With the emergence of major public health issues, or crises, such as COVID-19, grant funding for research and program development will be made available from various government agencies to help with the response. Additionally, foundations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation or Ford Foundation may provide the precious funds to perform the vital work to battle the at hand issue. If fortunate, those in receipt of funding to pursue the global health issue to be addressed will often utilize technology either developed or custom created and implemented to address the critical response, or in the case of COVID-19, slow the spread or research the creation of vaccines.
Organizations that will be included in such work include non-profits, Non-Government Organizations (NGOs), multilateral or inter-governmental organizations. In the interest of being efficient and effective, organizations will rely on the use of information technology and the like, and with this comes the potential for cyber threats and cyber breaches. We have learned about and witnessed a plethora of such threat actor attacks during the pandemic, but the attacks have existed pre-pandemic as well. As these public health organizations work on solutions and response, it is essential to keep cybersecurity front and center during all phases of their efforts in order to protect patient, and trial data from being exposed, ensuring proprietary systems solutions and knowledge are not compromised, and interfere with system operations.