Securing the Enterprise When Employees are Remote

Saw a number of variants of this as I worked from home during COVID.  Good thoughts

Securing the Enterprise When Employees are Remote,  By Keith Kirkpatrick

Commissioned by CACM Staff, September 29, 2022

Permitting workers to split their time between their home and office can improve job satisfaction and, in some cases, productivity. However, hybrid work arrangements can introduce additional layers of complexity and risk to an organization's technology systems and data. As such, IT departments need to consider several security technologies, processes, and policies to guard against cybersecurity threats that can be more easily exploited by workers that are on the go, or are working in unsecure environments.

For starters, security experts interviewed for this article highlight the importance of insisting that hybrid workers utilize virtual private networks (VPNs), which allow a direct, secure connection between their device and a corporate system, as well as virtual desktops (which ensures all activity and data remain within a corporate, secure environment) when accessing company inormation offsite.

IT leaders also must reinforce to hybrid workers that the most basic strategies used to mitigate security risks within a traditional enterprise environment are still relevant, no matter where a worker may be physically located, or what type of device is being used to access network resources.

"Before purchasing the newest endpoint protection software or cloud-based identity solution to help secure assets and connectivity, leadership should instead begin by authoring policy and standards that support the both the organization's remote work strategy and the overall business strategy," says Jon Anderson, manager of Schellman & Co., a global cybersecurity assessor. "The policy and standards should include language which clearly defines expectations regarding the physical security of the remote work environment, rules for the use of corporate equipment, security considerations for working from public locations, remote network access requirements, employee bring-your-own-device responsibilities, and incident reporting guidelines."

Steve Tcherchian, chief information security officer and chief product officer at cybersecurity solutions company XYPRO, says that if a worker is permitted to use their personal devices, such as laptops or smartphones to access any company resources or networks, children, spouses, or others in the household should not have any access to these devices, given the possibility that malware or viruses could've ben inadvertently downloaded. Says Tcherchian, "You don't want a game or app your kids downloaded three months ago to be the reason your company's network is now compromised."

For hybrid workers, providing them with ongoing training in short bursts may be the key to establishing good cybersecurity practices that become second nature, even when the user is not under the watchful eye of the onsite IT team, explains Rahul Mahna, managing director at EisnerAmper's Outsourced IT Services team. "We don't have a one- or two-hour cybersecurity training, like some firms do," Mahna says, noting that EisnerAmper will conduct phishing tests every quarter, and then if a worker fails a random phishing test, they're immediately prompted with a two-to five-minute video to teach them what they did wrong. "We found a really high [information] retention rate and level of understanding with those learning 'snacks,' versus making them sit down for a couple of hours of extended cybersecurity training."

Security experts say organizations need to take a risk-based approach to security, which can involve three key strategies: zero trust, validating users rather than devices, and monitoring data and nework access patterns for anomalies.

"Employees will be connecting from everywhere," says Murat Kantarcioglu, a professor of computer science at The University of Texas at Dallas and director of the Data Security and Privacy Lab at UT Dallas. "And this requires the use of a zero-trust architecture, where you don't trust anyone or anything."

A zero-trust security architecture requires all users, whether in or outside the organization's network, to be authenticated, authorized, and continuously validated before being granted or keeping access to applications and data. Many organizations have adopted the NIST 800-207 standard, which recommends specific authentication and authorization functions that must be performed before granting access to a specific resource, and was initiated in response to the growing use of distributed network assets, remote users, and bring-your-own-device policies which gained popularity during the pandemic.

Organizations have used some sort of multi-factor authentication to control access to a company resource. This authentication works on the principal of so-called trusted devices, which presumes that the recipient of the code is also the owner of the device it was sent to. A typical process involves a user entering a login credential, and then, a second verification code is sent either via an SMS message, or through an authentication app on a second device. The user must then enter that code to gain access to the requested asset or network.

However, criminals and scammers have tricked some users into sharing the access codes, often by calling users and pretending to be a legitimate organization such as the post office, bank or even an IT professional from a company, and asking for the code that was just delivered to your phone by text or email. That's why some companies are moving to a security concept known as identity access management, where individuals, rather than devices, are consistently verified and authenticated.

