Archive for June 23, 2021

#RIP John McAfee

Posted in Commentary with tags on June 23, 2021 by itnerd

Eccentric software mogul John McAfee has apparently died today in a Spanish prison. He was best known for a suite of antivirus programs that bore his name. According to McAfee’s lawyer, who confirmed details of his death to Reuters, the British-born technology trailblazer hanged himself in his Barcelona prison cell. This was just after he was approved to be extradited to the USA to face trial for tax evasion and fraud. Now if you want a history of what he did, and why he got into trouble, this Wikipedia article can help with that.

Rest in peace.

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Guest Post: Atlas VPN Says That Over 60% Of fraudsters Request Gift Cards In Business Emails Scams; eBay, Google Play Cards Most Popular

Posted in Commentary with tags on June 23, 2021 by itnerd

According to data presented by the Atlas VPN team, gift cards were the preferred payment method for 64% of fraudsters who used attacks to compromise business emails in the second half of 2020. 

eBay gift cards were the most popular, with nearly a quarter (24%) of cybercriminals requesting eBay gift vouchers as a form of payment. 

Google Play gift cards ranked second on the list. They were the gift card of choice of 15.5% of hackers involved in BEC attacks in the second half of last year. 

Google Play is followed by its competitor iTunes. Apple’s iTune gift cards were sought after by close to 12% of cybercriminals in H2 2020. 

On average, hackers demanded about $1,270 worth of gift cards per BEC attack. However, 22% of cybercriminals preferred wire transfers over gift cards as a payment method in BEC attacks. In the meantime, 10% of hackers preferred payroll diversion.  

Ruth Cizynski, the cybersecurity researcher and author at Atlas VPN, shares her thoughts on why gift cards are so popular with BEC attackers: 

“Gift cards make for a perfect payment method to scammers and hackers. Unlike, for example, wire transfers, payments in gift cards can not be easily tracked back to criminals.”

Gmail is the most popular domain among BEC scammers 

Frequently, scammers choose free email domains to carry out their attacks. It appears that the most popular webmail account Gmail was also the most favored among cybercriminals for BEC attacks in the second half of 2020. Overall, 61% of BEC hackers choose Gmail to conduct attacks. 

Other popular email domains for BEC attacks include Cox (6%), Naver (5%), Seznam.cz(4.5%), Earthlink (3%), Virgin Media (2%), Optimum.net (2%), Mail.ru (2%), and Roadrunner (1%). 

To read the full article, head over to: https://atlasvpn.com/blog/over-60-of-fraudsters-request-gift-cards-in-business-emails-scams-ebay-google-play-cards-most-popular

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ELEVATE Chooses Procore for Construction Management Software

Posted in Commentary with tags on June 23, 2021 by itnerd

Procore Technologies, Inc., a leading provider of construction management software, today announced that ELEVATE Build has chosen Procore as its construction management platform.

ELEVATE was founded in 2019 and specializes in creating high-end commercial spaces, including Alchemy, a Toronto retailer recently featured in Interior Design Magazine. The company delivers projects across Canada and the U.S. 

After trialing other solutions, ELEVATE chose the Procore platform for its complete feature set, flexibility and fast onboarding. Paul Bélanger, ELEVATE’s principal and project director, estimates that Procore will save the company about $45,000 (CAD) each year by streamlining administrative work. With Procore, ELEVATE is able to provide clients with frequent updates about project finances, confident that no details have been missed.

While ELEVATE initially implemented Procore to leverage financial and project management tools, the company continues to discover new ways to use the platform to innovate and improve day-to-day operations.

Procore is a leading provider of construction management software. Over 1 million projects and more than $1 trillion USD in construction volume have run on Procore’s platform. Procore’s platform connects key project stakeholders to solutions Procore has built specifically for the construction industry—for the owner, the general contractor, and the specialty contractor. Procore’s Marketplace has a multitude of partner solutions that integrate seamlessly with Procore’s platform, giving construction professionals the freedom to connect with what works best for them. Headquartered in Carpinteria, California, Procore has offices in the United States, Canada and around the globe. Learn more at Procore.com.

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AWS & Salesforce Announce Expansive Partnership To Unify Developer Experiences & Launch New Intelligent Applications

Posted in Commentary with tags on June 23, 2021 by itnerd

Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) and Salesforce today announced a significant expansion of their global strategic partnership that will make it easy for customers to use the full set of Salesforce and AWS capabilities together to quickly build and deploy powerful new business applications that accelerate digital transformation.

The partnership will drive customer value through new and enhanced unification between AWS and Salesforce products. Developers will now be able to build and launch custom applications that extend the power of both platforms by connecting Salesforce data and workflows natively into their solutions running on AWS, and make it easy for Salesforce developers to integrate AWS data and workflows into their Salesforce applications. Salesforce will also embed AWS services for voice, video, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML) directly in new applications for sales, service, and industry vertical use cases. With these new offerings, customers can purchase out-of-the-box solutions directly from Salesforce and then consume the integrated AWS services on a pay-as-you-go basis.

Organizations from around the world rely on Salesforce to manage their customer relationships and build new applications leveraging the Salesforce platform, while using AWS for their compute, storage, and database needs along with AWS technologies like Amazon Connect (an omnichannel cloud contact center), Amazon Redshift (a fully managed, petabyte-scale data warehouse service in the cloud), and AWS Lambda (a serverless compute service that enables customers to run code without provisioning or managing servers). Previously, significant custom integration code was often required for customers that wanted to combine AWS and Salesforce capabilities for their applications. These new offerings will enable customers to use AWS and Salesforce services together seamlessly through new, unified platforms. The companies have also collaborated on new low-code tools to help customers innovate and build applications that connect data in real-time between Salesforce applications and AWS services.

