This paper is in the following e-collection/theme issue:

TTRN CPH 2022: "Digital Health beyond COVID-19: Lessons Learned" (37)

Published on in Vol 9 (2023)

Preprints (earlier versions) of this paper are available at https://preprints.jmir.org/preprint/41724, first published .
A Survey of Internet Performance During COVID-19

A Survey of Internet Performance During COVID-19

A Survey of Internet Performance During COVID-19

Authors of this article:

Lars Dittmann1 Author Orcid Image
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    Abstract

    Department of Electrical and Photonics Engineering, Technical University of Denmark, Kongens Lyngby, Denmark

    Corresponding Author:

    Lars Dittmann, BSc, MSc, PhD

    Department of Electrical and Photonics Engineering

    Technical University of Denmark

    Oersteds Plads, 343, 222

    Kongens Lyngby, DK-2800

    Denmark

    Phone: 45 45253851

    Email: ld@com.dtu.dk


    Background: Since the beginning of 2020, many societal systems have been used to extend the health care system, which were not planned for, and as such, there is concern for its collapse. Clearly, the collapse of the health care system, primarily hospitals, has been a key concern, and many initiatives, including lockdown and curfew, were taken to avoid such a collapse. The internet was the key platform used to enable people to work from home, provide remote teaching, conduct meetings on the web, etc. However, when it comes to data communication and processing, the risk of collapse is not the only risk, and maybe not even the biggest one. Many systems were not properly adapted for used in such a hurry, which did not allow time (and concern) for a proper risk and privacy assessment.

    Objective: This paper presents internet performance statistics and analyzes how this knowledge can be used in future designs of internet-based telemedical solutions.

    Methods: Statistics regarding traffic increases and security attacks on the internet during 2020 and 2021 were analyzed.

    Results: The internet did not collapse during the COVID pandemic—as many people had predicted. However, the massive use of the internet, in new innovative ways, created a number of new opportunities for cybersecurity breach. Especially, the use videoconferences enabled made-in-middle attacks, phishing, and other classical breaches in new ways due to insufficient authentication and content encryption.

    Conclusions: Even though a large amount of experience has been gathered with respect to scaling eHealth systems, a minimum amount of improvement with respect to privacy and security has been identified.

    Conflicts of Interest: None declared.

    iproc 2023;9:e41724

    doi:10.2196/41724

    Keywords

    internet; security; eHealth; COVID-19 

    Edited by B Dinesen; This is a non–peer-reviewed article. submitted 05.08.22; accepted 19.06.23; published 27.06.23.

    Copyright

    ©Lars Dittmann. Originally published in Iproceedings (https://www.iproc.org), 27.06.2023.

    This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in Iproceedings, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on https://www.iproc.org/, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.