers to testing. “The design of CATCH as a study intends to try to overcome those kinds of inequities and really develop a very clear and comprehensive picture of how things are evolving,” he says.

From a research and science perspective, Dendi says that Vera and CATCH offer “the ability to better understand the disease spread in a given community, which is really very valuable, and we were very happy to help.”

“It really has quite a bit of potential for not only now, but down the road,” he says. “The promise of return to school, and to have that happen not just for one school, but beyond, is certainly something that we will celebrate as and when that happens.”

Top image: The Stanford Clinical Virology Laboratory will provide testing for a pilot use of Vera with the CATCH study. Photo credit: Steve Fisch.

In times of crisis, innovation becomes a necessity. And history tells us that humankind often ends up in a better place.

A cholera pandemic in 19^th century London led to the creation of a new scientific field, epidemiology. The challenge of decrypting enemy messages during World War II spurred the development of computers.

With the current pandemic, it’s not surprising to see a similar process of innovation. Since COVID-19 hit the global economy, “we have witnessed firsthand how a wave of transformative change has swept across the region,” says Ahmed Mazhari, president  of Microsoft Asia. “This is no easy feat; organizations have challenges to overcome and innovation is no longer a luxury. It has to form the core part of an organization’s DNA.”

Many others in the business world agree.

A new Microsoft-IDC study, Culture of Innovation, Foundation for business resilience and economic recovery in Asia Pacific (APAC) shows that 41% of businesses view COVID-19 as an opportunity. Those businesses also expect to recover more quickly and come out of the crisis with similar or better revenue than before.

Innovation helps

However, let’s not paint an overly rosy a picture. COVID-19 is taking a devastating toll on human life, and the resulting economic downturn has seen many people lose their jobs or suffer reduced incomes.

In the face of this disruption, people and companies are doing their best to keep going. In Asia Pacific , organizations that are adapting have increased their ability to innovate in the past six months. What’s more, as they embrace change, they are finding it easier to innovate.

Not all organizations are progressing equally, but there are many things we can learn from those leading the way.

Understanding the culture of innovation

The study includes a culture of innovation framework, which describes an interplay of people, process, data and technology to assess how an organization approaches innovation.

It also identifies four stages along the journey to a mature culture of innovation: traditionalist, novice, adopter and leader. Additionally, it provides guidance to help organizations become leaders, so they can respond to challenges and recover faster.

What do leaders have in common?

Almost all (98%) of the organizations identified as leaders, with the most advanced culture of innovation, share a belief that innovation is key to responding quickly to market challenges and opportunities. These leaders are more resilient to crises like the current pandemic and they expect to recover faster.

This resilience shapes their perception of business outcomes. Around 50% of those organizations identified as leaders reported an expected increase in overall revenue when asked what impact they think COVID-19 will have on their overall business in 2020.

Leaders also recognize the importance of digital transformation and are accelerating the pace of digitalization in response to the crisis. Eighty-seven percent intend to speed up initiatives, such as  launching digital products, digital payments, ecommerce and automation. Only 66% of other organizations intend to do similarly.

Beyond digital products, services and processes, leaders understand the urgency of redesigning their overall business models. Indeed, leaders have already rethought their current business models and are exploring new ones to ensure business resilience and faster recovery.

Perhaps the most striking feature of the leaders is their approach to future planning. Leaders are looking to future-proof their businesses by focusing on technological and people capabilities. This attitude appears years ahead of other organizations that are still working on digitalization. Leading organizations know that people are the key ingredient and that empowering them to use technology successfully is the challenge of the future.

People are key

Mazhari puts it this way: “The current crisis has shown us how much business continuity and our future success depend on people, who need to be fully ready to embrace the digital reality, together with technology. While important, technology on its own will not make a difference. It is people’s capabilities and skills that allow organizations to innovate and transform.”

Leading organization share certain best practices that everyone can implement.

Eighty-nine percent have developed a culture promoting disruptive ideas and encouraging innovation as a corporate value. Eighty-two percent prioritize and formalize innovation rewards over traditional performance and hire a diverse cross-industry, multicultural and multigenerational workforce. And 70% invest in growing enterprise-wide capabilities and skilling initiatives.

This openness helps to unlock the potential of people to accelerate transformation.

Resilience and recovery

When the people of an organization have fully embraced the concept of a culture of innovation, the other elements of technology, data and process fall into place.Leading organizations overwhelmingly (92%) invest in disruptive technologies to drive innovation and business transformation.

Leaders are also more systematic in their approach. They develop specific processes to drive innovation. They also have dedicated budgets to drive their digital innovation and programs.

They also understand the importance of leveraging data to differentiate and enhance

their products and services. Additionally, they make decisions to enable enterprise-wide collaboration and knowledge sharing.

