As the news stories about the wide ranging devastating impacts of COVID-19 continue to dominate media headlines across the globe, we wanted to take a moment to share a positive story about one of zvelo’s partners. Our partners include some of the market’s leading network security vendors, as well as regional security providers. While they may vary in terms of size and areas of expertise, what they share is zvelo’s mission of providing a safer and more secure Internet. We have been heartened to see the network security industry’s creativity in response to the crisis and are honored to be asked to participate with partners on some of their efforts.
One such partner, The Packet Hub in South Africa, serves a market that was particularly hard-hit by the impacts of closures. They specialize in providing security to the education market. The schools they support have closed, forcing teachers and parents to quickly implement distance learning for students.
Like other areas which have gone into lockdown, this would mean an entire community of parents and kids would be managing a range of challenges that come with remote learning — and internet safety and security was top of mind for our partner. Anyone paying attention can see that the COVID-19 pandemic has become an opportunity for Malicious Cyber Actors (MCAs) to scale up their efforts. Unfortunately, unsuspecting kids can be an easy target as they often lack the basic internet safety training that is more familiar to adults.
The Packet Hub already offered parental controls and web filtering as part of their services platform. Anticipating the growing need for this service, but also aware that many would be facing financial challenges, the partner decided to create a solution that would address the need for a safe, secure internet experience for parents and kids which would be financially supported through a sponsor program. The plan offers free parental controls service to families affected by the stay-at-home policies implemented in their market for the next three months.
We are proud to support partners such as The Packet Hub who share our mission of making the internet safer and more secure through this creative and safe remote/distance learning experience for families with children and students impacted by the Covid-19 virus.