Through the ubiquity of cellphone cameras and facial recognition techniques, users can be authenticated and verified each time they need to access a sensitive application or system. One such system is offered by Nametag, which employs the use of AI to scan a user's government-issued identification to ensure its legitimacy, and establish a person's identity. Then, a user shares a photo of themselves so it can be matched to the photo on their government-issued credential using AI, which compares the specific, non-changing features on a person's face, such as the distance between their pupils, across the two images to ensure confidence in the match. ... ' 

Deep Fake Job Seekers

Note how remote working can aid this.

Deepfakes Are Interviewing For Tech Jobs  in Extremetech

By Adrianna Nine on July 5, 2022

The tech industry has been rife with recruiting issues in recent years, from post-interview ghosting to bait-and-switch tactics affecting both sides of a job offer. But now the FBI is warning tech companies to look out for an unexpected challenge: deepfake interviewees. 

Bad actors are impersonating other people via deepfakes to weasel their way into remote work positions, according to the agency’s latest public service announcement. The wrongdoer starts by gathering enough of their target’s personal information to convincingly apply to jobs as that person. Then they acquire a few high-quality photos of the person, either through theft or a bit of casual online sleuthing. When interview time rolls around, the bad actor uses the photos (and sometimes voice spoofing) to create and deploy a deepfake, which often passes for the target in a video medium.   ... ' 

Looking at the Current stats of Remote Work

 Good look at US remote work stats.

92 million US workers now have the opportunity to work remotely: survey

58 percent can work from home at least part-time, 35 percent full-time

By Thomas Ricker@Trixxy in theVerge

58 percent of US workers now have the option to work where they want at least one day a week, while 35 percent can work remotely up to five days a week, according to a new survey conducted by management consulting company McKinsey. The report concludes that flexible work arrangements implemented in response to the COVID-19 pandemic are here to stay.

“After more than two years of observing remote work and predicting that flexible working would endure after the acute phases of the COVID-19 pandemic, we view these data as a confirmation that there has been a major shift in the working world and in society itself,” reads the report.

The survey found that when given the choice, 87 percent of workers embrace the opportunity to work remotely and spend an average of three days a week at home. That means 92 million American workers have the opportunity to work remotely and 80 million are currently doing so at least part time, when the survey data is extrapolated to the entire US population. 41 percent of those surveyed say they don’t have any option to work remotely.  .... ' 

Can Remote Management Succeed, Innovate, Grow?

 A debate.

How can companies with remote workforces innovate and grow? The question has been dividing business leaders. James Heskett considers both sides of the debate.  in HBSwk

Despite reams of material written about remote work in recent months, we know very little about the impact of remote management on performance. Perhaps it’s too soon. Until we can assess longer-term performance under home office and remote management, we can’t be sure of the impact.

Nevertheless, leaders have to make decisions about reassembling a management team in an office without full evidence. Greg D. Carmichael, CEO and chairman of Fifth Third Bancorp in Cincinnati, is one, according to a recent Wall Street Journal report. In calling all of Fifth Third’s employees back to the office he remarked that, “We can’t be a great company working remotely … We can get the job done, but it’s tough to flourish.”

The comment refers to Fifth Third’s management core. Like many service organizations, it will continue to deliver its services through branches as well as the internet, but not through employees managing from home. Mat Ishbia, president and CEO of UWM Holdings, shares the sentiment. As he puts it in the same report, “We are better together. If you have an amazing culture, and great people that collaborate and work together, you want them in the office together.”   ... ' 

Work From Anywhere Here to Stay

Mentioned this previously, Irving Wladawsky provides more links and backgrounds.

Is Work-from-Anywhere Here to Stay?  (many links in the below are shown by clicking through)

Remote work has been around for a few decades, but took off in the mid-late 1990s with the explosive growth of the Internet.  There were predictions that the Internet would lead to the decline of cities, because technology was making location less relevant to our work and personal lives.  Why would anyone choose to live in an expensive, stressful metropolitan area and endure a long daily commute?  However, instead of declining, superstar cities continued to attract talented, ambitious knowledge workers, and to generate the greatest levels of economy activity and innovation.

But, even before the pandemic, “a movement was brewing within knowledge-work organizations,” wrote Harvard professor Prithwiray (Raj) Choudhury in a recent Harvard Business Review article, Our Work-from-Anywhere Future.  “Personal technology and digital connectivity had advanced so far and so fast that people had begun to ask, ‘Do we really need to be together, in an office, to do our work?’”

Videogames as the Future of Work

Something we examined briefly.  Can we convert work into game?   Some people already do in their heads, is that workable?  Key drivers?

Are Videogames the Future of Remote Work?

