COVID-19 dominated the top security clearance headlines of the past week, including a number of articles related to navigating remote work for the first time or tips for those navigating the transition from classified work to unclassified telework.

1. Top Secret Telework. Each day brings new headlines about how remote work is rolling out across the federal workforce and across the country. And that’s not without challenges – we have dozens of articles about telework up on the site, from navigating telework with kids, to how managers can create a battle plan to make telework successful.

2. Employee retention and the cleared workforce. Last week, Sen. Mark Warner reached out to the intel community for reassurances that coronavirus related financial issues wouldn’t impact security clearances (spoiler: they won’t). The Intelligence and National Security Alliance also reached out to the heads of several government agencies, looking for reassurances that contract vehicles would be adequately adjusted to ensure cleared contractors don’t suffer financial implications for not being able to send their employees to work on a client site.

3. Watch what you do on that government laptop. While there is legitimate concern about security cleared professionals experiencing financial issues in the wake of the coronavirus, there is another very real concern – misuse of IT systems. One of the adjudicative criteria used to deny or revoke security clearance eligibility is ‘misuse of IT systems‘ – and with thousands of new remote workers suddenly working from home with government technology they may or may not be adequately trained on, there could be some very real, direct implications for employees who get into trouble on their government laptop. Previously, professionals have lost their security clearances for moonlighting on the government’s time or watching pornography from a government computer – have extra time on your hands because your boss hasn’t created a good telework game plan? Don’t be dumb enough to turn that idle time into a reason to revoke your clearance.

Tune in next week for more top security clearance headlines.