East River Electric 2020 Annual Report

Administrative Support Specialist Anne Hall
joined a Teams call held by Chief Operations
Officer Mark Hoffman during the COVID-19
pandemic. Teams became a critical employee
communication channel during the pandemic.
projects, East River was successful in transitioning
staff to work remotely with no downtime.”
Member systems that were already enrolled in East
River’s IT and Cyber Services program were also fully
ready to convert traditional office staff to remote
work. Additionally, our IT Division developed a plan to
help co-ops that were not already part of the program
transition staff to remote work.
Hackers used the pandemic as an opportunity to send
an increased amount of phishing scam emails and
other hacking attempts. Additionally, while connecting
home computers to a corporate network can make
remote work possible, it also increases organizational
cybersecurity risks. Our IT and cybersecurity teams
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were prepared for the enhanced hacking risks through
our monitoring and alert practices that were already
in place.
Beyond remaining diligent in protecting our
infrastructure against cybersecurity threats, our IT
Division was also instrumental in rolling out a new
communications channel to help our employees
communicate and collaborate during the pandemic.
Our employees relied heavily on the newly
implemented Microsoft Teams platform to send text
chats and also to host team video calls.
“Microsoft Teams has been a great tool for our staff
to safely communicate with colleagues during the
pandemic,” said Boyko. “There’s a lot of value in being