Archive for March, 2020

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SIM Swap Scams – How To Protect Yourself

Posted in Commentary with tags , on March 12, 2020 by itnerd

Right now the newest way for scammers to separate you from your money is the SIM swap scam. Here’s how the scam works.

  • A fraudster gathers personal details about the victim, either by use of phishing emails, by buying them from organised criminals, or by directly socially engineering the victim.
  • Once the fraudster has obtained these details, they then contact the victim’s mobile telephone provider. The fraudster uses social engineering techniques to convince the telephone company to port the victim’s phone number to the fraudster’s SIM. This is done, for example, by impersonating the victim using personal details to appear authentic and claiming that they have lost their phone.
  • Once this happens the victim’s phone will lose connection to the network and the fraudster will receive all the SMS and voice calls intended for the victim. This allows the fraudster to intercept any one-time passwords sent via text or telephone calls sent to the victim, and thus to circumvent any security features of accounts that are associated with the phone. Be they bank accounts, social media accounts, etc.

There have been a growing number of cases of this scam happening in Canada, US and other places. I have heard of bank accounts being drained and the take over of social media accounts. The most famous of these is the take over of Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s Twitter account a few months ago.

Clearly this is a scam that you need to keep an eye on due to the impact that it can have on your life. The question is, how do you protect yourself from being a victim? To help with that, I reached out to TELUS as they have programs to help Canadians protect themselves online. Most notably TELUS Wise. They were kind enough to point me to a number of tools on their website that can help guide consumers on how to protect themselves from scams in general. But they also provided a few tips specific to SIM swap scams:

  • Limit the amount of personal information about you online. Be careful to not click on phishing emails (and texts) that ask you to provide and/or validate private information.
  • Don’t add your phone number to any online accounts where it is not necessary.
  • Use strong and unique passwords for each of your accounts.
  • Set up authentication methods that aren’t text based only.
  • If you think something is awry and/or if you can’t make or receive phone calls on your device, contact your wireless provider immediately.
  • Report the fraud to your local police and the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre at 1-888-495-8501. Notify your bank and credit card companies. Contact the two national credit bureaus to request a copy of your credit reports and place a fraud warning on your file (Equifax Canada Toll free:1-800-465-7166 and TransUnion Canada Toll free: 1-877-525-3823).

Besides the above, one other thing that I do recommend is that you set up a PIN or a security code with your wireless provider. That way if someone tries to access your account to try and pull off a SIM swap, they’ll run into a brick wall as they won’t have the PIN. TELUS offers this security feature (In fact, when I signed up with TELUS, I had to come up with a PIN on the spot), and I have to assume that other wireless providers do as well. Thus you should contact them to see how you can set this up on your account.

SIM swap scams are on the rise. But the good news is that by taking the above steps, you can reduce the risk that you will be a victim.

 

 

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ServiceNow Introduces Now Intelligence

Posted in Commentary with tags on March 11, 2020 by itnerd

ServiceNow today introduced the Now Platform Orlando release, featuring Now Intelligence, a new set of powerful AI and analytics capabilities. With Now Intelligence, ServiceNow empowers enterprises with new insights that enable employees to work smarter and faster, streamline business decisions and unlock new levels of productivity.

Worldwide, companies are focused on delivering great customer and employee experiences. And behind every great experience is a great workflow. That’s what ServiceNow enables. With Now Intelligence embedded into its Now Platform, ServiceNow advances its position as a pioneer delivering practical, purpose‑built AI and analytics to the enterprise. Now Intelligence enables employees to quickly and easily make decisions, solve problems, find answers and automate tasks – making their lives at work simple, easy and convenient.

ServiceNow is a strategic digital transformation partner to the world’s largest enterprises, including approximately 80% of the Fortune 500. These enterprises use the Now Platform as their “platform of platforms” to streamline work by integrating siloed, legacy systems and digitizing complex workflows and processes across their organizations. Adobe, Deloitte, Equinix, Red Hat, Nutanix, UnitedLex, whyaye!, Acorio, Autotestpro and Highmetric are examples of companies using the Now Platform to power their digital transformations.

With its Orlando release, ServiceNow continues to deliver consumer‑grade mobile experiences across the enterprise. And with Now Intelligence, the Now Platform delivers great experiences that:

  • Help people get work done smarter and faster by automatically surfacing context‑aware recommendations, predictions and insights to help teams act on the fly.
  • Deliver better self‑service experiences with intelligent, “always on” virtual agents across any channel, so customers and employees can quickly get what they need and take action.
  • Better predict issues and automate actions with virtual agents fully embedded in the Now Platform. Customers and employees are now empowered to initiate workflows with dynamic conversations that deliver results by automating requests for quick resolutions anytime, anywhere.
  • Enable better business decisions by driving transparency and alignment at all levels of the organization and providing teams and process owners with valuable insight into real‑time patterns and trends so they can make more informed decisions and quickly identify areas for improvement.

