It’s Good Friday and a lot of you have the day off, but we’ve still had a strong turnout for our second annual Earth Day recycling day. It’s been great to see clients old and new (and some who aren’t even clients!), but the highlight of the day was the visit from our friends at Hattie Larlham. They brought three carloads of electronics recycling, and more importantly, a busload of their clients and patients who were really excited for a field trip to see some of our technology. In addition to their recycling, they brought a coffee break and snacks to our team, and we returned the favor with Ashton swag for all. And the best part was smiles all around! We’ll be back here at our office tomorrow from 9A-11A if you weren’t able to drop your recycling today.
In the meantime, keep scrolling for EDR vs. MDR, BYOD, hockey OT, and more! Enjoy.
Something about ...
Technology
The image above came from a tweet titled “Steve Jobs ruined sports”, and comparing the image of Rory McIlroy winning The Masters to LeBron James attempting what I imagine to be a game winning shot, I can see the poster’s point. Cell phones and mobile devices are not allowed on the grounds at Augusta National, and fans (“patrons” at Augusta) are into the moment. Whereas everybody at the Laker game is more worried about getting the right photo/video.
Uber Lost & Found
Pretty sure I posted last year a list of the top “lost and found” items according to Uber drivers. But somehow that list made it to me again this year. Happy to say I’ve never left anything in an Uber (at least as far as I’m aware), nor have I ever found anything.
BYOD
Clemson University last fall rolled out a “bring your own device” (BYOD) policy for employees and student workers. They state that they’re in the 20th percentile in terms of how often they’re attacked (probably because they’re in the 20th percentile of total enrollment), so they need to take more precautions. If I were a hacker, I’d be targeting them too; when the CIO of the school suggests that a policy is “rather draconian” and difficult to roll out due to “a history of a much more open environment,” they’re just asking for trouble.
Fortinet Firewalls
Earlier this week, at about the same time as a threat actor posted about a Fortinet firewall vulnerability, Fortinet itself was announcing vulnerabilities. Fortinet recommends upgrading the operating system on the devices in question, but has not presented any way to avoid the zero-day threat.
Tax Time
By now, you should know that hackers love to use big events as a way to scam unsuspecting users. “Big events”? Covid, March Madness, Hurricane ___, presidential elections, and even tax time (April 15th). This piece is focused on the threats that CPAs face (perfect marketing material to be published on April 15), but in reality, these are the same threats that all businesses face. If you take this article and replace the terms “accounting” or “firm” with your vertical (manufacturing, finance, non-profit, etc.), everything written will hold true. Give it a try. And “trust but verify”.
EDR vs. MDR
If you’re using endpoint detection and response (EDR) on your computers and servers, you’re off to an ok start (it’s better than regular old endpoint security or ‘anti-virus’) in terms of cybersecurity. But as Travis put it this morning when I asked, “EDR is like having a screen door on your porch without a solid core door behind it.” That’s why we use managed detection and response (MDR) across our client base. Not only does it offer protection across your network, it adds in 24/7/365 human eyes on every endpoint we manage. Sophos MDR provides threat hunting (why wait for them to show themselves), root cause analysis, and incident response. While EDR will alert you to an issue, MDR will alert and remediate, even if it happens at 2AM on Christmas Day.
Great Sports Moments
When I saw this list of the top 100 sports moments of the 21st century, I figured I’d have to include it. And when I saw TJ Oshie in the 2014 winter Olympics against Russia (hockey) at #98 (counting down from 100) , I knew I was going to have to set this aside for later. Hopefully I’ll be able to scroll through this ranking this weekend. But you might beat me to it.
While the Browns are horrible and the NFL in general doesn’t really excite me, I could watch college football starting at 9A on Saturday (College GameDay) and wrapping up with whatever west coast game starts at 10P. But the day never really started until Lee Corso put on the headgear. So it was sad (although not surprising) to hear that he’ll be retiring on August 30th. Knowing that the Buckeyes play the Longhorns in Columbus (where he first wore the Brutus head in 1996), I can only imagine that’s where he’ll say goodbye.
For those of you who don’t care for football, last week was the annual running of The Boat Race between Oxford and Cambridge. Here’s a short documentary you can watch this weekend about the history of the race.
Have a great weekend.
Abbey