According to a blog post from cybersecurity firm Avast, a “silver lining” from the health emergency could be a long-term improvement in organizations’ cyber hygiene. That could include more use of cutting-edge security tools and services, more adoption of cybersecurity best practices and closer observance of the full spirit of existing data security laws.

The shift to remote work during the pandemic-related lockdown has raised individual employees’ awareness of cybersecurity best practices, the blog post notes. Coming out of the crisis, each person may wash their hands more assiduously than in the past. Perhaps people will also exercise such good cyber hygiene as using a password manager and encrypted browser, or taking care on social media and before clicking on email links and attachments.

Another question is whether the cybersecurity industry alliances forged during the pandemic will endure in the years that follow. One such group is the COVID-19 CTI League, which has almost 400 volunteers in more than 40 countries aimed at stamping out scammers linked to the coronavirus, as Reuters reports. More recently, another coalition called the Cyber Alliance to Defend our Healthcare has reached agreements with 87 hospitals and four national healthcare services in Europe, as The Washington Post reports.

The Cyber Threat Alliance, founded in 2017, is also working to combat COVID-19 hackers. CTA President Michael Daniel told Krebs on Security that he considers it important to keep up the various partnerships taking place among industry groups and government agencies.’

“Information sharing is easy to talk about, and hard to do in practice,” Daniel is quoted as saying. “I don’t use the term ‘public-private partnership’ because it’s been bandied about so much over the years that I don’t know what it means anymore. It’s probably best described as ‘working together on an operation.’”