Business Value

November 7, 2018 by Joseph Martin

Security in the Android ecosystem is awful. There’s just no other word to describe it.

In large part, the blame for that can be placed at the feet of Google. Although they have succeeded in creating a wildly successful platform, their management of OEM devices (in particular, security updates for them) have been virtually nonexistent.

This has led to a situation where many device manufacturers don’t bother to push critical updates at all. It costs money to do so, and until now, there hasn’t been a downside for failing to. That, however, is about to change.

Recently, Google announced some big changes coming to their OEM agreements that would require Android device manufacturers to roll out security updates on a regular basis.

The company offered few details when the announcement was made, but since that time, an unverified copy of the new contract was leaked and obtained by The Verge. It sheds some additional light on what’s coming.

Specifically, the new agreement requires OEMs to regularly schedule updates for any device launched after January 31, 2018 if that device has been activated by more than 100,000 users. OEMs will be required to provide security updates for a minimum of two years.

In addition to that, they must make updates that address security vulnerabilities available to their customers no more than 90 days after the patch is released. Taken together these two pieces of information point to the fact that OEMs will be required to issue quarterly updates to their customers, at a minimum.

It’s a good move and one that’s long overdue. When this new agreement becomes official corporate policy, it will have an almost immediate, profound impact on security in the Android ecosystem. While it’s far from a perfect solution, it represents a very good beginning.

Joseph Martin

President & CEO
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October 17, 2018 by Joseph Martin

By now, almost everyone has heard of the Spectre and Meltdown security flaws that have been making headlines for more than a year. They’re serious flaws with dire implications for tens of millions of users around the world who have an intel-based PC.

The saga surrounding the fixes for these issues has been a long one and filled with twists and turns. Intel originally attempted to push a software fix to protect its chips, but the patch they issued was so flawed that the company requested users not install it and wait for a better, more reliable patch.

In time, that patch was issued, but unfortunately, the protection it offered carried a hefty price in the form of significant system slowdowns.

The longer-term solution was, of course, to re-engineer the chips themselves. Recently, Intel announced that some of their 9th Generation chips will come with built-in fixes to ward against both Spectre and Meltdown. Note the word “some.”

Specifically, the company’s new line of K-series chips, used in gaming CPU’s have been re-engineered to be resistant to those security flaws. Unfortunately, the X-Series (Xeon-class chips) don’t feature those security fixes.

The reason is that they’re based on the older Skylake-X architecture, and given that, the company is relying solely on software updates to protect those chips.

At a recent desktop press event, the company had this to say about the matter:

“…the new desktop processors include protections for the security vulnerabilities commonly referred to as ‘Spectre,’ ‘Meltdown,’ and ‘L1TF.’ These protections include a combination off the hardware design changes we announced earlier this year as well as software and microcode updates.”

Although Intel has been roundly criticized for its handling of the issues surrounding these flaws, this is undeniably a step in the right direction.

Joseph Martin

October 5, 2018 by Joseph Martin

Windows 10 is far and away the fastest growing version of the OS in the company’s history. It recently hit an installation base of a staggering 700 million devices after about three years on the market.

Note that these installation figures include installs not just on PCs, but also on Surface Hubs, Xbox, HoloLenses and smartphones.

Unfortunately, as impressive as that number is, it falls well short of Microsoft’s original estimate of a billion installs in three years.

The smaller than expected number of smartphone installations is the key reason behind the shortfall. Initially, the company had envisioned these devices adding several hundred million installations to the total count. However, when Microsoft switched gears and decided to abandon the smartphone market, it was inevitable that they would fall well short of their original target.

It matters because part of Microsoft’s pitch to developers was the massive (projected) size of the Windows 10 market. Now that the official numbers are in, and the final count is some 30 percent lower than anticipated, part of that appeal is understandably gone.

Even so, a market made up of 700 million devices is certainly nothing to sneeze at and developers are heavily invested in the platform, so it would make little sense for them to abandon it now. Not to mention the fact that the number of installations is expected to continue to grow at a healthy clip for the foreseeable future.

Inside the Windows ecosystem, 43 percent of Windows PCs are currently running Windows 10, with another 45 percent still running Windows 7. Given that support has officially ended for Windows 7, it’s all but guaranteed that Windows 10 will ultimately reach one billion installations. It will probably reach a bit more than that as users continue to slowly migrate away from Windows 7.

At the end of the day then, although Microsoft’s time frame was a bit too aggressive, it looks like they’re going to hit the magic number.

Joseph Martin

October 3, 2018 by Joseph Martin

Google is making a small but pivotal change as it relates to calls placed to 911 operators. Having recently finalized a complex partnership with RapidSOS and West (two emergency technology companies) and T-Mobile, Google will now send location data from its “Emergency Location Service” when an Android user places a 911 call.

If the caller is a T-Mobile customer, the information will be passed along via the carrier. Where 911 call centers use RapidSOS, Google will send the location data via the technology company. In the US Virgin Islands, Google has made the same arrangement with the Emergency Tech company, West.

