We should now adopt the “new normal” that requires maintaining physical distancing and safe hygienic practices has been established by the government. This is the effect of the COVID-19 Pandemic not only the people’s lives but also the global economy. It was started last March 17 when Philippines was placed under Enhanced Community Quarantine. Then the government recently announced new guidelines to gradually ease the lockdown and slowly open up the economy starting May 16, moving the NCR to a Modified Enhanced Community Quarantine (MECQ).  With the shift in status, still, mobility will remain limited,  particularly public transportation, due to government measures to limit the virus from further spreading.

According to an article by Moovit, the world experienced a decline in public transportation from about 70 percent to 90 percent among commuters from January to April this year.

Another study also said that the greatest risk for a person to get ill is exposure to mass gatherings, particularly public transportation, because of exposure to crowds or contact with surfaces touched by people such as handrails and door handles.

This reinforces the importance of not only physical distancing but minimized travel aside from staying at home. So when you can finally go out, it will be important to consider more clever ways of commuting. One such way will be investing in motorcycles as a means of solo transportation.

Motorcycles can become a reliable and convenient mode of transportation, especially during these trying times that commuters need to remain safe from crowds along with the added protection of full-face helmets and face masks.

Honda Philippines, Inc. (HPI), the No. 1 Motorcycle Manufacturer in the Philippines joins the country as it works to meet the challenges posed by the global health crisis through promoting physical distancing and providing a safe and convenient mode of mobility.

“This pandemic is expected to remain with us throughout the year. So, we must ensure the safety of Filipinos by providing the possible transportation solutions that will allow mobility at a reasonable price, yet keep them safe. It brings us great fulfillment that our motorcycles are of great importance especially during these days, bringing safety for people against the dangerous virus,”  said Susumu Mitsuishi, President of of HPI.

The array of cutting-edge motorcycles busy on the streets, such as the Honda BeAT, Genio, CLICK, and the PCX150 is an indication that Honda’s AT bikes are becoming predominant.

This signifies that the company has been true to its “ONE DREAM” campaign, which is helping fulfill people’s dreams while experiencing the joy of mobility. And in today’s reality, provide a safer way for people staying home to still access badly needed necessities and return to work for their living.

There is a lot more to explore from Honda’s wide array of motorcycles. For more details about Honda products and promos, visit us at our website www.hondaph.com and follow our Facebook page, Honda Philippines, Inc. and Instagram, @hondaph_mc

Outlook

During Modified Enhanced Community Quarantine (MECQ) Metro Manila goers are eager to once again visit their favorite restaurants and shop in their favorite stores. However, with the strong concern regarding everyone’s health and safety, Ortigas Malls wants to reassure each and every mall-goer that their well-being is always the top priority as the company rolls out new measures and guidelines that are effective starting May 16, 2020.

Before going to Greenhills, Tiendesitas, Estancia, and Industria, here are the three things to take note:

1. Re-opening our doors for you

Ortigas Malls hours from 11AM to 7PM and their happy to welcome back their guests with their favorite retail stores and restaurants. Their also focused on ensuring everyone’s safety and those vulnerable will not be allowed entry. Those who appear sickly, or with a body temperature above 37.5 and those without a mask will also not be able to enter the malls.

2. Sanitation and 2M Rule on Social Distancing

As you enter the mall, you would have stepped on the sanitized foot mat then your temperature will be checked. All guests must disinfect with alcohol and wear their mask at all times. Ortigas Malls also keeps the highest standard of cleanliness applied throughout every mall, with elevators, escalators, restrooms and other key areas sanitized every 30 minutes. Handwashing guidelines are also placed in all restrooms.

In order to maintain minimal physical contact among mall customers, each store has their own signages reflecting how many customers they can accommodate at any given time. Elevators will also strictly allow only 50% of the normal capacity while for escalator use, a 3-step gap is encouraged.

Escalator and elevators guidelines will also be on signages before entering to limit the number of passengers. Roving mall guards will also be present to help remind customers of the social distancing protocols.

Most importantly, everyone is advised to maintain a social distancing of 2 meters.

3. Click & Collect (C&C) Service

Ortigas Malls is still continuing its Click & Collect (C&C) Service that provides a designated pick-up area for customers who make purchases online from mall tenants. There will also be  designated parking areas for online delivery platforms.

Ortigas Malls would like everyone to feel safe and comfortable within their premises. With all these measures in place, Ortigas Malls is confident that it can safely welcome back its loyal clients and assure them of a secure and efficient visit. For more information you may check their official Facebook pages – Estancia, Tiendesitas, Industria.

Over the past few months, educational institutions around the world – from elementary schools to colleges and universities – have been forced to embrace distance learning. It’s now estimated that 70% of students are currently doing some form of online education.

For many of these institutions, this digital transformation to distance learning was thrust upon them—regardless of whether they were ready or not. Schools are scrambling to not only build the content for their courses but also to build the distance learning infrastructure needed to ensure all of their faculty and students have remote access to this content. The challenge they face is how to do this at scale and do it securely?

Unfortunately, malicious actors and cybercriminals are fully aware that for many organizations, these are uncharted waters. Educational institutions have long been a target by adversaries. According to the 2019 Verizon Data Breach Report, education continues to be plagued by human errors, social engineering, and denial of service attacks. And these changes only compound these challenges.

The movement to distance learning has created additional risk for institutions and created potential opportunities for the adversary. These criminals are more motivated than ever to steal financial information, intellectual property, or simply be disruptive.

