13.05.2020

COVID-19, the impact of 8 weeks of coronavirus lockdown

Corporate

With the gradual ease of coronavirus restrictions in Luxembourg, the Restena Foundation summarized the last 8 weeks marked by the COVID-19 pandemic.

When on Monday 11 May 2020, students and teachers of secondary education, vocational training, as well as the Advanced Technician's Certificate (Brevet de Technicien Supérieur – BTS) have returned to school, and as coronavirus lockdown is gradually lifting, the Restena Foundation looks back on 8 highlights of the last 8 weeks marked by the COVID-19 pandemic:

  • Two adaptations of services have been put in place, a data hygiene process for the e-mail service as well as a domain name non-expiration policy effective till mid-June 2020.
  • 100% of the telecommunication infrastructures specific to the research and education network, the DNS infrastructureand the LU-CIX Internet traffic exchange platform, as well as the continuity of services have been guaranteed by both technical and administrative teams of the Restena Foundation, with, in particular, the helpdesk activities.
  • +20 to 25% connections to the e-mail servers and e-mail traffic were both generated by the more than 25,000 Luxembourg professionals, especially teachers, using the e-mail hosting service of the Restena Foundation.
  • 1,311 .lu domain names were registered in the national .lu registry during April 2020. This figure is stable despite the health situation and confirms the ongoing need of reliable internet identifiers. 
  • The schouldoheem.lu platform, launched at the beginning of the lockdown, is hosted on the servers of the Restena Foundation. Managed by the Service de Coordination de la Recherche et de l'Innovation pédagogiques et technologiques (SCRIPT), this site provides teachers, students and their parents with educational resources and materials specifically targeted at homeschooling.
  • 33 institutions subscribing to the TCS certificate service migrated from DigiCert's to Sectigo's certificate management system during the lockdown. Fortunately, as timing could not be changed, the migration took place smoothly thanks to the cooperation of all stakeholders.
  • -82 % of national roaming was observed on the eduroam Wi-FI network in April 2020 compared to April 2019, confirming the decrease in mobility and travel on Luxembourg territory. 
  • A spam campaign exploiting COVID-19 was reported by users of @education.lu accounts to the Computer Security Incident Response Team (CSIRT), which also experienced an increase in reports.