Encryption Security

Pig Latin Will Remain a Legal form of Encryption As today’s technological and political environments are becoming ever more polarized, it is useful once again the think about these trends in the context of America’s foundation—i.e. the reason for celebrating Independence Day in America. Privacy and constitutional rights continue to be debated publicly, which most would agree is healthy, and with today’s political, health, security, and economic challenges, tec [...]

Is Work from Home Here to Stay Permanently? Almost everyone around the world is working from home, due to the imposed lockdown to battle the Covid-19 pandemic. This arrangement has a lot of benefits for both employees and employers. But, will the work from home continue even after the lockdown restrictions are lifted? Recently, the “Permanent-WFH” trend has gained momentum in the tech industry as many companies are extending WFH policies, including: [...]

Email impostor trickiness lures HR staff to change ADP payroll direct deposits In these strange economic times, impostors have identified an overworked company department. With Human Resource (HR) departments handling a new onslaught of employee concerns and issues, staffing changes, and remote work policies, email imposters have inserted themselves stealthily into their world. And, they have struck gold! CAUTION: This is complex trickery that usually results in $ [...]

Home email, the new normal for millions of Americans Today the Labor Department released a report that showed over 20 million jobs were lost in April alone, boosting the unemployment rate to nearly 15%. These are levels perhaps never seen by any living American. Even as people start to venture out to beaches and parks that are opening up, most people are still remaining inside — spending more time in their home email (i.e. Gmail, Hotmail, Outlook.com, Outlook Online, and other mobile [...]

Not Free Toilet Paper or Hand Sanitizer, But Something That May Help Like you, our business team is hunkering down, working in their offices with closed doors or safely from home. This coronavirus looks like it is going to be very serious. After all, the last coronavirus pandemic (2009 H1N1) infected 1 in 5 people worldwide. No one wants to shake hands. While you might want to meet in person to help your clients, they don’t want to meet you (in person). Everyone [...]

Right Email, Wrong Recipient. No Problem. Recall The company travel agent, Leah, sometimes gets some really insightful inside information about her client company – sent to her accidentally. Fortunately, she is a trusted outside contractor and politely replies to her client, “I think you did not intend to send this to me.” Oops? All of that sensitive business information intended to go to Leah in accounting, instead went to the outside travel agent [...]

Whale Eats Shark. Whale Eats Nurse. Whale Eats $1.2mm Killer whales occasionally hunt sharks. When they do, it can be ugly. In a recent whaling attack (This is not a nature article. We are referring to the very tricky type of email “spear-phishing” impostor email attack), the poser sent an email to one of the most famous sharks (from the Shark Tank TV show); an email with an invoice for a real estate renovation. There was no hack of an email account. There were no s [...]

Whaling Redux: Insurers Don’t Cover Whale Attacks Given the popularity of our piece on whaling last week, we thought we’d follow this up by looking back on a piece we ran in the early days of whaling about a fake CEO email that cost a company nearly half a million dollars (Tech Essentials recommended reading). [...]

Whaling Can Be a Grusome Affair It’s an election year, so it should come as no surprise that Russian military hackers are ramping up their efforts to wreak havoc on US elections. The NY Times reported on Jan 15 that hackers from a shadowy intelligence unit called GRU have been trying to gain access to Burisma, the Ukrainian gas company at the heart of the current impeachment trial. While it is not yet clear what the hackers found, it is likely they were trying to dig up potentially [...]

The Chinese Don’t Need Impeachment Inquiries. They Have A Citizen Score China is becoming the first society to connect all the data from a vast array of digital surveillance technologies, with an aim to seemingly control the population. China’s communist party is developing a “citizen score” to incentivize “good” behavior, harnessing advances in artificial intelligence, data mining, storage, facial recognition and indoor and outdoor video from connected devices and surveill [...]