Tip of the Week: Understanding Your 2FA Options

 Regardless of how airtight your organization’s password policies are, relying on passwords as your exclusive security measure just isn’t enough to resist some of today’s threats. This is why we—along with most other industry and security experts—recommend that two-factor authentication (2FA) be put into place. Let’s review some of the options available for your 2FA, and the added security it can introduce, for this week’s tip.

First of all, we should clarify something: any 2FA is better than relying on a password alone. There are three ways for a password to be undermined, after all. It could be stolen, guessed, or cracked through software. Boosting your security with an additional confirmation of your identity gives those who would attack one of your accounts an extra hurdle to clear, which is why you should embrace every opportunity to use it… especially in the professional setting.

What Kinds of 2FA Are There?

There are a few different varieties of 2FA you can choose from.

SMS

Basically, when you try to login into an account, a secondary code is sent to your mobile device for you to provide. Not only is this a convenient and user-friendly option, but it is also accessible thanks to how often people will have their mobile device in the vicinity (if not on their person). While not the most secure option available thanks to phishing attacks, using text-based 2FA is still a safer option than foregoing 2FA altogether.

Apps

Authentication applications function by kicking out a refreshed code every minute or so that must be input into the requested field before the time expires. As a result, the mobile device serves as an extra key that the person accessing a resource needs in order to open it. Again banking on the near-symbiotic relationship many people develop with their mobile devices, the tradeoff here is that the device needs to be powered on and ideally present… so forgetting the phone at home could seriously hinder productivity.

Hardware

You know that key analogy we made with the authentication apps? Modern hardware authentication solutions are the more literal interpretation of this concept. Requiring the user to plug a token or a USB dongle into their hardware or press a button on the device, this method has surged in popularity with phishing and other scams being so commonly used. While these keys have a price, it is comparatively small to what a data breach could result in.

Biometrics

We’ve all seen the spy films, where an authority figure accesses a super-secret lair or lab by having their iris scanned, their handprint analyzed, and other similar tests. Biometric authentication is the practical application of that and is now found on devices as common as a smartphone. While useful, its convenience can be tempered by some solutions being less accurate than others.

The Best Option for You is the One You’ll Use

It’s really as simple as that. While the above options aren’t all as secure as the others, they each are undoubtedly better when the alternative is protecting your precious data with a crackable password.

The FCC is Using an App to Fix Internet Inequality

 Connectivity to high-speed, broadband Internet has quickly transitioned from a convenient luxury to a practical need for personal life and business alike. Considering this, it seems amazing that Internet access isn’t nearly as equally distributed as the need for it is. However, the Federal Communications Commission is calling on the public to help them change that by downloading an application that they first released in 2013: FCC Speed Test.

Is Broadband Accessibility So Important?

Look at it this way: how much do you do every day that requires some form of Internet connectivity? Between shopping, consuming entertainment, keeping in touch with people, and (as we tend to focus on) working remotely, it’s becoming rare that something doesn’t involve Internet access nowadays.

However, while this is the reality for many, just as many don’t have the opportunity to take advantage of the Internet for much at all, simply due to the lack of broadband connectivity in their region. To try and correct this, the FCC has taken action, reinvigorating their Speed Test application and campaigning for people to install it.

What Does FCC Speed Test Do?

Assuming that enough people put the application to use, the FCC can use the app to collect data specifically concerning the quality of Internet services in different areas. Once this data is compiled, it will help inform them where the most pressing investments need to be made and their available funds divided up accordingly.

By analyzing a Wi-Fi or mobile network’s baselines, including its upload speeds, download speeds, and latency, the app helps collect reliable data directly from the source: the networks being evaluated. While these evaluations run once every 24 hours by default, their schedule and data usage can be adjusted to fit your needs.

The app will also test connection speeds, giving users a visual representation of where they stood at different times and in different locations. While FCC Speed Test does collect some data (including location, IP address, device type, operating system, and ISP) none of it is personally identifiable to the user.

Android users and those running iOS alike can use the app. If you’d like to learn more, we encourage you to visit the FCC’s FAQ page about it.

Hopefully, these kinds of actions will bring a more accessible Internet to those areas lacking it, helping businesses and individual users alike. What do you think about these efforts? Is this an app you’d be willing to download? Share your thoughts in the comments!

Cyberattacks are Happening Faster with Less Time for Early Detection

 In what sounds like a positive shift, cybersecurity experts have announced their research has found that cyberattacks are spending less time on the networks they infiltrate. Unfortunately, this isn’t such a clear-cut positive. Today, we’ll discuss “dwell time” and how less of it is a problem. 

What Is Dwell Time?