The Wall Street Journal

Christopher Mims

The startup Gather offers a videogame-like format for remote work, supporting virtual two-dimensional workspaces for enterprise clients. Gather's servers provide an artificial office environment for remote employees' avatars, including interaction via videoconferencing interfaces and collaboration on Web-based documents and applications. Nearly a dozen startups like Gather are building clientele that includes workers at ride-sharing company Uber, universities, and IBM; customers use these platforms to hold classes and events, and increasingly as an all-day replacement for office work. The builders and users of these platforms claim they activate place cells in users’ brains, enabling socialization and collaboration based on routines acquired from physical office experience. ... '

Transmitting Holograms for Remote Experience

Do we need a hologram machine in every home?  For telemedicine and work?   Replacing our zoom stadia?   So we might have crowds of realistic holograms in situ?  Is it necessary, and what is really necessary at all anymore?  Now much improved,  since seeing them first at Disneyworld.  Would be impressive, am in for the idea.

PORTL Hologram raises $3M to put a hologram machine in every home  By Jonathan Shieber@jshieber in TechCruch

What does a hologram-obsessed entrepreneur do for a second act after setting up a virtual Ronald Reagan in the Reagan Memorial Library, or beaming Jimmy Kimmel all the way from Hollywood to the Country Music Awards in Nashville?

If that entrepreneur is David Nussbaum, the founder of PORTL Hologram, the next logical step is to build a machine that can bring the joy of hologram-based communication to the masses.

That’s the goal thanks to a new $3 million round that Nussbaum’s company raised from famed venture investor Tim Draper,  former Electronic Arts executive Doug Barry and longtime awards-show producer Joe Lewis.

Barry is not only backing the company, he’s also coming on board as its first chief operating officer.

Much of this interest can be traced back to the hologram performance given posthumously by Tupac Shakur back at Coachella about eight years ago.

Nussbaum turned the excitement generated by that event into a business. He bought the patents that powered Tupac’s beyond-the-grave performance, and used the technology to beam Julian Assange out of the Ecuadoran embassy he had been holed up in during his years in London and making dead stars live (and tour) again.

Those visual feats were basically just an updated version of the Pepper’s Ghost technique that stage illusionists and moviemakers have been using since it was invented by John Pepper in the 19th century. ... ' 

Whats Next for Remote Work

 From McKinsey:

What’s next for remote work: An analysis of 2,000 tasks, 800 jobs, and nine countries

The future of remote work is likely to be hybrid in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, mostly for a highly educated, well paid minority of the workforce.

Remote Work, Example in Film Production

New changes in remote work, an example:

The film crews being directed from a continent away  By Richard Baimbridge  Business reporter BBC 

In a production studio in Kiev, Ukraine, a film director sits in front of a computer screen and yells, "Action!"

Some 7,500 km (4,660 miles) away in Shanghai, China, his assistant relays the message to the crew filming a TV advertisement for Mercedes-Benz.

Meanwhile, in Germany, executives from the carmaker are watching on in real time.

When the world first went into lockdown back in the spring, it shut down many film productions around the globe, be it for movies, or the advertising sector. Quarantine and social distancing rules, plus airlines grinding to a halt, more often made filming impossible.

But thanks to an increased roll-out of technology, remote filming is now growing in popularity. Assorted software systems mean that only a skeleton team is required on the ground, while the director and other colleagues can be on a different continent.  ... " 

Five Nonobvious Remote Work Techniques

Very interesting piece in Queue and the Communications of the ACM, Nov 2020,  pp 108-110.  Take the problem beyond the technical and to the collaboratively social.    From experiences at Stack Overflow.  Well Worth the read.

Five Nonobvious Remote Work Techniques   001:10 .1145/3410627

Emulating the efficiency of in-person conversations   By Thomas A. Limoncelli   This article reveals five nonobvious techniques that make remote work successful at Stack Overflow.

Remote work has been part of the engineering culture at Stack Overflow since the company began. Eighty percent of the engineering department works remotely. This enables the company to hire top engineers from around the world, not just from the New York City area. (Forty percent of the company worked remotely prior to the COVID-19 lockdown; 100 percent during the lockdown.) Even employees who do not work remotely must work in ways that are remote-friendly.

For some companies, working remotely was a new thing when the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns began. At first the problems were technical: IT departments had to ramp up VPN (virtual private network) capacity, human resources and infosec departments had to adjust policies, and everyone struggled with microphones, cameras, and videoconferencing software.

