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One from the vault, Brian talks with Trustifi CEO, Rom Hendler about the importance of email encryption to protect against Business Email Compromise.
Topic 1: Is “Patch and Zero Trust” Even Possible?
What does doing something different look like? How much do we need to rethink all this? Or, perhaps, is it possible to provide appropriate security at the small end of the market but impossible at the enterprise level?
With the explosion of IOT, security may in fact be impossible. If that’s true, what else can we do?
Topic 2: Status update on getting back to the Office
This is still an evolving story. Workers would like to stay home more; managers would like them to be in the office more. This might be the biggest change to come out of the pandemic/recession of 2020-2021.
Link: https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/16/your-boss-might-tell-you-the-office-is-more-secure-but-it-isnt/
Topic 3: Amazon “burning through” employees
What does this tell us about Amazon? And since they are a massive employer, does this massive turnover affect the larger employment market?
Employee churn is so high that some Amazon execs are reportedly worried about running out of people.
Links: https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-warehouse-turnover-worker-shortage-2021-6
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/06/15/us/amazon-workers.html
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Vendor Memo:
Did you know that the average MSP spends 10 hours manually inputting accounting data each week? That time is 120 prospect calls, a month’s worth of the Business of Tech, or building an entire lego death star. Gozynta Mobius can make your life easier through accounting automation. Automatic sync of invoices, expenses and inventory from ConnectWise Manage into QuickBooks Online in just a single click of a button.
With onboarding, direct support, and regular feature releases, Gozynta is a family owned company dedicated to making software suck a little less each day. Visit us at Gozynta.com
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Does your marketing message potentially open you up to liability? Are you appropriately protected in the event of a breach? Brad Gross, Technology Legal Expert and Ryan have a sobering conversation on providing a cybersecurity standard of care to your customers. In the event of a breach, can it equate to that of medical malpractice and do your agreements adequately communicate your scope of service?
Brad throws out a challenge to the listeners to check your agreements, specifically the section on Limitation of Liability and equate it to your specific customers. For help and some guidance in this area and a review of your agreements you can contact Brad directly through his website https://www.bradleygross.com/
Topic 1: FBI Creates Their own App to Snag Hundreds of Bad Guys Around the World
Yes – we use the word “Badass.”
We know you’ve heard about this one by now. But it’s the biggest cyber story of the year, so we have to cover it. Great article/press release from the FBI.
A few summary notes: 800 arrests; 8 tons of cocaine; 22 tons of marijuana; 2 tons of methamphetamine/amphetamine; 6 tons of precursor chemicals; 250 firearms; and more than $48 million in various worldwide currencies. On top of that, the FBI has initiated dozens of public corruption cases.
. . . and MORE!
Topic 2: AI Hall of Shame
Great new resource to help AI stay on the right side of “ethics.” The actual artificial intelligence database is at https://incidentdatabase.ai. This is intended to be a resource to remind us all that AI honestly has a potentially evil side that we need to keep track of.
https://www.wired.com/story/artificial-intelligence-hall-shame/
The database: https://incidentdatabase.ai/
Topic 3: Supreme Court Rules on Computer Fraud and Abuse Act
The ruling is, basically, that misusing a computer to which you have access is different from using a computer beyond the level of access you are supposed to have. The said that a police officer didn’t “hack” any part of the computer system. He merely used the computer he had access to to do something he shouldn’t have done.
Note two things. First, we have really old laws written before the web existed, and they are being used to regulate today’s behavior. Second, the courts, as a rule, do not understand what we do for a living. WE need to be involved in the way our industry is regulated.
https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/03/supreme-court-hacking-cfaa-ruling/
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Sponsor Note:
Are you still relying on a frustrating patchwork of legacy solutions? Modernize your cybersecurity and data protection with Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud. It’s a single solution that combines backup, anti-malware, and endpoint protection management. As an MSP, you can easily improve clients’ security posture, eliminate complexity, and generate more recurring revenue. Learn more about Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud at Acronis.com.
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With everything the world and in particular, IT Service Providers have been through in the last year, it’s difficult to imagine that we are still seeing objections and reluctance from SMB clients to embrace cybersecurity and protecting their businesses.
Ryan talks with Secure Now CEO, Art Gross about having clear and concise business conversations with customers….Taking a holistic approach to securing their businesses from establishing customer clarity and training their staff to cyber insurance. Spoiler alert….You can actually leverage a rigid stance on cyber insurance policies from underwriters to buttress your approach and drive services and budget! Selling on price could be the kiss of death in today’s environment.
Topic 1: Amazon devices will soon automatically share your Internet with neighbors.
Amazon introduces “sidewalk” network sharing.
This feature is ON by default. At this point, Amazon’s new mesh network sharing is experimental. How do you feel about that? Is this OK from Apple but not from Amazon?
Read in Ars Technica: https://apple.news/AfIgdLQgQRZyr-N3QGbK69A
Topic 2: The Era of the Digital Leash is well on its way. Now add some AI analysis.
Bosses putting a ‘digital leash’ on remote workers could be crossing a privacy line. We’ve reported about watching both students and employees. Now we find this constant monitoring moving into warehouses and more types of employees. We seriously question whether this is a good thing.
