The article below discusses Canada's role in COVID-19 vaccine and intellectual property rights. Will they be loosened to help developing countries? And, how organizations can collaborate with government and employees to tackle cybersecurity as a whole.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stated that Canada is committed to making COVID-19 vaccines available around the world and will consider waiving intellectual property rights along with vaccine makers to improve that access.
Canada, the U.S. and the European Union have been under pressure from progressive groups and the World Health Organization (WHO) to surrender IP rights as COVID-19 cases mount in some countries. U.S. President Joe Biden said this week his administration would not block efforts to loosen IP protections.
The initial IP waiver proposal included vaccines, treatments, diagnostic kits, ventilators, protective gear and other products needed to battle the pandemic.
Loosening IP protections will be opposed by some of the COVID-19 vaccine makers, who spent billions of dollars on making the vaccine and are expecting a return on their investment.
The current issue Canada is facing is the dispute between Western countries on the IP issue.
Since businesses and governments are interconnected and rely on the same network of software vendors, they expose each other to tons of cyber-risks. The recent attack on SolarWinds made it clear that handling cyberattacks is too big a job for either government or business to tackle alone which is why collaboration is needed.
Here are ways business and government can work together:
Human error in cybersecurity is inevitable, so companies need to focus on cybersecurity strategies instead of blaming employees.
Amy C. Edmondson is a behavioural scientist at the Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School, who studies leadership, teaming, and organizational said she believes a lack of psychological safety results in a "blame culture."
Edmondson coined psychological safety and defines it as: "Where blame is not apportioned, but instead every mistake is treated as a learning opportunity, mistakes ultimately improve performance by providing opportunities to find the systemic causes of failure and implement measures for improvement."
Here are ways organizations can involve employees in the security process: