While I think the name of Cleveland’s baseball team is absolutely ridiculous (and the logo looks like something drawn by a fifth grader), I do love the namesake and the shot below from photographer Roger Mastroianni. And it’s appropriate considering that I spent Tuesday afternoon at the home opener in what turned out to be the first 1-0 game that ended with a walkoff walk in all of MLB since 2009. Definitely the most boring historic baseball game I’ve ever attended. To learn more about Roger’s work as well as AI for social engineering, Babe Ruth’s apartment, and more, scroll on down!
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Working From Home
I was curious when I saw this article about the best states in which to work from home; not so much as to which states were better (I’m much happier working in the office than at home), but why one state could be better or worse than the next. So I immediately scrolled down to the “methodology” portion to understand what data went into this ranking where Delaware was first and Ohio was 23rd.
The number one weighted factor in this ranking is states that have the most people working from home. Isn’t that kind of like the fact that you can’t use a word to define itself? Just because people work from home in Delaware, does that mean it’s a good place to work from home? Also heavily weighted is the share of potential telecommuters in any given state. Again- just because people can work from home based on their jobs, does it mean it’s a great state to actually do it?
Also taken into account are rate of cyber crimes per capita (not sure if high or low is good here), cost of residential electricity and internet (now we’re getting somewhere!) and average home size (another one that actually makes sense). And finally, there’s one glaring omission- average home price by state. I looked that up and some of the “best” states for work from home also happen to have the highest housing prices. DC, MA, and WA are all in the top 10 for working from home but also at the highest end of the housing market. Those states may be great to work from home, if you can actually afford a home…
Real Estate
And speaking of real estate prices, Babe Ruth’s NYC apartment is on the block for $1.5M (plus $4,200/mo in maintenance fees).
Tariffs and Cyber
Somewhat confused by this article that starts with the suggestion that increased spending due to tariffs will lead companies to spend less on cybersecurity, yet concludes with the statement that “a deterioration in the cyberthreat landscape could increase demand for their (cybersecurity firms) products.” Well, are people going to be spending less or more with us?
Aside from the contradictory opening and closing statements, there are some reasons as to why we may soon be seeing an increase in hacking incidents; economic espionage to seek an edge in political or business negotiations, individuals and groups struggling because of economic hardship turning to illicit methods of generating revenue, and nations resorting to increased cyber operations as a means to retaliate against rivals.
So, keep your eyes open, educate your employees, and don’t cut corners when it comes to securing your network and data.
Manure
Our son lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and Nancy has taken to reading the West Side Rag to stay abreast of the hyper-local goings on. And I’ll take a random study of horse manure in Central Park over a bunch of PhD’s compiling data about working at home, any day of the week. And as George Costanza once suggested, horse manure “is a very positive thing”. I will be waiting for that day “either six months or a year from now” to find out what the intrepid WSR reporters determine about the change in manure levels in the park.
Email is something that everybody uses, and it’s also the biggest risk for allowing hackers into a network. Google’s Gmail now offers end to end encryption, and this piece is a great reminder about many things email-related;
- Default security settings, whether they be through Gmail or MS365, are generally not enough to properly secure your network.
- Even with end to end encryption, Google still has access to your communications, and they still sit on Google’s servers
- A single email security layer is not enough- you should be using spam filtering, encryption, data loss prevention, and multi-factor authentication.
- Security training and awareness for all employees is critical
If you’re curious as to what it looks like when email is not properly configured and only default settings are used, click through to see an audit we completed for a non-Ashton client after they’d been hacked 12 times in the first six months of using Microsoft 365.
AI & Social Engineering
This was definitely the most interesting one I read all week, and it’s not too long which is even better. We are often asked about penetration testing as a security tool. We don’t offer it (that would be “grading our own homework”), but have partners that do.
Part of penetration testing is attempting to gain physical access to a building or office through any number of methods, including dressing as a FedEx driver or pretending to be a DoorDasher. In this piece, the writer explains how they used AI to get pertinent information about a building and its tenants to then gain unrestricted access to company networks.
Photography
Roger Mastroianni is a Cleveland-based photographer who works with world famous organizations like The Cleveland Orchestra, Cleveland Clinic, and Ashton Solutions (yes, he does all the still photography and headshots for our website). It’s always fun to have him onsite so that we can see what new projects he’s been working on, or what cool piece of equipment he’s using to do specific types of work. Roger’s new exhibit just opened at University Hospital’s Trudy Wiesenberger Gallery, and if you have a chance between now and June 30, you should definitely stop by.
That’s all for this week. Don’t forget to watch the championship game of the Frozen Four tomorrow night (Western Michigan and Boston U.), and hope for a little warm weather for the Indians to keep their undefeated home season going strong.
Have a great weekend.
Abbey