Dwell time is a term that’s used a lot in technology. Typically, it is used to measure how long a user stays on a particular webpage, but in this context it is the duration a threat comes in contact with the network’s filter before it is detected by the software or a technician. You may be surprised to learn that in the latter context, the median dwell time for malicious code is 24 days. This may seem like an eternity, but just 10 years ago the median dwell time of a threat was well over a year at 416 days.

It’s reasonable to assume that since people are more cognizant of web-based threats and therefore are investing more time and money into cybersecurity initiatives, that the number would shrink rapidly. It stands to reason that the shorter the dwell time is, the more apt a program designed to catch cybersecurity threats would be able to quarantine and eliminate the threat, right? Unfortunately, it’s not so simple. 

New Threats Complicate Things

Many of the attacks we see today are far more sophisticated than they were a decade ago. Threats like ransomware, for instance, are now used more today, and dwell time isn’t as big of an issue. In fact, while your average attack method has a dwell time of 45 days, ransomware’s average is just five before it is deployed and causes you to be locked out of your files or systems. Ransomware doesn’t sit on the network, it is deployed and devastates quickly.

Ransomware Is More Sophisticated

Today more hackers are deploying more ransomware than ever and it’s a major point of emphasis that every network administrator should understand. Not only that, ransomware tactics are becoming more aggressive. Now there is a situation called a “multifaceted extortion” where ransomware is deployed and instead of deleting or stealing the data, they threaten to publish it publicly. Most organizations would do anything to keep their intellectual property and the sensitive information of their clients, vendors, and workers confidential.

It’s Not Just Ransomware

Network administrators need to be aware that it’s not just ransomware they have to be on the lookout for. Unpatched software exploits have exponentially risen recently. In fact, over one-quarter of all hacks (29 percent) happen because hackers find an exploit in a business’ network. Phishing, which is often cited as the most dangerous hacking method only accounts for 23 percent. 

Prepare Your Business’ Network

With the threat landscape the way it is, it is important that you diligently patch your software, keep your tools updated and actively train your employees to help you keep threats off your network. At Net It On, we can help. Give us a call at (732) 360-2999 to learn more about how to ensure your business can navigate through the minefield that’s out there today.

YouTube Can Help Take Your Business Where You Want It to Go

 I think if you took a deep look at it that you are probably paying too much to train your employees. If you account for the cost of the resources and the time it takes to properly train someone, you are talking a substantial amount of money. There is a way to use YouTube to subsidize your training practices and get the information you need your new employees to see more cost-effectively. 

YouTube and Your Business

Let’s not take a lot of time telling you about YouTube. If you don’t know what YouTube is you are in for a rude awakening once you see it. YouTube has billions of videos and that is a good thing for people. You can learn how to fix your car, care for your houseplants, or format that screenplay that has been in your OneDrive for the past ten years. For this reason, it is a great resource for business, as well as something that you need to keep an eye on.

YouTube can end up costing your business quite a bit too.

Anyone that has been on YouTube knows that there are literally millions of hours of videos about any topic important to any human being. It’s a lot of content. In fact, according to Google, the parent company of YouTube, nearly five billion videos are watched on YouTube every day. This is why many organizations have chosen to block or limit the use of YouTube. 720,000 hours of new video content is updated every day, and a lot of it is video game and movie reviews.

So, How Can I Use YouTube to Improve My Business?

There are many ways to use YouTube to your business’ benefit, but we’re not going to get into marketing and content creation here. Really, all we want to impress on you is that no matter what your business does, there is a literal library of content out there that, if you use it properly, can be beneficial to your business. 

Using existing YouTube content can help you educate your staff about your type of business goals, your culture, your market, the services you provide your customers, customer relationships, physical and cybersecurity, and much more. To do this, you’ll have to learn how to make a playlist. 

How Do I Make a Playlist?

Just as you would if you were making a music playlist, YouTube provides the ability to put together a playlist of videos. By choosing videos that can help improve the knowledge base of your staff, you can get them to quickly learn what you need them to learn to do their jobs more proficiently. Here’s how to do it:

1. You find a YouTube video you want to add.
2. Directly under the video, you will click the Add to button.
3. There will be a dropdown menu. Choose Create new playlist.
4. Enter a name for the playlist.
5. Choose any privacy settings you want to enact for the playlist. For businesses, we suggest unlisted.
6. Click create.

That’s it. Then you can add to the playlist by clicking on the Add to button under a video and placing it on the corresponding playlist. You will quickly find that the hardest part about building a playlist is watching content. Once your playlist is finished, however, you will reap the benefits as your staff will become more knowledgeable and start asking the right questions about how to do their jobs better. 