While the announcement may raise some surprised eyebrows, the change has been in the works for more than a year. Google has spent much of that time testing. Their findings were that the location data Google sent over was more accurate and arrived more quickly than the data the 911 call centers had been getting previously.

Not to be outdone, Apple announced in June of this year that it was developing a similar service for iOS users, and that beginning with iOS 12, Apple devices would automatically send location data to emergency call centers when users dial 911.

Even privacy advocates agree that this is generally a good move, and it’s one of the growing number of instances where smart use of technology can save lives. Anything we can do to give our nation’s emergency call centers an edge is an important change. Currently, those call centers take an average of 140,000 calls a day, so this is by no means a trivial issue.

Kudos to both Google and Apple for taking bold action on this issue. While we may not like the idea of having our location data shared, in this particular instance, it certainly seems like a smart play.

Joseph Martin

October 3, 2018 by Joseph Martin

Google has recently made some changes and improvements to its G-Suite. It introduces new tools designed to allow managers and admins greater visibility into how the people in their organizations use the G-Suite.

Currently, the “Work Insight” tool is available in beta and displays information on how G-Suite is deployed at the team level.

While this will be a boon to all organizations, it will be especially valuable for organizations moving from legacy tools to the G-Suite. It will also serve to shine a light on teams or individual employees who could benefit from additional training on specific applications and provide valuable information on cross-team collaborations.

Where collaboration is concerned, the thinking is that admins would be able to see, for example, how many members of a sales team are working collaboratively with the marketing department. They could also see whether that collaboration is happening via face to face meetings or via co-created documents.

In addition to the Work Insight tool, Google also announced the availability of the G-Suite Security Center, which is an investigative tool that provides admins with a dashboard they can use to monitor a variety of security metrics.

The two big advantages to the new Investigation tool are:

It gives admins the power to scale an incident response as needed, up to and including scaling it across an entire domain

It adds integrated remediation to the detection and prevention capabilities already available to admins in the G-Suite.

Taken together, these changes should make life much easier for both managers and admins, providing better data which can be transformed into hard-hitting business information. If you use the G-Suite at all, be sure to check out these new tools at your next available opportunity. Both are excellent additions.

Joseph Martin

September 20, 2018 by Joseph Martin

Microsoft has been making two major Windows 10 releases every year, giving businesses 18 months before they need to move to the next update. This plan and schedule is part of the company’s “Windows as a service” paradigm, designed to ensure that Windows 10 gets new features, as opposed to the company’s former practice of a new Windows release every three years.

In most respects, the new paradigm has to be regarded as the superior approach, but unfortunately, the pace is a bit too fast for some businesses. High level executives have pushed back, asking for more time and flexibility to update the OS, so they can be sure that business critical apps work with the latest update.

Microsoft has heard, and more importantly, they’ve listened. However, business owners didn’t get everything they wanted. Here’s the scoop:

The company is planning to release a series of cloud-based tools that will make app compatibility testing easier, and has agreed to give IT admins more time to update. As things stand now, all currently supported feature updates of Windows 10 (Enterprise and Education editions) are supported for 18 months. The company is expanding that to 30 months, but only for their September release. The March updates will still only be supported for 18 months.

While not a perfect solution, it does give everyone some of what they wanted. Businesses will have an extra year to apply the latest features if they stick to the September cycle, while firms that don’t need the extra time can simply continue on as they are.

Jared Spataro, the Corporate VP of Microsoft 365 summarized the changes this way:

“You’ve been talking, and we’ve been listening. We recognize that it takes time to both upgrade devices and operationalize new update processes. Today’s announcements are designed to respond to your feedback and make it easier, faster, and cheaper to deploy a modern desktop.”

On the whole, this is very good news indeed.

Joseph Martin

September 18, 2018 by Joseph Martin

In 2016, an unnamed US energy company left some 30,000 records (containing information about its security assets) exposed for more than two months (a total of 70 days), in violation of energy sector cyber security regulations. When the incident was initially reported, the name of the company was withheld.

That company has now agreed to a $2.7 million-dollar settlement, and its name has now been made public, along with some additional details about the incident.

Initially, the company admitted that they unintentionally exposed the database in question, but that it contained fake data. As the investigation into the matter continued, it became apparent that the data was not only real, but that it included hashed passwords for administrators that hackers could have easily reverse-engineered. PG&E subsequently reversed their fake data assertion.

The exposed data was found by independent security researcher Chris Vickery, who indicated at the time that the database contained details for some 47,000 computers, virtual machines, servers and other devices.

In addition to that a number of non-encrypted email passwords were found, along with 120 encrypted passwords. In Vickery’s words, “This would be a treasure trove for any hostile nation-state hacking group.”

According to the official NERC notice regarding the incident:

“The data was exposed publicly on the internet for 70 days. The usernames of the database were also exposed, which included cryptographic information of those usernames and passwords. Exposure of the username and cryptographic information could aid malicious attackers in using this information to decode passwords.”

