It’s October 18th and the Browns season is already on its last legs… but we still have meaningful playoff baseball. This week went awfully fast, so I don’t have much in the way of wisdom for you. And while there’s lots of interesting info about meal benefits, racist robots, and Cleveland sports, there’s not a Nancy’s Nuggets section today; that’s because she was on a roll yesterday morning and sent me half the posts I’m sharing with you. Enjoy!
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Taking Advantage
Meta (Facebook, Insta, WhatsApp) just relieved a handful of employees of their jobs, when they were found to be improperly using daily meal credits. Instead of using the credits for food (thus the term “meal credit”), they were buying things like wine glasses and acne pads. Cuz, you know, why use it on food when I’m working from home today? No matter what you do for people, there will always be somebody who takes advantage of you.
Cyber Liability
Cyber liability claims severity (the value of the claim) increased by 14% in the first half of 2024, over the same period of time, last year. Business email compromise was the most common claim, followed by funds transfer fraud and then ransomware. Ransomware costs varied significantly based on the size of the business, but for those businesses with less than $25M in revenues, the average cost was $73,000.
A local business called us late last week, having been hit by ransomware. All of their systems were locked, they had no endpoint monitoring solution in place, and worse, they had no cyberliability coverage. Travis explained to them everything that needed to be done, and introduced them to our partners at Sophos and their rapid response team. Unfortunately, their internal IT guy was paralyzed by fear and moving at a snail’s pace. Based on what Travis could detect, the hackers had been in the company’s network for weeks, if not months, and there’d been a loss of personal data. Three days after the fact, the company got back to us and explained that “for budgetary reasons”, they didn’t want to move forward. Had they had insurance in place, most, if not all of the cost would’ve been covered. But they decided to go cheap and hope for the best.
Big Data
As if it’s not bad enough that half the products in many drugstores are under lock and keys, retailers (CVS) are now coming with solutions that will give them even more info about consumers. By requiring consumers to use a CVS app to unlock products, retailers will know everything you buy (I guess it’s no different than a frequent shopper card, if you use one of those). Retailers claim it makes it easier for consumers to buy products (there’s a big bounce rate when customers see locked product), but it will still lead me to shop elsewhere.
Connected Devices
We don’t use Siri or Alexa, and my refrigerator is definitely not connected to the internet. We also don’t have robot vacuums, and this story of racist robot vacuums won’t do anything to change my mind on that one. All the more reason to question how many devices you really need that are connected to the internet.
Goals
For you hockey fans (and anybody else who likes rare occasions), here’s the 18th goalie goal in NHL history, from earlier this week.
If you prefer your activities to be a little more strenuous, you might model yourself after the 18 year old (something about 18 this week?) who just became the youngest person ever to summit all fourteen of the 8,000 meter peaks in the world.
Southeast Asia
According to this article, cybercrime based in Southeast Asia is a $37B industry. And it doesn’t look like it’s going to go away.
Cleveland Sports
If you don’t know me, you have no idea as to how superstitious I am when it comes to my teams. Nancy still married me after I locked her in the bathroom for the entire 4th quarter of a late season Browns game in 1989… she happened to be in there when the Browns scored two touchdowns in five minutes of what would end up as a playoff clinching game. So there she stayed. But don’t think poorly of me… I slid a few magazines under the door for her.
Anyway, I missed most of the exciting finish of last night’s Indians game. I was so ticked when Clase blew the save that I refused to turn it on. And after Big Christmas tied it up, I refused to turn it on for fear of changing their luck. So there I sat at the dining room table, stewing over a jigsaw puzzle (which I’m told has to be done by tonight since we’re having people over for dinner), not watching the game. I did cave in and listened to the bottom of the 10th on my phone via the MLB app. Not sure what I’m going to do tonight…
If the Indians are too exciting for you, there’s always the Browns. Nobody wanted to buy our tickets for Sunday (shocker), so we’ll go down and cheer Nick Chubb’s return, (but probably not much else). Pretty sure his effort won’t be as lacking as most of the rest of the team’s has been this year.
Before Tom Hamilton, there was Joe Tait… And I think he’d be spot on today if he were still calling games; “It’s a beautiful day for baseball!” If you’re going to the game tonight, please bring home another winner. If you’re not, I’ve just given you something to read between innings while you’re watching at home.
Here’s hoping you have a great weekend and enjoy the beautiful weather while it lasts!
Abbey