Q 250. What is "herd immunity"? How does the concept of "herd immunity" apply to online security? Where else is this concept applicable in business?

 

 

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-       Herd immunity in medical world means overall protection of community, when a substantial proportion of people are immunized or vaccinated against a particular pathogen. Herd immunity acts an important line of defense against the spread of infectious diseases. It protects unprotected individual  from  infections.

-       System patches in IT, act equivalent to that of vaccines in medical field. As we can not vaccinate each and every individual  due to poor compliance, poor socioeconomic status etc, similarly we can not secure all the systems due to economical constraints, technical and operational issues. e.g-legacy systems in financial and transport sectors, few of the diagnostic equipments in healthcare sector. Network connectivity is now required in all the systems, even for specialized and legacy systems, which are not designed accordingly. Patching or frequently applying software updates, may deter the operations, while not doing so, may jeopardize the security of system. Raising awareness about the cybercrime to employers and employees and  installing  security measures, helps in enhancing  overall online security and  confers a  herd immunity. So for unprotected systems,  apart from active monitoring, herd immunity can play a crucial role in securing the sytems. These systems, should be made to interact with patched systems only, so that spread of  malicious code is curtailed and protection is conferred to all the systems.

-        In business world, by  use of  strong encryption , anonymized browsing and security software,  hacker and government surveillance can be averted. So it will prevent from gaining access to datasets including customer profile, transactions, which can be used for targeting by peers and other companies such as advertisers, insurance companies etc.. If a large number of companies use these privacy tools, they become readily available to  other non compliant companies and their employees as well, when ever they needed  them and thus ensuring herd immunity and immunity to data invasion.

 

References:

 

-www.mcafee.com

- www.lorca.co.uk

-www.hbr.org

Herd immunity is also known as herd effect, community, population immunity and social immunity. As the name says itself about it, It is a type of protection of a large community from a contagious disease. It happens when large number of population has become immune to the infection, whether by the vaccination on large scale to protect the people who are not immune. When in a population a large number of individuals posses immunity will not contribute to transmit the disease , the chain of infection will disrupt which will slows the spread or eventually stops.

In case, any person who can not become immune from the infection, herd immunity is becomes crucial. Such people can be protected when a certain proportion of population become immune, herd immunity gradually eliminates a disease from a population. Herd immunity is natural phenomenon observed in 1930, when large number of children were has become immune to measles by large number of vaccination. Then this phenomenon also observed in 1977, when small pox was eradicated by herd immunity.

This phenomenon will also end present pandemic Corona Covid-19 contagion spread with large number of vaccination over the globe.

Concept Herd immunity also apply to businesses and online security. Biological infections and their spread are much similar to online security. Local connectivity network or IT environment is a necessity today and maintaining a stable connection with a wide network. In such environment herd immunity becomes crucial and being done by upgrading the software which may lead to disruption in connectivity or effect the functionality. Eventually decision makers prefer the functionality over security fearing the potential disruption in the functionality. Though it is not easy to patch unvaccinated systems, Herd immunity concept is used to protect the unvaccinated systems and is being used by agencies against the cyber attacks.

This concept can be applied to many areas such as

1.     Education sector – to eradicate the illiteracy from country, we have to educate a large proportion of population. Then the literate people will directly or indiractly provide education to other remaining illiterate people. 

2.     Medical Sector – to eradicate the contagious disease spread.

3.     Corruption in Society – If large number of individuals say no to corruption then eventually left over corrupted people will also turn around and corruption will be eradicated.

4.     Cyber security – If large number systems are immune to virus then the spread will be stopped or slow down.

5.     Quality management – If large number of companies follow any specific certification then it will become necessity for all companies to acquire the same certificate to get the business.

6.     New Manufacturing technology – If large number of companies adopt the new technology for manufacturing then customer will automatically start asking the suppliers without new technology to use it. 

Very good answers by Shashikant Adlakha and by Ajay Sharma. Ajay has extended the concept to several business areas like corruption, quality certification, technology usage, and to non business social areas like literacy and diseases. Ajay is a winner for this question for his broad outlook.