Once those technical issues are resolved, the social issues become more apparent. How do you strike up a conversation as you used to do in the office? How do you know when it is appropriate to reach out to someone? How do you prevent loneliness and isolation?

Here are my top five favorite techniques Stack Overflow uses to make remote work successful on a social level.

Tip #1: If Anyone is Remote, We're All Remote

Meetings should be either 100 percent in-person, or 100 percent remote; no mixed meetings.

Ever been in a conference room with a bunch of people plus one person participating by phone or videoconference? It never works. The one remote participant can't hear the conversation, can't see what everyone else is seeing, and so on. He or she can't authentically participate.

At Stack Overflow we recognized this years ago and adopted a rule: If one person is remote, we're all remote. This means everyone who is physically present leaves the conference room, goes back to their desks, and we conduct the meeting using desktop videoconferencing.

During the COVID-19 lockdown your entire company may be remote, but this is a good policy to adopt when you return to the office.

This may not be an option for companies with open floor plans, however, where participants videoconferencing from their desks may disturb their neighbors. How can you make mixed meetings work? Where I've observed them working well required two ingredients: First, the conference-room design was meticulously refined and adjusted over time (this is rarer—and more expensive—than you would think); second, and the biggest determinant, was the degree to which all those in the meeting were aware of the remote participants. It requires a learned skill of being vigilant for clues that someone is having difficulty in participating and then taking corrective action. Everyone, not just the facilitator, needs to be mindful of this. ... "

More on Endpoint Security

More on this topic by Cisco, see the other parts of this pointed to. Note its particular relevance for remote work.

Why Endpoint Security Matters in Protecting Remote Workers – Part 2    By Pat Correia

As attack surfaces expand customers see improved visibility with AMP for Endpoints!

In part 1 of this blog series we discussed how securing your workforce on any endpoint, anywhere, at any time, is more important now than ever before, and that Cisco AMP for Endpoints plays a critical role in the new Cisco Secure Remote Worker solution that connects and protects people and devices working remotely.

In the first entry of this blog series we promised to take a more in-depth look at our customer’s thoughts on the value that AMP for Endpoints brings to their business.  As a quick recap the Top 3 business values from that Endpoint survey are:

-Better visibility – for insights and protection to stop threats from the expanding attack surface
-Better efficacy – to remediate faster and fully expose, contain and resolve threats
-Getting time back – for improved security effectiveness, eliminating complexity and enhancing security admin productivity  ... " 

Uncertain Future of Corporate HQs

Questionable, though major HQs will likely still need the presence.   My guess is that many will be threatened. 

The Uncertain Future of Corporate HQs    in HBR by Richard Florida

The Covid-19 pandemic has seen tens of millions of Americans engage in a gigantic experiment in working from home — one that looks to be more permanent than anyone might have imagined. Corporation after corporation has announced that they won’t be reopening their offices until mid-2021, at least.  Some commentators are even predicting the death of the office and the end of cities.

But let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. Now, more than ever, the issue of where we work — of place and location — remains a fundamental question.

Pandemics and other crises can disrupt or change the status quo, but history shows they can also accelerate trends already underway. The question of where to locate corporate facilities has been increasing in strategic importance for a long time. Corporations were facing a rising backlash to their perceived effects on housing prices and gentrification in superstar cities and tech hubs, and from attempts to hoard taxpayer-financed incentives   ....   '

Ivanti Panel discussion on Supporting Remote Service Work

Supporting Remote workforces for service desk applications.

Hi Franz,

2020 has been...interesting. IT teams had to do the impossible, supporting a completely remote workforce with very little notice. But they survived the craziness, finding ways to support their remote workers and create a smooth transition. Now as many offices are starting phased approaches back to the office, IT has a new to-do item on their list: figure out a way to support a hybrid workforce.  

We interviewed customers from KFC, Queensland University of Technology, and University of Southern Queensland to learn about their experience supporting a remote workforce and how they made this transition as seamless as possible. They also cover ways they kept their service desk up and running. Don't worry if you aren't on the service desk, this panel discussion covers many ways these IT departments kept afloat over the past few months. I hope this helps as you decide on the next steps for your IT team.

