Thoughts From My Inbox

September 3rd, 2021

Something About…

This blog post from Dave Kennedy at TrustedSec was written just as lockdowns hit Ohio in March of 2020.  Many workers were sent home and security for those remote workers was, in many cases, lax at best.  While offices are back up and running, the ideas around a remote (at least some of the time) work force have changed quite a bit in the past 18 months. Security has not, however, and remote workers pose a very big threat to their employers’ networks.  Here are five great suggestions for keeping your remote workers safe and your network secure.

This one is lengthy but if you like hockey or The Sopranos, it’s worth the read (and there’s even a Netflix documentary).    A garbage hauler with mafia ties bought his 17 year old son a hockey team.   They named them the Trashers, which seems appropriate for many reasons.

Think you’re not at risk?  You are.  Hacked and you don’t bother to do anything about it? Now you’re in bigger trouble.  The SEC announced this week that they are fining three brokerage firms anywhere from $200K-$300K for security breaches that have occurred over recent years.  Honestly, $300K seems like a slap on the wrist, especially considering that eight separate entities make up those being fined. These firms were all hacked and then didn’t bother to train their employees, implement multifactor authentication, or announce the breaches. When will people start to take this stuff seriously?

 In a perfect world, our clients would always let us know BEFORE they terminated an employee.  That way, we could take all the proper precautions to prevent the soon to be former employee from causing damage to networks and data. Sometimes that’s just not possible.  And sometimes, those former employees are looking to cause as many problems as they can.

 As I was driving north on I77 this past Sunday, I noticed the lights on and a game taking place at the Hall of Fame Stadium in Canton.  Thought it was odd for a Sunday evening, but it wasn’t until the old inbox blew up on Monday morning that I realized it was quite an event.  It seems that Bishop Sycamore high school, an online school supposedly based in Columbus had talked their way into a nationally televised ESPN game against IMG Academy, from Bradenton, FL.  Turns out that the school doesn’t really exist, they’re not on any lists of recognized Ohio schools, they played another game two nights earlier, and they’re really bad at football!

Computer chips have gotten smaller and smaller as technology has gotten better.  But now, researchers are working on larger chips.  And while one of the  engineers dates himself by referring to Schlitz beer (didn’t they stop making that in 1976?), I promise that this article just appeared in last week’s issue of The New Yorker (thanks Esther for the submission!)