Discover how mastering email communication can boost business efficiency, avoid common pitfalls, and ensure secure, respectful online interactions.
Turkey Revenge
The turkeys are pissed this Thanksgiving they are seeking revenge.
Germs Infest 60% of Americas Phones
60% of Americans sleep with their phones, harboring germs. Cleaning regularly with UV sanitizer or alcohol wipes can help keep your phone and bed germ-free.
Smartphone Sanitizing: A Practical Guide
Securely erase personal data from your old smartphone before recycling. Protect your identity from hackers—easy steps to follow.
Why Soft Skills Matter in Today’s Job Market
Boost your career with essential soft skills like communication, teamwork, and emotional intelligence. Learn why they’re crucial for workplace success.
State of Michigan Data Breach
Data breaches are no surprise these days. I have covered a number of data breaches here on the Bach Seat here, here, and here. Now the State of Michigan (SOM) has joined the ranks of data leakers like Yahoo, Home Depot, Target, BCBS, and the US government. MLive is reporting that the State of Michigan has spilled the personal data of millions of Michigan citizens. On February 03, 2017, the Michigan Department of Technology Management and Budget (DTMB) announced the Michigan data breach. The breach leaked the Personal information of nearly 20% of Michigan residents who were vulnerable to unauthorized access for four months.
Unemployment Insurance Agency
The article reports that in October 2016, a software update to the Michigan Data Automated System (MiDAS) system was used by the state’s Unemployment Insurance Agency (UIA). MiDAS was created by Fast Enterprises of Centennial, CO, and went live in 2012 as part of a modernization of the unemployment benefits and tax system. A flaw allowed employers and human resources firms to get access to names and social security numbers of nearly 1.9 million Michigan residents they were not authorized to view.
The state identified the Michigan data breach on Jan. 30 and fixed it on Jan. 31, 2017. Contracted payroll service providers had unauthorized access to the MiDAS system, according to UIA spokesperson Dave Murray. Anybody working for a company that uses one of those payroll service providers may have had their personal information compromised. DTMB official Caleb Buhs warned, “If you are an employee in Michigan and your company uses a payroll vendor to process payroll, then you can potentially be included.”
Impacted by the Michigan data breach
According to a report on MLive, the 31 vendors with unauthorized access to Michigan citizens’ PII included:
- 7-Eleven
- Aatrix
- Accountants World
- Acrisure
- ADP
- Benepay
- Casper Willson Wilson
- Computing Resources
- Connectpay LLC
- CoStaff National Services Inc
- Craft Accounting
- CSS Payroll Inc
- DTMB
- DM Payroll
- Dominion Systems
- GT Independence
- Heins Acctg
- Hewitt Assoc
- Highpoint Business Services LLC
- Infiniti HR LLC
- Julie Lepper Acctg
- Mercantile Bank
- My Pay Solutions
- Nieland & Kosanke PC
- One Source Virtual
- Paychex
- Paycomm Payroll LLC
- Paycor
- Paylocity Corp
- Payroll 1
- Payroll Tax Mgt
- Professional Systems
- Ultimate Software
- VenSure HR Inc
- Wayne County Regional
- Zen Payroll
DTMB Director and State CIO David Behen stated, “Data security is a top priority for the state of Michigan … We will work with our third-party vendors and our state team to check our processes and procedures to avoid incidents like this in the future.”
Recommendations
Here’s what the SOM is recommending those who may have had their PII exposed do:
- Call the state hotline at 855-707-8387 between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. on weekdays to make inquiries about this issue.
- Monitor financial account statements and immediately report any suspicious or unusual activity to financial institutions.
- Request a free credit report at www.AnnualCreditReport.com or by calling 1-877-322-8228. Consumers are entitled by law to one free credit report per year from each of the three major credit bureaus – Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion – for a total of three reports every year. Contact information for the credit bureaus can be found on the Federal Trade Commission.
- Take steps to monitor their personally identifiable information and report any suspected instances of identity theft to their local law enforcement.
MiDAS has been in the news before. MiDAS’ “robo-adjudication” feature wrongly flagged at least 20,000 people for unemployment fraud between October 2013 and August 2015. MiDAS would automatically flag a discrepancy and send a message to a seldom-used internal unemployment system. When the victims didn’t respond, the system would automatically find they had committed fraud and issue a 400% fine.
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The way data breach report work is that the originating firm under-estimates the number of records lost by half. So it is possible that the SOM has released nearly 4 million or 38% of all Michiganders personal records.
Despite the Michigan State Police Cyber Command being on the job, it is likely that nothing will happen to the perpetrators – nothing ever does. DTMB spokesman Buhs said, “We are learning from this.” I hope so.
Related articles
- Equifax, TransUnion Fined for Deceptive Credit Score Marketing (thesimpledollar.com)
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
Category: Uncategorized |
Tags: 2017, ADP, Data breach, David Behen, DTMB, Equifax, Experian, Home Depot, Marissa Mayer, Michigan, Paychex, PII, Rick Synder, Security, Target, TransUnion, Yahoo, YHOO
Who Owns Ruckus Today?
