The arrival of COVID has forced many companies to figure out new ways of working, and to accepting the idea of allowing, where feasible, employees to work from home. These new alternative work arrangements may yield substantial sustainability, cost saving and productivity benefits, but also expose of corporate confidential information to new threats. In this context, adopting increased security habits becomes more important than ever.

Many people are taking advantage of their time in quarantine to brush up on their knowledge, and massive online open courses (MOOCs) provide a good alternative. In this article, we describe the major platforms for online education and what they have on offer, both for professional development as well as purely for the fun of learning.

Artificial intelligence is contributing to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. Projects directly related to pharmacology, medical and hospital care, or mobility analysis to reduce contagion have found a crucial ally in data science to make progress and deliver results.

BBVA is partnering with the IMDEA Software Institute, which belongs to a network of international research centers in Madrid, on the development of advanced cryptographic techniques. This technology is key to the creation of data-based digital solutions that protect the privacy and security of users’ data.

With millions of people teleworking and communicating with each other online during the coronavirus crisis, email has become of the main tools for both professional and personal purposes. Now more than ever before, it is important to learn to detect cyber attacks that come in the form of emails, and follow the recommendations to protect ourselves from them.

Children and young people are particularly susceptible to the risks of the Internet. These risks are even more pronounced as the coronavirus imposes social distancing, causing our children to spend more of their day online than normal. Here are some suggestions that will help keep children safe when they are on social media.

Cybercriminals are taking advantage of COVID-19 and the new reality it has imposed: telecommuting hitting peak levels and huge amounts of information — and misinformation — circulating the Internet. Scammers are ramping up their activities as they try to maximize ill-gotten gains. We explain how these organized groups work, what attacks are the most common, and what we can do to protect ourselves.

To continue collaborating with the ‘fintech’ ecosystem and keep in touch with startups during the quarantine period, BBVA Open Innovation teams from all over the world joined together to host the InnovaHome Festival, a series of virtual events on entrepreneurship and innovation that enable us to continue providing value to entrepreneurs while the crisis lasts.

More than 700 people have responded to BBVA Next Technology’s invitation to participate in Tech4Change. The initiative is grounded in a spirit of solidarity and seeks collaborators who want to contribute to the development of two technological solutions, both of which have been conceived by BBVA employees with the goal of helping small businesses weather the COVID-19 crisis. Over the coming weeks, the assembled teams will work together on two solutions: a platform that allows small businesses to manage orders from home and an application that cuts down on customer traffic in establishments that provide essential goods or services.

Since the start of the COVID outbreak, a plethora of mobile data collection applications have been developed to help users to report their symptoms and track the disease. In countries like South Korea these 'apps' have gone even further and provide authorities with the ability to alert users when they’ve been in direct contact with a confirmed positive case. In this article we take a look at how these applications work, what they are for and how they handle user information.