Have you been caught out by a pesky message from an unknown email address claiming you have Covid-19 and need to buy a vaccine? Or perhaps you’ve received one asking for details of your vaccine passport from someone masquerading as the Ministry of Health? Maybe you’re unsure of the security aspects involved in NZ Covid related technology, or are struggling to figure out who sees your data and when?
As New Zealand adapts to living with Covid-19, they are also having to deal with an increasing number of life-altering technologies, all of which have a substantial risk of creating cybersecurity issues for the public. Not only this, but New Zealanders are sharing their personal data at a rate like never before, and a lot of the time have no idea where it’s going and who has access to it.
While many parties involved in the creation of these applications and tools (including the NZ Government) maintain the strictest security protocols and standards, there will always be gaps for threat actors to exploit, and using Covid-19 related lore is a common entry point to do this. Generally, security and privacy are of the utmost importance when creating these tools, but it is up to users to make sure they know how to further protect themselves by fully understanding the dangers and systems in place to prevent them.
On the whole, Covid technology cybersecurity risks generally come under two categories, either app or device-related concerns to do with data security or scams and…