Read in CNBC:
https://apple.news/ATt9jvg7uR1ihlKylsRprMA
Topic 3: Emotion-tracking AI.
Even if we can, should we?
Emotion-detection AI meets eye-tracking technology. A major merger claims to be able to tell how you’re feeling (when driving).
The really interesting question is, what other applications could use this technology? AI that can recognize emotions has the ability to bring us more-social robots as well as improve customer service chatbots.
The emerging question with AI seems to be: Should we?
Read in ZDNet: https://apple.news/AW3l5FPbjRymvie18rh7V_A
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Sponsor Note:
Think you know PC Matic? Think again.
PC Matic is working with MSPs to deliver true zero trust/default deny endpoint security.
Allowing only trusted applications and blocking all the rest. A light weight, simple to deploy & easy to manage approach to application allowlisting.
Layering a default deny approach provides MSPs of all sizes the ability to again focus on prevention, and PC Matic delivers this without impacting performance or efficiency.
Find out more about by visiting pcmatic.com/MSP
Be sure to ask about PC Matic’s exclusive lead sharing program for MSPs backed by a prime time national TV campaign.
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Topic 1: Google Replaces Bert with MUM
At I/O 2021, Google introduced MUM — Multitask United Model. According to Google, this new language model is 1000 times more powerful than BERT, the search engine they released in 2019. MUM is coming to Google products sometime in the future.
Note: BERT = Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers.
Did BERT change your life two years ago? Will you actually notice the move to MUM?
https://yoast.com/google-bert/
Topic 2: Drones as first response to 911 calls.
The Chula Vista police drones can now cover 100% Of of the City For Emergency Calls. And they are deploying drones at “first response” to emergency calls. Of course the drones have video recording and two-way communications.
Channel note: Go get some of this money!
https://www.kpbs.org/news/2021/mar/19/chula-vista-police-drones-100-city-emergency-calls/
Topic 3: Forum topic – Ethical vs Contractual obligation
Warning: Tough discussion of ethics in business. What do you and your clients owe each other? Can you limit your client relationships to transactions?
And in the area of security, can you actually inform clients enough that they can make good decisions to operate at a lower level of security? How do we begin to talk about standards around these conversations? It’s fine to say “Buyer beware” – but only if the buyer has some chance of understanding what that really means.
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Sponsor Memo:
Are you still using on-prem file servers and VPNs to share files with remote workers? Egnyte is a business class cloud sharing solution that works more like your on-prem server than other solutions. With a security first approach to file sharing and collaboration, Egnyte offers multiple options for sharing files and collecting files from outside sources. And do it all addressing data governance and compliance. Want to learn more? Check out https://Egnyte.com/msp. And when you do, tell them we sent you.
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Ryan sits down with David Corlette, Director of Product Management with Vipre for a very frank conversation on the approach that IT Service Providers need to be taking with today’s cybersecurity. The importance of proper configuration from the onset, to ensure that all the tools in your stack are actually securing you and your clients.
Topic 1: Does the obvious stupidity in the Crypto-verse help to increase or decrease the adoption of crypo currencies?
A bit of crypto news this week. But on the serious side, what does this activity mean?
Elon Musk makes fun of crypto currencies and the market goes wild (down). Dogecoin created as a joke. Now it’s going crazy. Then two winners created a spinoff coin because “people seem to like dogs” and became millionaires.
https://u.today/dogecoin-spin-off-turns-struggling-brothers-into-overnight-millionaires
https://www.vox.com/recode/2021/5/18/22441831/elon-musk-bitcoin-dogecoin-crypto-prices-tesla
Topic 2: Ann Arbor to Launch Autonomous Shuttle Service October 11th
But there’s one already operating in Fairfax, VA. We have some questions about the experience . . . and we send Dave off to do some homework.
https://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/transportation/autonomous-shuttle-pilot
Topic 3: Lower hash rates, and video cards that aren’t graphics cards.
NVidia is finally making some moves to tackle the shortage of video cards despite the continuing chip shortage. They’re designing video cards with lower hash rates, so they’re not attractive to crypto-miners. And they’re creating cards designed for mining with actual video output.
We’ll see what competitors do, and how quickly this has a visible effect on graphic card availability for plain old gamers.
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Sponsor Memo –
Did you know that the average MSP spends 10 hours manually inputting accounting data each week? That time is 120 prospect calls, a month’s worth of the Business of Tech, or building an entire Lego death star. Gozynta Mobius can make your life easier through accounting automation. Automatic sync of invoices, expenses and inventory from ConnectWise Manage into QuickBooks Online in just a single click of a button.
With onboarding, direct support, and regular feature releases, Gozynta is a family owned company dedicated to making software suck a little less each day. Visit us at https://gozynta.com
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Amy Luby, Channel Chief Evangelist with Acronis talks with Ryan about focusing on protecting the data and selling solutions rather than products. With a myriad of different tools available for MSPs to deploy our security stacks are only going to increasingly get more complicated. Amy tells us ‘Simplify our processes and tool sets when looking at modernizing and automating our integrations’.
