We got your picture even without a microwave
his is a picture laden blog. There might even be a picture of you. We had our Open House on March 9th and I can’t be more proud. Kristian, Sara, Bernice and Teresa did a fantastic job promoting and organizing the event. The office looks great. We beat our attendance target. What surprised me the most was the energy at the event and how long people stayed to network, chat and learn about new stuff.
Here are some fun pictures. Some are a bit sentimental for me.
A sentimental photo, here we have Juan Lopez (a 20+ year veteran of Alvaka Networks), Yvonne Clemens (a 20+ year client of Alvaka Networks), and Rex Frank our first service manager and now an industry icon in what else… service management.
CRN’s story on the CIA Wikileaks leak
Partners Say Alleged CIA Hacking Papers Prompt 'Constant Vigilance' In Mobile Security In its news release on the so-called "Vault 7" documents, WikiLeaks describes a specialty CIA unit that develops malware to "infest, control and exfiltrate data" from iPhones as [...]
The latest trends in government contracting
Los Angeles, CA - 2017 is going to be highlighted as a banner year for some DoD related contractors, and a sad downturn for others. Why? DFARS 252.204-7012 is going to define new winners and losers in defense contracting. Within [...]
What is CEO fraud? c/o KnowBe4.com
Irvine, CA - CEO fraud is a phishing scam in which cybercriminals spoof company email accounts
and impersonate executives to try and fool an employee in accounting or HR into executing unauthorized wire transfers, or sending out confidential tax information.
The FBI calls this type of scam "Business Email Compromise" and defines BEC as “a sophisticated scam targeting businesses working with foreign suppliers and/or businesses that regularly perform wire transfer payments. The scam is carried out by compromising legitimate business e-mail accounts through social engineering or computer intrusion techniques to conduct unauthorized transfers of funds.”
In the time period from January 2015 to June 2016, the FBI reported a 1300% rise in lossesfrom this type of fraud. Most victims are in the US (all 50 states), but companies in 100 other countries have also reported incidents. While the fraudulent transfers have been sent to 79 countries, most end up in China and Hong Kong. Unless the fraud is spotted within 24 hours, the chances of recovery are small.
Four Attack Methods
Understanding the different attack vectors for this type of crime is key when it comes to prevention. This is how the bad guys do it:
DFARS 252.204-7012 is going to define new winners and losers in defense contracting
Kevin McDonald has just published his latest article of DFARS (Defense Federal Acquisition Regulations Supplement) at SearchCompliance.TechTarget.com. If you fall into this category, a recently implemented rule from the Department of Defense called the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS) [...]
Aligning IT and compliance procedures increasingly a business priority
Kevin McDonald writes for TechTarget SearchCompliance on Aligning IT and compliance procedures increasingly a business priority. He says, "When I've asked IT pros about HIPAA Security Rule compliance within their organization, they've typically responded with, "That is the compliance officer's realm" [...]
Smoke testing is a term used to describe the testing process for servers after patches are applied. 
Estimating an average time for patching servers and PCs can be a bit tricky. It can vary from one month to the next, depending upon the number and complexity of the patches released by your software vendors. You must consider all versions of operating systems and have a complete inventory of all your application software to do this job correctly. Our experience has shown that manual patching of systems takes on average of about 1.5 hours each.
This is a basic cost calculator for you to compute your typical monthly cost for patching your servers, PCs, laptops, tablets and associated application software. It also forms the basis for you to begin calculating your Return on Investment for software patching, or for comparison with alternatives to the manual process of patching operating systems and application software—such as Patch Management as a Service, also known as Vulnerability Management as a Service.