Securing the Learning Environment

There are several simple steps every educational institution needs to consider implementing if they desire to set up and maintain an effective distance learning environment while keeping their cyber adversaries at bay. These include:

• Provide Strong Authentication: With advancements in hardware processing power, cracking passwords can be done in a matter of seconds. Which is part of the reason why there is a ton of stolen credentials for sale on the dark web, with more being added every day. It is essential, therefore, to enforce strong password policies (i.e., complexity, length, and expiration), enforce account lockout after failed attempts to prevent password guessing, and leverage multi-factor authentication where possible to prevent the misuse of stolen passwords.
• Protect Web Applications: Next to stealing credentials, exploiting vulnerabilities in applications is the easiest way for an attacker to breach your network. You must scan external sites for security flaws such as cross-site scripting errors and SQL injections. And it’s equally important to encrypt the traffic between your learning systems and your users, whether faculty, students, or administrators, so information can’t be stolen in transit. In addition, deploying a web application firewall (WAF) can protect web application servers and the infrastructure from attacks and breaches originating from the Internet and external networks.
• Leverage Network Segmentation: Another way to secure your environment is to segment your internet-facing teaching applications from your other internal applications, such as your HR system. This way, if a breach or malware outbreak were to occur, the scope of impact will be limited.
• Manage 3^rd Party Risk: The third-party technologies that you use in your online learning environments can pose additional vulnerabilities and risk to your enterprise network. Whether it’s your learning management system or teleconferencing tools, regardless of whether they are hosted in the cloud or on-premise, you need to ensure you perform a thorough security assessment of the vendor and their products before introducing them into your network environment.
• Monitor for Malicious or Unusual Activities: Organizations new to implementing distant learning will see a significant increase in devices and external network traffic connecting to their networks. The security staff needs to be aware of any unusual login attempts, unexplainable large data transfers, or other behaviors that seem out of the norm.

Knowledge is Power in Protecting against Adversaries

Similar to how we teach our kids to learn and memorize basic math facts to tackle more complicated math problems, we need to ensure that faculty, students, and staff understand the cybersecurity basics to ensure they remain safe. No online course is complete without having some form of cybersecurity education on the syllabus.

At a minimum, faculty, students, and staff should know how to:

• Protect Their Passwords: Ensure individuals use strong passwords that are not obvious, like your birthday, or default passwords provided with devices. Never use the same password on multiple accounts and devices. And never share a password with anyone – even individuals claiming to be on the IT team.
• Keep Their Devices Up To Date: Make sure devices and applications are updated with patches, and that any antivirus/malware software is current and operational.
• Spot Social Engineering Attempts: Everyone should be taught how to spot attempts to steal personal and proprietary information vial email (phishing), texting (smishing), and phone (vishing).
• Be Wary of Public Networks: Many public places, such as cafes, hotels, and airports, offer free internet connections to jump online easily. However, while they are convenient, they may not be secured. In addition, cybercriminals will often spoof these sorts of networks. So it’s essential to check with the establishment to ensure the network is legitimate, and when possible, use a VPN connection to access or transmit data. To that end, it is essential that any distance learning tools – both the front end used by students and the back end used by teachers – support SSL VPN and strong authentication.

As we engage in distance learning, we need to ensure that we practice cyber distancing to protect ourselves from the adversary. Taking control by following these standard security practices is one of the best ways to effectively move us securely into this new distance learning norm.

To ensure the health of customers and employees, the Araneta City management will continue the regular sanitation and disinfection of all interior and exterior establishments within its premises, as shown in this photo.

Several malls in Metro Manila like the management of Araneta City has announced the reopening of its  three malls- Gateway Mall, Ali Mall and Farmers Plaza-  starting Wednesday, May 20. The customers/shoppers will experience differently as the malls implement rules to ensure their safety and in accordance with the resumption under the modified enhanced community quarantine (MECQ) regulations set up by the Covid-19 Inter Agency Task Force (IATF).

Here are their rules and regulations for the safety measures of customers and employees that established Covid-19 such as:

1. “no face mask, no entry”
2. the requirement of presenting a quarantine pass or authorized company ID upon entry
3. temperature checks at entrances
4. minimum one meter social distancing
5. two steps between persons on escalators
6. limited elevator capacity
7. for pregnant women, the elderly, and PWDs, they may be accompanied by one person when visiting any of the malls of Araneta City

Other measures that have already been in place at Araneta City since the declaration of enhanced community quarantine will continue to be implemented such as the placement of disinfectant-soaked foot baths and alcohol dispensers at entrances, hand sanitizers and alcohol dispensers located in concierge, booths, and restrooms, and floor markings for social distancing. Regular sanitation and disinfection of interiors and exteriors of Araneta City establishments will also be maintained.

In the photo, floor marks indicating where elevator riders should stand are seen as a worker disinfects the elevator’s surfaces. The Araneta City management urges customers and employees to follow social distancing protocols to ensure a safe and healthy environment for everyone.

Food and other service establishments are mandated to follow workplace safety guidelines promulgated by the Department of Health and the Department of Labor and Employment to ensure the safety of customers and service providers.

“We welcome back our customers and employees to Araneta City. Your safety and well-being is always our top priority, which is why we will continue to implement social distancing and enhanced personal hygiene protocols,” said Antonio Mardo, Senior Vice President for Operations of Araneta City.

Sanitation is essential in combating COVID-19. Knowing this, the Araneta City management will continue to sanitize and disinfect all of its spaces, especially those that are frequented by customers such as washrooms.

For the information of the general public, safety guidelines such as advisories and infographics will be posted in prominent areas in the malls, especially at entrances, parking and smoking areas, escalators, elevators, and restrooms.

Mall hours will be from 11 AM to 7PM and only non-leisure stores and establishments will open as per the guidance set by the IATF. A complete list of open stores and establishments is available on facebook.com/AranetaCity.