Updated December 05, 2017 – As predicated below, cable box maker, ARRIS International completed its acquisition of Ruckus Wireless from Broadcom in December 2017. According to reports, “Ruckus Networks, an ARRIS company,” will operate as a dedicated business under the ARRIS Enterprise Networks business segment.
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Ruckus Wireless was founded in 2004 and supplied Wi-Fi services and equipment to enterprises and service providers. At its peak, it had annual revenues of almost $400 million and more than 1,000 employees. Ruckus was the first firm to roll out enterprise 802.11ac Wave 2 AP. The company’s products powered high-profile public Wi-Fi installations, such as New York City’s LinkNYC.
In April 2016, San Jose, CA-based Brocade purchased Ruckus Wireless in a deal worth about $1.5 billion. Brocade is most famous for data center SAN switches and a player on the NFV and SDN scene. Brocade planned to add Ruckus’s Wi-Fi products to its enterprise networking business.
At the time of the purchase, Brocade CEO Lloyd Carney said, “The acquisition will strengthen Brocade’s ability to pursue emerging market opportunities around 5G mobile services, Internet of Things (IoT), Smart Cities, OpenG technology for in-building wireless, and LTE/Wi-Fi convergence.”
Ruckus changed hands. Irvine, CA-based chipmaker Broadcom (AVGO), which supplies to phone vendors purchased Brocade for $5.9 billion. But the chipmaker said it plans to divest the Brocade IP networking business that consists of wireless networking, data center switching, and software networking offerings.
Brocade CEO Lloyd Carney wrote on the company’s website. “In terms of our IP Networking business, due to competitive overlap with some of Broadcom’s most important customers, Broadcom will seek a buyer for the business.” The Ruckus product line competes with industry titans like Cisco and Apple.
Broadcom
CEO Hock Tan said in a press release, “… we will find a great home for Brocade’s valuable IP networking business that will best position that business for its next phase of growth.” It seems Broadcom has found a firm willing to take Ruckus off their hands.
FierceCable is reporting that cable set-top box manufacturer Arris (ARRS) is in talks with Broadcom to pay around $1 billion for Brocade’s wireless network edge business – i.e Ruckus Wireless. The article says Arris CFO David Potts told investors that the vendor might transition into serving the wireless needs of its customers. Arris client, Comcast is developing a wireless service based on its MVNO relationship with Verizon.
Reports are that Arris does not want to buy other parts of the business being divested by Brocade. Brocade is reportedly looking for a buyer for the rest of its IP portfolio, which includes data centers, switching, and software.
Related articles
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
Avaya Goes Chapter 11
-Updated- 03-07-17 As predicted Avaya spun off its networking business. The lucky winner is Extreme. The presser from Extreme is here.
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In one of the worst-kept secrets in tech, Avaya has finally declared bankruptcy. The Santa Clara, CA-based communications company filed for chapter 11 protection on January 19th, 2017 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. Reports are that Avaya faced an end of January deadline to reach agreements with creditors to address its $6.3 billion debt or potentially default.
The company’s presser announcing the bankruptcy characterizes the decision to seek Chapter 11 as a necessary re-do on deals made a decade ago. The company was spun off from Lucent, a former AT&T unit, in 2000. Avaya went private in 2007 when private equity firms Silver Lake Partners and the Texas Pacific Group took over the firm for $8.2 billion. Avaya was set up as a leveraged buyout – loaded with debt. At the time the new owners said going private would help Avaya to accelerate product development. In 2009 Avaya scooped up the remnants of Nortel for $900m.
The Nortel acquisition added Ethernet switching and VoIP to Avaya’s portfolio. While the move added needed hardware to the Avaya portfolio the rest of the tech world started the shift towards software-as-a-service and the cloud. Avaya was not able to digest Nortel while taking on Cisco, Microsoft, and the cloud at the same time.
Avaya was both late with VoIP and Unified Communications. Neither Microsoft nor Cisco were competitors in the TDM/PBX era. Cisco joined the race with VoIP and Microsoft then came along with Unified Communications. Both have tremendous enterprise penetration and brand recognition.
The pressure forced Avaya to consider selling its crown jewel, its contact center products to Genesys in 2016, in the hope it would raise some cash. When the deal with Genesys fell through, Avaya decided to file for bankruptcy. Avaya CEO Kevin Kennedy said in a statement, “…chapter 11 is the best path forward at this time.”
In order to keep the lights on during the reorganization, the company has secured a $725 million loan underwritten by Citibank.
As part of its debt load, Avaya owes its pensioners $1.7 billion in unfunded pension liabilities. According to NoJitter Avaya will honor it obligations to maintain and continue the pension (as did GM in its reorganization).