The Orlando release of the Now Platform delivers analytics, intelligence and mobility solutions enhancements across ServiceNow’s IT, Employee and Customer workflows. Key innovations in the Orlando release include:

Analytics Solutions

  • Cloud Insights helps IT teams optimize the cost of their cloud assets by making intelligent recommendations on managing usage across business hours, choosing the right resources and enforcing usage policies.
  • Advanced Risk Assessments make it painless for an organization’s front line to assess different risks within their daily work, so their second line can effectively adapt to change as they analyze and manage operational and other risks across the business.
  • Software Exposure Assessment enables security and IT teams to minimize the potential impact of zero‑day vulnerabilities by quickly identifying vulnerable software and related devices and servers, then initiating changes immediately through standard IT workflows.

Intelligence Solutions

  • Agent Affinity for Work Assignment allows customer service teams to assign work to the best agent using intelligent context to improve customer satisfaction. This can include assignment to a specific team that always services a specific customer, agents who have served the customer previously, or agents who have experience with related tasks.
  • Virtual Agent with Natural Language Understanding updates continue to build off innovations unveiled in the Madrid and New York releases, making it easier to create and maintain NLU models.
  • CI/CD supports the use of standard DevOps tools for on‑platform development at scale with team development, including enhanced developer collaboration with selective commits and collision avoidance, and simplified deployment processes for faster time to value.

Mobility Solutions

  • Mobile Agent enhancements deliver native mobile experiences so service desk agents and operators can resolve issues at any time, through any device. These capabilities are available on ITSM, ITOM and Field Service Management solutions.
  • Mobile Branding and Analytics allow customers to configure the Now Mobile enterprise experience in a customer‑branded environment, driving deeper engagement, and bring analytics into the services that pre‑hires, new hires and employees use most.
  • Mobile Targeted Campaigns provide employees with important and relevant information (like ‘tax time,’ site updates and local IT initiatives) right on their mobile devices using profile information, like department and job type. This proactive approach to employee communications increases satisfaction and reduces calls to the service desk.

Also, ServiceNow is extending the Now Platform to manage DevOps pipelines, connecting developers within IT operations with new insights and automating the manual and time‑consuming change approval process. This will enable customers to release features developed off‑platform more rapidly while retaining safety. ServiceNow DevOps, which was initially available through the ServiceNow Store, is now available as part of the Orlando release.

ServiceNow’s Now Platform Orlando release is generally available today. The ServiceNow Now Agent, Now Mobile and ServiceNow Onboarding apps are available to download on the Apple iOS store and Google Play store. For more information, visit:  https://www.servicenow.com/now‑platform/latest‑release.html

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When It Comes To Infotainment Systems, Car Dealers Need To Do More To Educate Their Customers On How They Work

Posted in Commentary on March 11, 2020 by itnerd

Roughly three times a month I get a call from someone who has just bought a new car, and the dealership didn’t do a whole lot to show them how to use the infotainment system that came with it. Thus after a few days of struggling with using trying to use it, they call me for help. This happens with people who spend $20,000 on a car, or they spend $80,000 on a car. And it doesn’t matter if it’s a mainstream brand or a luxury brand. And occasionally, I get a call from someone who has bought a car from a dealer who wouldn’t even pair their cell phone via Bluetooth. Or I get a call from someone who was expecting to get stand alone navigation, but none is present because it is driven via Apple CarPlay or Android Auto.

That’s lame.

My personal opinion is that when a car dealer delivers a car to a customer, they should be walking through the features of infotainment system along with the rest of the features of the car. And they should be getting customers to the point where they are comfortable with every feature of the car. I feel that if they don’t do that, the dealer isn’t doing their job. Another view of this is that it’s insane to me that someone makes a purchase worth tens of thousands of dollars and then they have to pay a third party, namely me, to do what the dealer should be doing.

Now if you’re a car dealer, or a car company who’s reading this story, I have some advice for you to put me out of business as I shouldn’t have to do your job. Hire a person who can specialize in how your infotainment system(s) works, and have that person communicate that to customers when cars are delivered, or even after the fact. This could be a teenager who needs an after school job, or someone working their way through college or university who needs some cash. The advantage of using a young person is that they are often well versed in how iOS and Android phones work, and will pick up how infotainment systems work instantly. This person would free up the sales person to do other things, such as sell cars. This to me is the best solution from where I stand as a person who can specialize in infotainment systems will provide the best customer experience. Because from where I stand, dealers are not delivering the best customer experience right now.