VIEW THE PANEL DISCUSSION
Ivanti
Dave Martinez

Senior Product Marketing Manager
www.ivanti.com

Advancing Remote Work

Microsoft continues advances for remote, multiple person conferencing

Microsoft's plan to make video calls less miserable

Ina Fried, author of Login
screenshot from a Mircrosoft ad that has people sitting in seats in a lecture hall

As the pandemic continues to reshape office work, Microsoft is adding new features to Teams that aim to make video calls more human and less exhausting, including a new "together mode" that puts all participants in a single virtual environment.

Why it matters: Millions are stuck with video conferencing as a key work tool for the next many months (and possibly longer). That creates a huge incentive for tech companies to create a better experience in a market currently dominated by Zoom. .... 

Teams' Together Mode displays the images of the user and all the other participants in a video conference against the same backdrop, ranging from a coffee bar for a couple people to an auditorium for larger gatherings of up to 49 people.

Since users are in a fixed place relative to others (rather than in one of many boxes moving around in a gallery), they can point at each other and make eye contact.
The effect is like sitting in a barber chair, seeing yourself and others in the mirror and having a conversation with them.

Under the hood, the technology draws on understandings from virtual reality applied to a traditional 2D video chat. Indeed, one of the key collaborators on Together mode is Jaron Lanier, a researcher known as the father of VR. ... "

Should Workers Accept Pay Cuts for Working Remotely?

Excerpts and analysis of a survey, more details at the link,

Should workers accept pay cuts in exchange for working remotely?  by Tom Ryan in Retailwire

A recent survey of 600 U.S. adults found 66 percent willing to take a pay cut for the flexibility of working remotely.

To what degree varied, however.

Fourteen percent would take a one to four percent cut;
Twenty-nine percent would take a five-to-14 percent cut;
Seventeen percent would take a 15-to-24 percent cut;
Seven percent would take a 25 percent or more cut;
Thirty-four percent would not take a lower salary for flexible remote work.

Microsoft Studies Remote Working

Good to see this being studied in the new context. 

Microsoft Analyzed Data on Its Newly Remote Workforce
By Harvard Business Review
July 20, 2020

Microsoft employees found new touchpoints ranging from group lunches to happy hours with themes such as "pajama day" and "meet my pet." ...

Microsoft began a study of remote work four months ago when the pandemic prompted work-from-home practices. "We wanted to study how flexible and adaptable [work] might or might not be, how collaboration and networks morph in remote settings, what agility looks like in different spaces," say members of the company's Workplace Insights, Workplace Analytics, and workplace intelligence teams.

The experiment measured how work patterns across the groups were changing, and included anonymous sentiment surveys. "We looked weekly at areas such as work-life balance and collaboration by analyzing aggregated, de-identified email, calendar, and IM metadata; comparing it with metadata from a prior time period; and inviting colleagues to share their thoughts and feelings," the researchers say.

Among their findings:

Workdays are lengthening. Employees said they were carving out pockets of personal time to care for children, grab some fresh air or exercise, and walk the dog. To accommodate these breaks, people were likely signing into work earlier and signing off later.

Meetings are getting shorter. The total time for meetings each week increased by 10% overall, and individual meetings actually shrank in duration. Workers had 22% more meetings of 30 minutes or less and 11% fewer meetings of more than one hour.  ... "

Via the HBR and ACM 

Implications of Working Without an Office

Worth while look based on a broad survey, analysis of the results, with some surprising results. 

The Implications of Working Without an Office   HBR Big Idea
HBR Big Idea
By Ethan Bernstein, Hayley Blunden, Andrew Brodsky, Wonbin Sohn, Ben Waber

In early 2020, the world began what is undoubtedly the largest work-from-home experiment in history. Now, as countries reopen but Covid-19 remains a major threat, organizations are wrestling with whether and how to have workers return to their offices. Business leaders need to be able to answer a number of questions to make these decisions. Primary among them is “What impact has working from home had on productivity and creativity?”

To help answer that question, we decided to explore how employees have fared since they began working virtually. To that end, we started surveying a diverse group of more than 600 U.S.-based white-collar employees during the second half of March and have continued to do so every two weeks since then. (This article is based on results collected through May.) Approximately half of our respondents are women, and half are men; they hail from 43 states; nearly half are married; and more than a third have children. About 40% hold management positions. We have been asking them about their job satisfaction, work engagement, perceptions of their own performance, conflicts with colleagues, stress, negative emotions, and current living situation, among other questions. (A fuller description of the survey’s participants is at the end of this article.)