Once PG&E was made aware of the problem, it took a server offline, which removed the exposed data. They also brought in third-party forensic experts to investigate, and as a result of that investigation, revised a number of their security policies.

Overall, the company’s handling of the matter was spotty at best, but in light of the record-setting fine, the hope is that we won’t see a similar instance of carelessness in the future.

Joseph Martin

September 18, 2018 by Joseph Martin

It’s official, Apple now has company in the Trillion Dollar Club as Amazon’s stock surged past $2,000, briefly pushing the company’s total value to just over the trillion-dollar mark.

This makes the company’s CEO Jeff Bezos the richest person in the world, with a net worth estimated at around $166 billion dollars.

Amazon started out as just another internet company struggling to turn a profit. Over the years, however, the company has become a true retail powerhouse, and a disruptive force in the industry.

Some analysts predict that the company’s stock price is poised to climb even higher. Brian Nowak, (an analyst at Morgan Stanley) cities some reasons for his continued optimism. These include the company’s rapid growth, their improving business mix and their profit potential. Overall, Amazon’s total value only trails Apple’s by about $100 billion.

The last twelve months have been kind to Amazon, and the company has seen its stock price surge nearly 75 percent. The company is aggressively expanding into new businesses and finding success in doing so, which is exciting investors. Last year, for example, Amazon purchased Whole Foods Market for $13.7 billion, and recently acquired the online pharmacy, PillPack.

While there are only two members of the trillion-dollar club, there are two other companies poised to join their ranks. Both Microsoft and Google’s parent company, Alphabet are currently valued at about $850 billion. A modest nudge in either company’s stock price could push either of them into the trillion-dollar stratosphere.

Although there are a number of analysts who are excited by the stock’s future prospects, there is also some cause for concern. At current prices, the stock is trading at nearly 100 times earnings, which is nearly five times the broader market’s P/E ratio of 21. Then there’s the considerable risk that Amazon may suffer from a regulatory crackdown, given its size and dominance in the market.

Even so, it’s great news, and even better if you already own Amazon stock!

Joseph Martin

August 30, 2018 by Joseph Martin

Earlier this year, Microsoft announced that it had entered into a partnership with Open Whisper Systems, the makers of the Signal app. The purpose of the partnership was to bring Signal’s open source, end-to-end encryption protocol to Skype.

As of the latest Skype builds, that is now a reality. Stable versions of Skype have been released for Windows, macOS, Linux, android, and iOS. If you haven’t yet upgraded to the latest versions and want to begin making use of the new protocol, you should upgrade to Skype v8.15.0.306 if you’re an Android user, or Skype v8.28.0.41 if you’re a Windows user.

The new feature is called “Skype Private Conversations.” To access it, just press the “+Chat” button at the top of your contacts sidebar and select “New Private Conversation.”

A couple of caveats here. First, both parties will have to have the latest version of Skype to make use of the feature. Second, a new private conversation needs to be started from each device.

Assuming that’s the case, Skype sets up keys to encrypt the conversation. Note that as the name of the protocol indicates, this is end-to-end encryption, which means that the messages remain in an encrypted state even while in transit between the two devices that are communicating.

It’s a good feature, and a long-overdue addition that makes Skype even more useful. At present, however, the implementation is a bit cumbersome. It won’t see widespread adoption until a majority of the Skype user base has upgraded to the latest version.

Nonetheless, this is an excellent development that will, over the medium term, make communications more secure. Be sure your team is aware, and if you want to begin using encrypted chat right away, make sure that all users upgrade to the latest version.

Joseph Martin

August 21, 2018 by Joseph Martin

File this one away under “unintended consequences.” There’s a newly emerging trend in the medical community called “Snapchat Dysmorphia” that’s leaving plastic surgeons around the country to sound the alarm, and in some cases, scratch their heads in disbelief.

Recent research conducted at Boston University has discovered that the digital filters featured prominently in social media services like Snapchat are influencing how Millennials think about beauty. It’s causing significant numbers of them to investigate the possibility of getting plastic surgery in order to look more like the filtered pictures of themselves.

The newly minted term, ‘Snapchat Dysmorphia’ is a variant of body dysmorphia, which is a mental health condition that causes people to be stressed and obsessed with the way they look. Previously, one of the leading causes of body dysmorphia has been the unrealistic standards of beauty portrayed in magazines and on televisions. These media portrayals include supermodels with perfect bodies setting a standard of perfection that few can ever hope to achieve.

The more recent trend, however, is an increasing percentage of young people wishing to look more like their filtered-image selves, with, as the report highlights, “fuller lips, bigger eyes, or a thinner nose.”

The researchers went onto say, “This is an alarming trend because those filtered selfies often present an unattainable look and are blurring the line of reality and fantasy for these patients…overall, social media apps, such as Snapchat and Facetune, are providing a new reality of beauty for today’s society. These apps allow one to alter his or her appearance in an instant and conform to an unrealistic and often unattainable standard of beauty.”

If you have a child who spends a significant amount of time on social media, then it’s something to keep a close eye on. Based on the data, this trend is only going to get stronger over time.

Joseph Martin

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