The other option that I see is that car brands need to provide specific product training so that salespeople who do the majority of car deliveries can teach a car buyer about one of the key features that car buyers care about. If brands aren’t in a position to deliver that training, then the dealerships can find someone like me to deliver that training to their staff. Now that doesn’t sound like a winning strategy on the surface. But keep this in mind. I am often called into situations where I have never seen the infotainment system in question. But after 5 or 10 minutes of playing with it, I can teach the client how to use it. Thus I feel that other people like me should be able to do the same. The advantage of having salespeople take this training is that they will not only be better salespeople as they will be able to articulate the features of the infotainment system before the sale, but they will be able to add value after the sale as they will able show new buyers how to use these systems.

Either way, car dealers need to do better for their customers when it comes to instructing them on how to use the infotainment systems that come with cars. It shouldn’t fall to a third party like me to do this for them as it leaves the customer with the impression that this isn’t something that matters that dealers. That’s not good, and needs to change sooner rather than later for the benefit of all concerned.

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Guest Post: MailRoute Explains How To Secure Your Email If You’re Working From Home During The Coronavirus Outbreak

Posted in Commentary with tags on March 11, 2020 by itnerd

“During SARS, in 2003, I was working in Hong Kong and we were sent home with our enormous desktop computers. We were completely unprepared to be working from home for months,” says Rachel Plecas of MailRoute Email Security Solutions, leaders in email security and continuity.

“Businesses – and the bad actors who threaten them with spam and viruses – are far more sophisticated in 2020. All companies must be proactive and mitigate risk to business disruption right now, and your biggest vulnerability is probably your email.”
Security, speed, backup and streamlined workflow must all be considered.
Securing a home network to your office-network’s I.T. standards is hard when working via your residential ISP. More companies are choosing to send workers home during the Coronavirus infection, as governments and public-health officials rush to determine best practices for the health of all citizens, which means increased traffic across home networks.

Greg Caplain of alt-work facilitator RemoteYear.com shared that 51% of people report working at least part time remotely and as many as 31% of people are working at least 80% of the time remotely, before the virus outbreak. Chances are some people in your office already work remotely some or all of the time, so these tips apply to all employees.

TIP #1: Confirm Your Connection
Confirm that you’re using an IMAP or SMTP connection. MailRoute founder and CEO Thomas Johnson explains: “For email, make sure that you have enabled TLS/SSL for your IMAP, POP, and SMTP connections in your email client. Keep your communications private.”

TIP #2: Separate Your Work Email from Personal Email
Consider using a different computer, or at the very least, a different login and user account for your work and personal uses. It’s not uncommon for malware to come in from a personal email, and then infect a corporate network.

TIP #3: Don’t Trust Open Networks
Avoid public WiFi. Consider using your phone as a personal hotspot instead.
Here are more tips from the experts on remote or distributed work environments:
“Culture is so much more than what goes on in an office. It’s really the sum of what everyone does all the time — all those little decisions, the way people communicate, the way people text, expectations for how you reply to things, how meetings happen.” — Matt Mullenweg, founder of Word Press on “Distributed” podcast.

“The truth is, just because somebody’s at their desk in front of a computer typing away or whatever they’re doing, it doesn’t mean they’re working. The only way to tell if somebody is doing their work is to look at the work itself: It’s words, it’s graphic design, it’s programming, it’s customer service. It’s things that you can evaluate from far away. You’ve got to look at the work at the end of the day.” – Jason Fried, cofounder and CEO of Basecamp.

“The office during the day has become the last place people want to be when they really want to get work done. In fact, offices have become interruption factories. A busy office is like a food processor — it chops your day into tiny bits. Fifteen minutes here, ten minutes there, twenty here, five there. Each segment is filled with a conference call, a meeting, another meeting, or some other institutionalized unnecessary interruption.” –Cole Stryker, “Distributed”.

“Heading over to the computer first thing after you wake up — or worse, pulling it into bed with you — is a mistake. I know: You just want to fire off one quick thing. But I promise, you’ll get sucked in. And getting sucked in at 6 or 7 AM means you’ll have put in a 10-hour day by 4 or 5 PM. Do that all week, and you’re bound to burn out,” declares Liz Presson, remote-working expert and founder of WorkingRemote.ly

About MailRoute:
MailRoute was founded in 2003 by the team that created the first email-filtering service (sold to Microsoft as their first cloud offering). The company is privately held and owner-operated by the leading team of innovators in this industry.