Chapter 11 only impacts Avaya’s United States operations. In the rest of the world, the company is moving to assure customers and stakeholders that it’s business as usual.
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My experience is that the Avaya IP Office product is way over-priced, even in a bid environment. Why would anyone buy an Avaya Ethernet switch or access point when you can get a Cisco or an HP?
So what is to become of Avaya? One likely outcome is that all of the business units will be sold off to satisfy the creditors. The only thing left of Avaya will be a service organization to care for the huge installed base of orphaned Nortel and Avaya systems.
I know people are already getting calls from Cisco about replacing Avaya.
Related articles
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
Should You Say Something in Meetings?
Recently came across a post from Oisín Grogan, the “$200 Million Business Coach” about why people hate meetings. He says people hate meetings because:
- They don’t start on time.
- They don’t finish on time.
- What’s in the middle is a waste of time!
He stresses the project manager running the meeting needs to keep people on point. Project team members should only talk about matters related to their roles. The sales manager should not talk about how production should be delivering. The team should talk about how to get tasks completed.
Coordination between different departments and roles is a vital function of meetings and Mr. Grogan says you’ll get more of your meetings if you keep people on point. To help address the issue, he developed a flow chart on how to decide when to and how to say something in a meeting.
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What do you think? Should this be handed out at project kickoff meetings to set the rules?
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
Category: Project Management |
Tags: 2017, Agile, Flow chart, Meetings, PMI, PMP, Project, Waterfall model
Blockchain Basics
This is the season for predictions. Many tech prognosticators say that 2017 will be the year for Blockchain. As an emerging technology, Blockchain is approaching what Gartner (IT) calls the Peak of Inflated Expectations – a period the analyst refers to as “when early publicity produces a number of success stories — often accompanied by scores of failures. Some companies take action; many do not.”
Just to prove the point, Business Insider claims blockchain has the capability to transform the world of digital banking and finance — and beyond. The author suggests that the complex technical nature of blockchain makes it difficult for people to fully grasp how the technology works. BI helps blockchain novices understand exactly what blockchain is and how it works.
Blockchain is a distributed database or ledger that allows companies to start trade digitally without the need for approval from a central authority. Because blockchains are distributed, an industry or a marketplace can use them without the risk of a single point of failure.
The ledger is the central part of a blockchain. The ledger is publicly available and shared among all parties within the network. It can’t be changed or tampered with, making it secure. The ledger keeps track of all the details of a transaction, including time, date, parties involved and the transaction amount.
The article examines how the most common blockchain application, a bitcoin transaction, works.
- Alice decides to buy bobbles from Bob’s Bead Boutique online.
- Bob’s Bead Boutique accepts bitcoin.
- Alice has a 3rd party bitcoin wallet set up to hold her digital funds.
- Bob at Bob’s Bead Boutique shares his unique numerical bitcoin address with Alice.
- Alice makes her payment to Bob’s Bead Boutique by signing it with the private key of her own address. The transaction is called a block.
- The block is broadcast to everyone within the peer-to-peer network.
- Users who verify the buyer’s block via a process called “mining” will be rewarded with bitcoins.
- To verify and validate the block, miners take information from the block and run it through an algorithm.
The approved block is attached to the previous transaction in the network. - Collectively all the transactions form a blockchain that cannot be altered making it permanent and transparent
- The transaction is verified and completed.
BI claims that the most important aspect of blockchain is its versatility. The author claims that the disruptive technology has implications far beyond bitcoin. The article points out there are more than 100 blockchain projects spread across many industries. Here are some industries blockchain could disrupt.
Banking and Financial Services – Blockchain is more secure and efficient so financial processes powered by blockchain could save banks up to $20 billion dollars annually by 2022.
Healthcare – Blockchains could allow patients to securely share their health records across a vast network of healthcare providers more securely. Preventing many of the recent healthcare data breaches.
Music – Blockchain could potentially be used to help prevent piracy in music while also increasing sales.
Insurance – Blockchain could allow wholesale insurers to overcome complex transactions that involve a large number of participants and increase efficiency in areas like documentation and claims management.
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The Brookings Institute correctly argues that Blockchain is a foundational technology, like TCP/IP, which enables the Internet. And much like the Internet in the late 1990s, we don’t know exactly how the Blockchain will evolve – but evolve it will.
Similar to the Internet, the Blockchain must also be allowed to grow unencumbered. This will need careful handling that recognizes the difference between the platform and the applications that run on it. TCP/IP empowers many financial applications that are regulated, but TCP/IP is not regulated as a financial instrument.
Disruptive technologies rarely fit neatly into existing regulatory considerations, but rigid regulatory frameworks have repeatedly stifled innovation.
Related articles
- Why Bitcoin Could Be More Important Than the Internet: Here’s why (huffingtonpost.com)
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
Category: Uncategorized |
Tags: 2017, Bitcoin, Blockchain, Business, Coinbase, Data breach, Database, Financial services, Gartner, Healthcare, IT, Ledger, Security