The Lessons to Learn from Coca-Cola’s Insider Trade Secret Theft

 In today’s business, your data is your number one asset. For this reason it is important that you take steps to protect it. One case that accentuates this is the case of Xiaorong You, which is currently playing out in a Tennessee court. The accused is charged with stealing trade secrets and committing corporate espionage, as she is accused of allegedly stealing almost $120 million worth of BPA-free technologies from several companies, among them the Eastman Chemical Company and Coca-Cola.

Let’s take a look at how these two companies deployed their threat detection systems and the effect they had on the companies. 

You’s Story

Xiaorong “Shannon” You, a naturalized US citizen and Ph.D. in Polymer Science and Engineering, has worked at several companies since the early ‘90s. From December of 2012 to August of 2017, she worked for Coca-Cola as a principal engineer for global research, moving to the Eastman Chemical Company to work as a packaging application development manager from September of 2017 until June of 2018, when her employment was terminated.

During her tenure at both companies, You was given access to many trade secrets that only a handful of employees were privy to. In the indictment, You is charged with retaining these secrets (despite affirming that she hadn’t in writing) and then handing them over to the People’s Republic of China in an attempt to qualify for its The Thousand Talents program. This program has been used before to introduce advanced technologies to China, with the Department of Justice having prosecuted some cases similar to You’s.

Her modus operandi was that she retained this information by simply uploading data to her personal Google Drive account or captured especially sensitive information on her smartphone. Once she captured this data, You worked with a Chinese national named Xiangchen Liu to form a separate company in China that went ahead to use these trade secrets to begin revenue generation. They allegedly used an Italian BPA-free manufacturer to incorporate the stolen technologies onto their own products.

The theft of this information impacted several companies, including Coca-Cola and The Eastman Chemical Company, AkzoNobel, Dow Chemical, PPG, TSI, Sherwin Williams, and ToyoChem. This led to the charges she currently faces.

How You’s Employers Could Have Stopped Such Activities

There were stark differences between the way that Coca-Cola and The Eastman Chemical Company handled these issues. You left Coca-Cola in August of 2017, but her indictment states that the crimes she’s charged with didn’t happen until 2019. This means that Coca-Cola had no knowledge of the theft until after she had been exposed by her later employer. 

This fact is indicative of two reasonable hypotheses:

1. Coca-Cola lacked the tools to detect such activities in real-time, making it far more difficult to prevent protected and sensitive data from successfully leaving the corporate environment.
2. Coca-Cola also lacked the policies that could have prevented non-authorized devices from entering the workspace or otherwise being kept in proximity to sensitive company data or infrastructures. While old-fashioned, the concept of taking photographs of such information is no less effective for its age.

If you compare that to You’s sudden dismissal from the Eastman Chemical Company, you would have to consider that they had the data protection standards implemented to catch would-be thieves pretty rapidly.  If they hadn’t, the $120 million in trade secrets could have been substantially more. 

This just goes to show that any business can have the right idea about security, but not pay close enough attention to the details. Coca-Cola is a massive brand, but it couldn’t stop You from allegedly raking the company over the coals. 

Smart Technology Can Actually Help You to Streamline Your Business

 A lot has been made about smart technology over the past few years with one major takeaway: it is far too risky to deploy. Security problems with Internet of Things (IoT) devices have been widely discussed and it has kept organizations from deploying technology that can really help their business. Let’s take a look at some of the technologies that your business can use to streamline your operations.

Smart Technology Gets Smarter Through AI

Before we get into specific business solutions, we should mention that many of today’s smart technologies utilize some form of AI to help them be effective in business situations. AI typically does one thing extremely well: fuels successful automation. Obviously, this benefits both the operational-level workforce and the business as a whole. The whole point in deploying these smart technologies is as a subsidy to your current workforce to help them do their jobs better and focus on the right things to help generate revenue. 

Security

One of the best ways to invest in smart technology is to use it to enhance the capabilities of your security systems. Not only are there smart physical security tools that typically come with door, window, and motion sensors that alert business owners and managers immediately when there is unauthorized activity, there are also technologies that are built to alert decision makers when HVAC systems aren’t working optimally. Additionally, AI can be used to improve your operational cybersecurity as well as using the same general principles. 

Utility Management

Businesses can save up to 15-to-20 percent on their utility bills with the use of smart thermostats and lighting. These technologies can be set on a schedule or even detect usage and modulate electricity consumption. With more businesses going to more flexible work schedules, they are a great way to save some money without having to constantly pay attention to the in-office environment. 