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Citrix Announced As A Leader In Virtual Client Computing

Posted in Commentary with tags on March 11, 2020 by itnerd

Citrix Systems, Inc. has announced that it has been named a leader in virtual client computing (VCC) solutions in the recently published IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Virtual Client Computing 2019-2020 Vendor Assessment (Doc #US45752419, January 2020).

Designed to assess the market for VCC solutions, the report evaluated 10 vendors on two key criteria: strategy and product capabilities. Citrix was identified as a Leader for the:

  • Alignment of its strategy with expected market trends over the next five years and ability to adapt to unanticipated changes.
  • Completeness and competence of its core functionality and competence of extended functionality.

A Unified Platform for Work

The company was specifically recognized for leveraging Citrix® Virtual Apps and Desktops alongside its network, endpoint management and security offerings to create an integrated, user-centric digital workspace. According to IDC analyst Shannon Kalvar, “This unified platform allows for rapid innovation.”

A Modern Solution Built on Flexibility and Choice

The assessment also called out Citrix’s investments in hybrid cloud enablement and management of virtual apps and desktops, including traditional on-premise offerings and hosted solutions, along with integrations with public cloud vendors. “Combined with recent innovations in Citrix’s HDX streaming protocols, the Citrix platform can support a wide range of deployment scenarios and workload locations,” Kalvar noted.

A True Digital Workspace

Together with Citrix Workspace™, Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops goes beyond traditional desktop virtualization, enabling companies to serve up personalized access to the systems, information and tools their employees need in one, unified experience and dynamically apply security policies based on a user’s behavior and environment so they can work when, where and how they want with the confidence that their applications, information and devices are safe.

To learn more about Citrix solutions and the value they can deliver for your organization, click here. To download a complimentary copy of the IDC report, click here.

 

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Aptum Partners With Alert Logic And Delivers Managed Detection & Response Solution To Customers

Posted in Commentary on March 10, 2020 by itnerd

Aptum, a global hybrid cloud and managed services provider, today announced its partnership with Alert Logic to deliver the market-defining Alert Logic managed detection and response (MDR) solution to Aptum’s global customers. With this partnership, Aptum becomes the first partner to offer Alert Logic’s MDR solution in Canada.

Managed detection and response providers enable proactive detection capabilities that allow organizations to quickly identify cyber threats, and deliver higher levels of support with remediation and response guidance. Alert Logic provides managed detection and response capabilities to help businesses extend understaffed security teams through a unique combination of award-winning technology platform, continuous threat research and analytics, and round-the-clock security experts.

Alert Logic is the industry’s first SaaS-enabled managed detection and response (MDR) provider, delivering unrivaled security value. Since no level of investment prevents or blocks 100% of attacks, you need to continuously identify and address breaches or gaps before they cause real damage. With limited budget and expertise, this level of security can seem out of reach. Alert Logic’s purpose-built technology and team of MDR security experts protect your organization and empower you to resolve whatever threats may come. Founded in 2002, Alert Logic is headquartered in Houston, Texas, with offices in Austin, Cardiff, London, and Cali, Colombia, and online at alertlogic.com.

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Review: ASUS ZenWiFi AC (CT8)

Posted in Products with tags on March 10, 2020 by itnerd

Mesh WiFi continues to be the go to type of WiFi router for consumers as you can ensure that you have complete coverage for your home. ASUS has a new product for those who need mesh WiFi in their home. That’s the ASUS ZenWiFi AC (CT8):

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Now unlike many of these devices, I like how good this node looks. It will fit in with any decor. You get two of these nodes in the box. The other thing that I notice is that it is very functional:

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The ZenWiFi AC comes with 3 Gigabit Ethernet LAN ports and a USB port. And both nodes have them. That allows you to use them in a variety of use cases. The USB port is for file sharing and/or printer sharing on the network.

The setup process of the ZenWiFi AC is very simple by using the ASUS Router app. The app can automatically detects the mesh WiFi system over a Bluetooth connection. Just connect one unit to the modem and turn both units on. Once both units are booted up, you can use the ASUS Router app to setup the system. I configured the ZenWiFi AC (CT8) to be used in my condo with one node in my den and another one in the living room. The result was that I had 100% coverage in terms my 800 ish square foot condo. The other thing that I noticed is that I was able to get roughly 600 Mbps sustained speeds regardless of where I was in my condo. And that speed consistently. I also noticed that the experience was seamless. I was able to walk through my condo and the ZenWiFi AC seamlessly switched between nodes. So if it works in my use case, it will work for houses up to 5400 square feet in size.

