It’s hard to believe that it’s already November, especially considering how nice the weather has been this week (until today). Baseball season is over (down go the Yankees!!!!), Halloween has already come and gone (unless you live on our street, where somebody decided that trick or treating should take place on November 1), and it’ll be Thanksgiving before we know it. We even got our first big batch of catalogs in the mail yesterday, which means that Christmas isn’t far behind. Anyway, you can scroll down for Halloween candy (I was all set to use a bag of Nerds as my photo for this week’s edition, but then I remembered a chart I saw showing Browns QBs in the 2000s), lines, clouds, fish sandwiches, and more. Enjoy.
Something about ...
Crowdstrike Fallout
And so it begins. Delta has filed a lawsuit against Crowdstrike, claiming $500M in damages. Crowdstrike blames Delta for not understanding cybersecurity (probably the reason Delta hired Crowdstrike to protect their networks, rather than doing it themselves) and feels Delta’s liability is only $10M (Crowdstrike sells cybersecurity, not airline tickets). I was never very good at math (well, I was until 5th grade, and then it all went downhill in a hurry), but Delta says they cancelled 7,000 flights over five days. Let’s assume (conservatively) an average of 100 people per flight at a retail cost of $300/person (again, conservatively). That works out to $210M. I gotta think Delta is a little closer to the right number…
United Healthcare
A breach of United Healthcare’s network (due to lack of multi-factor authentication) lead to personal data (including SSN’s) of 100 million people being leaked. And that’s after they paid a $22M ransom. Talk about good money after bad!
Queues
Whether it’s the grocery store, the concession stand, or the airport, I have a bad habit of picking the longest line. And I warn people not to get in line behind me. A researcher at the University of Toronto has put together a study as to the best methodologies for ‘queing up‘, depending on the options presented you.
Cloudy Outlook
I had a conversation yesterday with a leader in the M&A world, and he mentioned that “everybody has everything in the cloud these days. Nothing is local.” I countered with the fact that we’ve seen a fair amount of companies moving certain pieces of their business away from the cloud, for various reasons.
This morning, I decided to look at the pile of links that Travis has been sending me all week. Five in total. And they’re all on one topic- moving off of the cloud, for various reasons. Cost, security, unmet expectations, and more.
As far back as 2021 (Travis’ inbox gets overwhelmed on occasion), companies were concerned about escalating cloud costs in relation to its scalability. And over the years since that article was posted, we’ve spoken to more than a handful of companies who’d been forced by their IT partner to move to the cloud, even though it wasn’t the best solution for certain aspects of their business. And just yesterday, a piece came out about VMware users seeing 300% price increases.
Not trying to dissuade anybody from using the cloud, but rather, suggesting that you consider what’s best for your business in terms of both technology and costs.
Nerds
I couldn’t let Halloween pass without some sort of acknowledgment of the big day… And while I ignored this article the first time I saw it in the WSJ the other day, I figured I should take a look when it popped up on my phone, yesterday. It seems the newest candy fad is Nerds Gummy Clusters (aka “candy gummy chunks” on Amazon), and to give you an idea as to how popular they’ve suddenly become, Nerds sales have gone from $40M to $500M (yes, 40 to 500- I didn’t add a zero). Did anybody hand these out last night (or get them in their candy buckets)?
Data Breach Disclosures
Way back in 2020, Solarwinds suffered a data breach that led to many of its users (including some of our peers who used the tool for remote management of their clients) to suffer the consequences. Now, the SEC has handed out fines to a handful of organizations who downplayed the severity of the breach. We’ve seen the SEC do this type of thing in the past, penalizing brokers for thumbing their collective noses at cybersecurity requirements mandated by the feds. So, when you get hit with a data breach, don’t claim that “no personal data was compromised” or “it only effected 145 files”. Own it and fix it.
Nancy's Nuggets
If you’ve ever wanted to break a Guinness World Record, here’s on that’s yours for the taking; an Idaho man recently sorted 500 grams of peanut M&Ms, by color, in under one minute.
If peanut M&Ms don’t do it for you, how ’bout a McDonald’s Filet-O-Fish? We’ve never been much of a fast food family, but for some reason, Nancy loves those fish sandwiches (I couldn’t tell you the last time she ate one, and she usually turns her nose up at beer battered fish I make on occasion). Here are 11 things you must know about McDonald’s fish sandwiches (she highlighted number 10, knowing my love of wasabi).
I’ll leave you with a pretty cool behind the scenes drone video that I found the other day. This is from the Tampa Bay Lightning and ESPN and goes to show what can be done if you know how to fly a drone. Nancy and I took the dogs for a walk at the polo field the other day and some guy was out flying his drone. She looked at me and said something to the effect of “why does one need to practice flying a drone?” Well, there’s our answer!
Don’t forget to turn your clocks back when you go to bed on Saturday night. And don’t get your hopes up for another Browns win this weekend… I sold our tix for last weekend (thus the win), and my group insists we go to this weekend’s game (meaning another big L).
Have a great weekend,
Abbey