In addition to the survey answers, participants provided written comments. Further, we collected data on the automatically tracked interactions (based on email and calendars) between a separate group of employees of selected organizations from both before and after they began working from home. (While that project is continuing, the interactions we examined for this article began a year before employees began working remotely and ended two months into the lockdown.) Finally, we validated our initial findings through interviews with senior leaders of other organizations who, at the request of their organizations or clients, were investigating the impact of working from home on productivity and creativity. ....'

Teams Improving Capabilities with Cortana, Stadium Seating

Teams adds group meeting features.   More competition putting together useful capabilities for group remote meetings.   Transcripts.    Like to see what kind of assistance Cortana might give,  could be just the thing to get people involved and less annoyed by the experience.   But is it too late already with Zoom and other   players in the field.  First mover is a powerful thing.    Could AI make useful suggestions regarding context of the goals of a meeting?  Or even just record specific to-do agreements as they relate to goals?

Microsoft Teams is getting AI-powered features Together Mode, Dynamic View, suggested replies, and Cortana    By Emil Protalinksi   in VentireBeat

Microsoft today announced the latest slew of features coming to Microsoft Teams for people at work and in education. This batch aims to “make virtual interactions more natural, more engaging, and ultimately, more human.” The majority of the additions are powered by AI, including Together Mode, Dynamic View, Cortana, suggested replies, and speaker attribution and translation for live captions and transcripts. Other new features include video filters, live reactions, chat bubbles, a Reflect messaging extension, Whiteboard updates, a new Tasks app, and support for more participants.... "

Axios also talks this:
Microsoft's plan to make video calls less miserable

By Ina Fried ... 

Something Missing in Remote Work?

Nice view of the very nature of remote work.  What is essential, what is a waste of time?

Remote Work is Surprisingly Productive, But For Many… Something Is Missing in Wladawsky-Bergers Blog

What If Working From Home Goes on … Forever?, asks science and technology journalist Clive Thompson in the title of his June 9 NY Times Magazine article.  “The coronavirus crisis is forcing white-collar America to reconsider nearly every aspect of office life.  Some practices now seem to be wastes of time, happily discarded; others seem to be unexpectedly crucial, and impossible to replicate online.  For workers wondering right now if they’re ever going back to the office, the most honest answer is this: Even if they do, the office might never be the same.”

A recent survey found that of the 56% of respondents employed pre-Covid-19, half were working from home, - 35% having recently switched to working from home, while another 15% were already doing so pre-Covid; 37% continued to commute to work, and 10% had been recently laid-off or furloughed.  The survey was  based on two separate national samples of US data, - one which gathered 25,000 responses in early April, and the second another 25,000 responses in early May.

Thompson’s article cites the experience of Accenture, which has around 500,000 employees in more than 200 cities in 120 countries.  Before the pandemic, no more than 10% worked remotely on any given day.  But, by the middle of March, nearly all were asked to work from home.  Employees adapted quickly, said Accenture’s CTO.  The volume of video calls went up by a factor of six while those of audio calls tripled.  Despite having to switch from face-to-face to audio and video interactions, overall productivity actually went up as measured by several metrics.    ... "

Ready to go beyond Zoom to Virtual Worlds?

Something we explored, but it was overall not very successful.  Even allowed us to construct part of the real-world operational process world to interact with.    If you are talking to a group of  plant managers, why not include the simulation of a manufacturing line that is a twin of the real thing?  Interact with virtual streams of data from the real thing? Makes some kinds of training more natural.  But now have needs changed enough to make it more reasonable?   A broader means of remote work?

Zoom Not Cutting It for You? Try Exploring a Virtual World   By Louise Matsakis  in Wired

If you’re craving more from your video chats, think outside the box. From Second Life to Online Town, there are plenty of places to gather while staying at home.

"... It’s time to think out of the Zoom box. Why not add a virtual world to your next video call? Having a place to socialize, even a digital one, can make connecting through a computer far more enjoyable—even if you think you don’t like videogames. Virtual worlds like Second Life, as well as massively multiplayer online games like World of Warcraft, have been around for decades, but the Covid-19 lockdown presents an opportunity to revisit them and to explore what we want in an online destination. “I think the new demands of the shelter-in-place orders may prompt interesting new designs for virtual spaces and also help us rethink assumptions,” says Nick Yee, the cofounder of Quantic Foundry, a gaming market research firm, and the author of The Proteus Paradox: How Online Games and Virtual Worlds Change Us—and How They Don’t. “Why do we need virtual chairs if our virtual bodies never get tired?”