Google said it would restrict the federal government’s access to its trove of location data from users and would not share such data within the industry as it looks for ways to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus, The Hill reported Wednesday.

The company said in a statement Tuesday that it would not share "aggregate anonymized location data for this purpose as we are still assessing the best way to help.”

The U.S. government is in talks with technology companies and health professionals about possible ways to glean insights from smartphone location data to combat COVID-19.

Jothi Dugar, chief information security officer of the National Institutes of Health’s Center for Information Technology, said the NIH’s Optimize IT Security program reflects the “people-centric approach” the agency is taking to address cybersecurity concerns, Federal News Network reported Wednesday.

“We’re looking at people through the Optimize program as our biggest assets,” Dugar told the network in an interview. “Because why are we focused on cybersecurity anyway? It’s to protect our people, our science and the data.”

The Optimize IT Security program is one of the eight initiatives introduced throughout the Department of Health and Human Services in an effort to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of operations. It seeks to empower staff to identify phishing emails and other malicious behavior and report such activities to cyber officials.

The initiative also aims to reassess cybersecurity training from the perspective of employees. “We’re trying to change the culture to engage our employees [and] all of these different stakeholder groups, not just our IT department, and really communicate with them,” Dugar added.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology has provided security measures that organizations may use when conducting virtual meetings.

NIST advises organizations to frequently change access codes, use one-time passwords or multifactor authentication and monitor attendees for virtual meetings, Jeff Greene, National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence director, said in a blog post published Wednesday.

The agency also recommends hosts to not record meetings unless necessary and disable unneeded features. Hosts may also seek input from security information for virtual meetings that involve sensitive content.

Meetings that require recordings may use encryption as an added layer of protection, Greene noted.

Organizations are adopting telework and virtual business approaches amid the coronavirus outbreak.

Sean Connelly, program manager for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s Trusted Internet Connection initiative, said the agency has conducted pilot projects ahead of the TIC 3.0 policy’s rollout, Federal News Network reported Tuesday.

Connelly told the publication that CISA collaborated with working groups, vendors and cloud service providers to help inform the agency's plans to establish “trust zones” in government network infrastructures.

He noted that the TIC 3.0 pilot efforts are currently focused on infrastructure-based services and potential alternatives that support the zero-trust concept.

“Ideally we want to shrink that trust zone down to be as small as possible to focus on the application, to focus on identity user,” said Connelly. “But with the pilots we have right now is more focused on a larger spectrum of networks and systems.”

CISA’s TIC subcommittee plans to launch more pilots and seek proposals from agencies focused on the development of architecture risk strategies.