Now this router is highly configurable and the nodes are accessible via the router app, or via a web page which is really good for nerds like me as the advanced features are available via the latter. You also get a pile of security to keep you safe via AiProtection Pro. And it supports Amazon Alexa and IFTTT

Gripes? It would be nice to have the Gigabit Ethernet LAN ports to be bondable so that you can get extra speed from a NAS or something. But I will have to admit that I am really being nerdy at this point. The ZenWiFi AC is a great product which you can pick up for roughly $450 CDN for two nodes. If you need WiFi across your home, the ZenWiFi AC deserves a good hard look.

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Shadowy NSO Group Fails To Show In Court To Defend Itself From Charges That It Hacked Smartphones Via WhatsApp

Posted in Commentary with tags on March 9, 2020 by itnerd

Readers of my blog may have heard me talk about The NSO Group. This is a company based in Israel that acquires exploits and sells them to some pretty repressive regimes for the purposes of spying on their citizens and those who are critical of said regimes. They’ve been fingered as being behind exploits in iOS that allegedly ensnared Jeff Bezos and WhatsApp. And it’s the latter that made Facebook who owns WhatsApp sue the NSO Group after a an exploit in WhatsApp was used to go after some dissidents and journalists. The NSO Group at the time promised to “vigorously” defend itself in court. The thing is that according to this story in Harretz, The NSO Group didn’t show up:

WhatsApp has taken a step toward winning its widely publicized lawsuit against the NSO Group after the Israeli spyware merchant failed to show up in court, according to a notice of default entered Monday in California.

And:

NSO promised to “vigorously fight” the allegations, but the firm was a no-show in the Northern District of California, where the case was filed.

Legal documents filed by WhatsApp detail repeated efforts to serve the company with legal documents, including emails to senior executives, FedEx-delivered copies to NSO board members, and even a hand-delivered copy of the suit left with NSO cofounder Omri Lavie’s wife at their New Jersey home.

Though a report in Bloomberg has the company singing a different tune:

“WhatsApp prematurely moved for default before properly serving NSO Group with the lawsuit,” a spokesman for the Israeli company said in a statement. “As NSO Group has not been formally served, this default notice will not stand. We cannot comment further about this ongoing matter.”

Well, that’s an interesting statement from a company who could have said the above in court but chose not to for whatever reason. In any case, expect the screws to turn on The NSO Group as I suspect it’s going to get harder and harder for them to avoid having to show up in court and answer questions about what they do and who they sell to.

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OpenText Buys Montreal’s Xmedius

Posted in Commentary with tags on March 9, 2020 by itnerd

OpenText™ today announced that it has acquired XMedius, a provider of secure information exchange and unified communication solutions. XMedius brings decades of experience and patented technologies to transform secure and collaborative communication, enabling organizations to move more workloads to the cloud and unlock the information advantage.

XMedius also provides innovative technologies to optimize the omnichannel customer experience and the connected business. These solutions will complement OpenText’s Customer Experience Management (CEM) and Business Network (BN) platforms. More information on XMedius can be found on http://www.xmedius.com/.

Terms of Agreement and Preliminary Outlook

The purchase price of the acquisition is approximately $75 million in an all-cash transaction. XMedius currently generates approximately $40 million annually in revenue. OpenText expects first year revenues to be down, up to 20% due to customary purchase price accounting adjustments and typical integration activities. XMedius is not expected to contribute significant revenue to OpenText’s results for the fiscal third quarter ending March 31, 2020.

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EcoWake: An Alarm Clock App That Plants Trees If You Wake Up On Time

Posted in Commentary with tags on March 9, 2020 by itnerd

EcoWake is an alarm clock app that rewards users by planting trees in real life when they wake up on time.

App overhead2.jpg

EcoWake empowers users to wake up on time through the use of a unique type of gamification  – every day you wake up on time, you earn seeds towards planting trees in your virtual forest on the app, which EcoWake then turns into real trees planted through partnerships with tree-planting organizations around the world. 

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Tree planting is one of the most effective ways that the world can combat climate change. With EcoWake, you can now take an everyday, normal activity (waking up to an alarm) and start saving the world!

EcoWake is available on both the iOS App Store and the Google Play Store. It is free to download, allowing you to plant one tree per month. A premium $5/month account allows you to plant up to 10 trees per month. 

How the tree-planting works:

  1. User downloads the app
  2. User earns 30 seeds for waking up on time 3 days in a row
  3. User plants a tree in their virtual forest
  4. EcoWake (at the end of month) calculates how many trees have been planted and donates the requisite amount of funds to edenprojects.org to ensure those trees are planted responsibly and effectively

More information available at https://ecowakeapp.com

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