Unifying the Developer Experience

  • Create custom business applications faster and easier: New low-code and click-to-launch development tools will accelerate the creation of custom applications, built on top of Salesforce and AWS services. Salesforce’s point-and-click development tools will operate directly on data from AWS services like Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) or Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), as if the data were native in Salesforce.
  • Unleash the power of customer data with real-time events: By natively connecting AWS’s services with the Salesforce platform, real-time data will securely move between the two providers, allowing customers to more easily automate workflow and maintain a single view of the end customer.
  • Simplify security, identity and access management: A new guided setup experience will make it easier for customers to bring Salesforce products and AWS services together. Sign into AWS from Salesforce Setup or into Salesforce from the AWS Management Console to simplify service authorization, user identity, security, permissions, and data management and governance between Salesforce and AWS.

New Intelligent Applications

  • Sell, service, and engage smarter from anywhere: Customers will be able to innovate quickly with pre-built out-of-the-box applications and add-ons that leverage AWS services for voice, video, and productivity with AI/ML functionality. For example, customers can activate virtual call centers and empower high-velocity sales teams with Amazon Connect and AWS AI/ML services, pre-integrated into both Sales Cloud and Service Cloud.
  • Launch industry-specific customer solutions: Customers will be able to deliver new digital experiences and services to remain ahead of industry disruption by leveraging AWS technologies like Amazon Chime SDK (embedded real-time communication capabilities), Amazon Textract (intelligent data extraction from scanned documents), Amazon Comprehend (natural language processing to uncover information in text), and others directly within Salesforce Industry Clouds. Starting with a telehealth solution, Healthcare customers can deploy an intelligent virtual care platform to deliver personalized patient experiences.

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Darktrace Reports Rapid Growth in Canada

Posted in Commentary with tags on June 23, 2021 by itnerd

Darktrace, a leading autonomous cyber security AI company, today reported that its Canadian customer base has grown substantially over the last year, as organizations across the country seek to protect themselves from increasingly sophisticated cyber-attacks. Significant customer wins in Canada include global retailer Herschel Supply Co., leading Quebec-based brokerage firm Lussier Dale Parizeau (LDP), the City of Sudbury, non-profit United Way of Calgary and Area, and Canucks Sports & Entertainment. 

Powered by self-learning Cyber AI, the Darktrace Immune System works by learning the normal ‘pattern of life’ of an organization and can interrupt in-progress attacks across increasingly complex digital infrastructures, including the cloud, email and home office environments. Organizations across the region have not only embraced AI to understand where threatening activity is happening, but also now trust the technology to stop attacks from evolving within a matter of seconds, before security teams are even at their desks.  

Darktrace is a leading autonomous cyber security AI company and the creator of Autonomous Response technology. It provides comprehensive, enterprise-wide cyber defense to over 4,700 organizations in over 100 countries, protecting the cloud, email, IoT, traditional networks, endpoints and industrial systems. 

A self-learning technology, Darktrace AI autonomously detects, investigates and responds to advanced cyber-threats, including insider threat, remote working risks, ransomware, data loss and supply chain vulnerabilities. The company has 1,500 employees globally, with headquarters in Cambridge, UK. Every second, Darktrace AI detects a cyber-threat, preventing it from causing damage. 

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Cloudli Acquires Montreal-Based OMNIVIGIL

Posted in Commentary with tags on June 23, 2021 by itnerd

Cloudli Communications, a leading provider of voice, data and messaging solutions, today announced that it has acquired Omnivigil Solutions, a Quebec-based provider of innovative cloud PBX, mass notification and call center solutions. The acquisition enables Cloudli to expand its Canadian SMB customer base while integrating new flexible, feature-rich and customer-centric services.

With its integration of Omnivigil Solutions, Cloudli will offer enhanced business communications including expanded solution capabilities such as contact center, CRM and third-party integrations, responsive and high-quality support, and cost-effective pricing. Cloudli represents an attractive alternative to the incumbent business phone providers, helping Canadian SMBs stay ahead of the rapidly transforming communications landscape. 

Omnivigil has more than 1,800 customers and over 70 partners, with points of service extended throughout all provinces of Canada. Omnivigil maintains offices across Québec.

Read Gavin Macomber’s (President and CEO of Cloudli) blog on the acquisition of Omnivigil Solutions.

Cloudli Communications, Corp. delivers feature-rich communications solutions to businesses of all types and sizes, with a track record that spans decades. Today, our solutions include work-from-anywhere unified communications apps for SMBs, VoIP connectivity solutions optimized for businesses of any size and digital fax solutions that leverage new technologies without disrupting trusted and established workflows. Serving over 7,000 customers in the United States and Canada, Cloudli helps businesses across North America better communicate with their customers – how, where and when they want – without compromising security, reliability and efficiency.

For more than 10 years, Omnivigil has been developing advanced communications services and designing solutions to meet the needs of SMBs, municipalities, and government agencies. Omnivigil’s expertise and technology provides companies with optimized and innovative solutions to meet the growing needs in the field of telecommunications. Omnivigil has more than 1,800 customers and over 70 partners, with points of service extended throughout all provinces of Canada. Omnivigil’s offices are located across Québec.

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