This combination of tech adoption and tech capability is known as tech intensity. “Now, with every organization becoming a digital one, achieving the success in transformation requires both the adoption of tools and technologies as well as their own digital capabilities,” Mazhari says. “Culture that encourages innovation and embraces digital opportunities is critical as it prepares the workforce and organizations for current and future challenges.”

The study lays out four steps that any organization can follow:

1. Fortify resilience with technology
2. Invest in people’s capabilities and skills
3. Leverage data to increase competitiveness
4. Redesign processes to empower people to continuously drive innovation

Mazhari reiterates that the culture of innovation is achieved through the critical combination of technology and employee empowerment.

“To succeed in the new normal and drive digital transformation, we not only need to have a robust digital foundation, we also need to ensure our people have the skills and tools to work together to drive disruption. Ultimately, we want to ensure a more resilient and inclusive future for all organizations. At Microsoft, we are committed to working with organizations in Asia Pacific to make this happen, together.”

Today, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia unsealed documents detailing Microsoft’s work to disrupt cybercriminals that were taking advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic in an attempt to defraud customers in 62 countries around the world. Our civil case has resulted in a court order allowing Microsoft to seize control of key domains in the criminals’ infrastructure so that it can no longer be used to execute cyberattacks.

Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) first observed these criminals in December 2019, when they deployed a sophisticated, new phishing scheme designed to compromise Microsoft customer accounts. The criminals attempted to gain access to customer email, contact lists, sensitive documents and other valuable information. Based on patterns discovered at that time, Microsoft utilized technical means to block the criminals’ activity and disable the malicious application used in the attack. Recently, Microsoft observed renewed attempts by the same criminals, this time using COVID-19-related lures in the phishing emails to target victims.

This malicious activity is yet another form of business email compromise (BEC) attack, which has increased in complexity, sophistication and frequency in recent years. According to the FBI’s 2019 Internet Crime Report, the most-costly complaints received by their Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) involved BEC crimes, with losses of over $1.7 billion, representing nearly half of all financial losses due to cybercrime. While most of the public’s attention in recent years has justifiably focused on the malign acts of nation state actors, the increasing economic harm caused by cybercriminals must also be considered and confronted by the public and private sectors. For our part, Microsoft and our Digital Crimes Unit will continue to investigate and disrupt cybercriminals and will seek to work with law enforcement agencies around the world, whenever possible, to stop these crimes.

These cybercriminals designed the phishing emails to look like they originated from an employer or other trusted source and frequently targeted business leaders across a variety of industries, attempting to compromise accounts, steal information and redirect wire transfers. When the group first began carrying out this scheme, the phishing emails contained deceptive messages associated with generic business activities. For example, the malicious link in the email was titled with business terms such as “Q4 Report – Dec19,” as seen below.  

With these recent efforts, however, the phishing emails instead contained messages regarding COVID-19 as a means to exploit pandemic-related financial concerns and induce targeted victims to click on malicious links. For example, using terms such as “COVID-19 Bonus,” as seen here.

Once victims clicked on the deceptive links, they were ultimately prompted to grant access permissions to a malicious web application (web app). Web apps are familiar-looking as they are widely used in organizations to drive productivity, create efficiencies and increase security in a distributed network. Unknown to the victim, these malicious web apps were controlled by the criminals, who, with fraudulently obtained permission, could access the victim’s Microsoft Office 365 account. This scheme enabled unauthorized access without explicitly requiring the victims to directly give up their login credentials at a fake website or similar interface, as they would in a more traditional phishing campaign.

After clicking through the consent prompt for the malicious web app (pictured below), the victim unwittingly granted criminals permission to access and control the victims’ Office 365 account contents, including email, contacts, notes and material stored in the victims’ OneDrive for Business cloud storage space and corporate SharePoint document management and storage system.

Microsoft takes many measures to monitor and block malicious web apps based on telemetry indicating atypical behavior and has continued to enhance our protections based on this activity. In cases where criminals suddenly and massively scale their activity and move quickly to adapt their techniques to evade Microsoft’s built-in defensive mechanisms, additional measures such as the legal action filed in this case are necessary. This unique civil case against COVID-19-themed BEC attacks has allowed us to proactively disable key domains that are part of the criminals’ malicious infrastructure, which is a critical step in protecting our customers.

As we’ve observed, cybercriminals have been adapting their lures to take advantage of current events, using COVID-19-related themes to deceive victims. While the lures may have changed, the underlying threats remain, evolve and grow, and it’s more important than ever to remain vigilant against cyberattacks.

To further protect yourself against phishing campaigns, including BEC, we recommend, first, that you enable two-factor authentication on all business and personal email accounts. Second, learn how to spot phishing schemes and protect yourself from them. Third, enable security alerts about links and files from suspicious websites and carefully check your email forwarding rules for any suspicious activity. Businesses can learn how to recognize and remediate these types of attacks and also take these steps to increase the security of their organizations.

Tags: business, COVID-19, cyberattacks, cybercrime, Digital Crimes Unit, Office 365, phishing