Digital Assistants

I know what you’re thinking: “You're not going to tell me that Alexa can help my business.” That’s exactly what I’m saying. These apps may not be all the way there now, but they do offer some pretty solid features. They are probably most effective as a hub to manage all the other smart devices you may use, but they can also be used (with integrations) to schedule meetings, set up correspondence, and quickly access information.

Other Internet of Things Devices

There are all types of innovative devices that have been produced over the past few years that are designed to help people manage their tasks. From wearable devices like smartwatches to connected devices inside your printer that tell you when your ink/toner is low, to RFID tags that can help manage inventory, the IoT can fuel a culture of efficiency in and around your business.

Technology is Changing the Way We Look at Productivity

 The concept of productivity isn’t what it used to be. It has evolved significantly over time. In fact, it wasn’t until the late 16th century, where subsistence living was less frequent, where the term started to mean what we know it to mean today. Today, we’ll take a look at how the modern definition of productivity came about.

Changes in Technology Fueled a Reimagining of Productivity

The life of a worker in the late 16th and 17th centuries wasn’t always so much to bring home a paycheck, it was to sustain their lives and the lives of their families. With no refrigeration, no electricity, food had to be acquired and prepared in short order. Even after people started moving to cities and forgoing the subsistence life, most of their time was trying to secure shelter and food. 

Birth of Modern Productivity

By the end of the 18th century, global trade had created demand for new goods and services. This is when you first start to see productivity mentioned regularly. In Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, he describes labor as:

• Productive labor, which produces added value
• Unproductive labor, which produces no additional value

Shortly thereafter, the polymathic Benjamin Franklin developed his own philosophy of productivity that asked the questions that modern productivity is centered around:

• “The morning question, What good shall I do this day?”
• “Evening question, What good have I done today?”

These questions and the development of new technologies that would change the world went a long way toward creating the definition of productivity that we know today. In fact, one could say that the more technologically advanced society has become, the more apt people are to reference productivity. Take into account that initially slave labor was used and then for half a century low-wage workers (many of a very young age) toiled in unsafe conditions before labor unions pushed for protective measures.

The Shift to Modern Productivity

After the turn of the 20th century, what could only be described as the predecessor of today’s efficiency guru was born. Thought leaders such as Franky Winslow “Speedy” Taylor and Frank and Lillian Gilbreth (yes, the ones from Cheaper by the Dozen) started a movement that has since grown into a massive industry of management consultants. 

For much of the early 20th century, productivity was looked on as a patriotic duty as workers toiled through the first two World Wars and the Great Depression. This expanded productivity to women, who up until this point, were looked on more as domestic caretakers than workers. 

Food, which was the major driving force behind work just centuries ago, has transformed to adjust for more productivity elsewhere. The TV dinner was developed in the 1950s and the invention of the microwave oven only made those prepackaged and easy-to-make meals more of a mainstay in homes. This also revolutionized the ability for food chains to make food quickly. This led to the explosion of fast-food chains starting in the mid-1970s.

The Development of the PC

Computers changed the world. With the development of computers that you can use to expand productivity, and then computers that you could take on the go, you’ve seen a complete shift in the way that people categorize productivity. 

Where to Go from Here

Now that we have superior tools to be productive with and new applications that are using technologies like artificial intelligence to automate tasks that people are slower to accomplish, productivity should be higher than ever. It has plateaued in many instances, however. This can be explained by the amount of distractions available to the average worker. If it wasn’t for automation, we’d probably be falling deeper into recession. 

Productivity Reexamined

Getting back to the definition shift of productivity, there is currently a shift prioritizing value over the core metric of output. This is because workers today are extremely undervalued by many organizations and they need to establish guidelines to lure workers into being more productive than in previous generations. Workers want to be productive, but they also don’t want to work for as long and as hard as the people they’ve replaced. That’s why value is so important in today’s workplace. 

Don’t mistake this shift for one that doesn’t measure output. Output is still important, but value of work is much more important with the technological options available to companies today. Businesses are more focused on doing the right things over doing a lot of things that don’t add value to the workers, the executives, and most importantly, the customers. 

The Journey, Not the Destination

Today’s productivity standards aim to balance the means with the ends. Today, it’s all about the experience, whether that be at work or as a customer. In a way, it builds meaning to the work that is being done and makes this work more tolerable to people who have shorter attention spans.

Collaboration

One of the biggest shifts we’ve seen in productivity is that most things today are approached as a team. Since people enjoy their work more when they aren’t being micromanaged, companies have structured work environments that require contributions from many people instead of a few. Essentially it is an assembly line where people are in constant contact with each other. Building trust with your team goes a long way toward giving modern workers the fulfillment they need out of a job that takes over a large portion of their waking hours.