MSP, MSSP, and IT Industry Notes
Sponsored by
May 10th, 2021
Why partnering with ARCOA makes sense
Electronics Recycling is an important and profitable part of the IT asset lifecycle, but it can be overwhelming with all you already do, varying state regulations, and the limited resources at hand. That’s where ARCOA comes in. When you partner with ARCOA, you get all the benefits of a big company without any of the capital investment. We’ve been doing this since 1989 and have the expertise, certifications, and nationwide resources to get the most for all your clients’ retired IT assets. Plus, positioning your clients as environmental stewards not only elevates their appeal to consumers, it meets government requirements and avoids fines.
What partnering with ARCOA looks like
Our role is to make it easy for you to bring more value to your clients. We work with you to help stretch your clients’ IT budget by reducing the total cost of ownership of their electronics. We’re experts at identifying and implementing the solutions your clients need for the end-of-use remarketing, recovery, and recycling of their technology assets. The sooner you involve ARCOA, the sooner you and your clients will see better results.
VEXXHOST Selects Interxion: A Digital Realty Company To Support Expansion Of Its Cloud ...
- VEXXHOST, to support the expansion of its public and private hybrid IT solutions globally to its growing customer base
- Deploying on PlatformDIGITAL®
- “We're very excited to be working closely with VEXXHOST to help solve the global coverage, capacity and connectivity needs of its customers at the heart of a rich connected community in EMEA that is optimized for open data exchange," said Interxion Managing Director Jeff Tapley
- Interxion: A Digital Realty Company, is a leading provider of carrier- and cloud-neutral data centre services across EMEA
Carbon60 accelerates digital transformation capabilities with acquisition of OpsGuru, an award ...
- Announced its acquisition of OpsGuru (the "Company"), a growing multi-cloud and DevOps consultancy
- States acquisition makes the combined company the preeminent Canadian multi-cloud transformation and managed services organization
- Carbon60 specializes in delivering secure managed cloud solutions for public and private sector organizations with business-critical workloads
- OpsGuru was founded in 2017 with headquarters in Vancouver, Canada
Forbes Names CGI one of America's Best Management Consulting Firms
- CGI announced its selection by Forbes to America's Best Management Consulting Firms 2021 List
- CGI applies more than 40 years of expertise in building and executing complex information technology solutions to advise federal agencies, state governments and commercial clients on IT solutions and business strategies that best suit their mission needs," stated Tim Hurlebaus, CGI's President of U.S. Commercial and State Government Operations
- Founded in 1976, CGI is among the largest IT and business consulting services firms in the world
IRS complains about its printer/MFPs
- Press release issued by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration
- The IRS apparently may have up to 8.3 million tax returns that it has yet to process
- Is blaming backlog on the fact that up to 42% of all of its printers and MFPs are not functioning
- Apparently the contract with legacy vendor expired in September of 2020
- New vendor supposedly has had trouble getting into IRS offices to install new equipment due to COVID-19 concerns
Netsurion Achieves SOC 2 Type 2 Compliance for Secure and Operationally Effective Managed ...
- Announced that it has achieved Service Organization Control (SOC) 2 Type 2 compliance
- With compliance, Netsurion meets the five American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) Trust Services Criteria for internal controls relevant to security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality and privacy
- Selected by the Department of Defense's (DoD) Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) for the Solutions for the Information Technology Enterprise (SITE) III IDIQ contract, designed to streamline the delivery of IT mission support solutions on classified and unclassified programs across multiple security domains across DIA and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA)
- One of the largest defense and intelligence IT contracts
- ITE III carries a 10-year contract period with $12.6 billion ceiling
nDivision Appoints Former CyrusOne and Dell Executive, John Gould, to Its Board of Directors
- Announced that John Gould has been appointed to the Company's Board of Directors
- Alan Hixon, nDivision CEO, commented, "We are incredibly excited and honored to have John join the nDivision board. John is an extremely accomplished business executive and respected corporate leader who brings a wealth of experience to nDivision. His business savvy as well as his relationships immediately makes him a valuable board member and advocate for nDivision."
- nDivision Inc. provides Autonomic Managed Services and End User Help Desk services to private and public entities, ranging from small businesses to Fortune 500 global enterprises
HP Introduces Hybrid Work Print Solutions with HP Wolf Security
- HP Inc. announced enhanced print services and solutions with HP Wolf Security that allow IT departments to help boost workforce productivity while also helping to protect corporate networks and data
- “The existing business transformation trends around cloud, as-a-service, and security have seen significant acceleration over the past year,” said George Brasher, General Manager and Global Head, Print Services and Solutions, HP Inc.
- New report published with results of latest survey:
- 45% of IT decision makers say they have seen evidence in their company of compromised printers being used as an attack point in past year
- 86% have concerns around the security of their home printers
- 5 attacks per minute on endpoints connected to Internet, including printers and MFPs
- 91% plan on making endpoint security just as important as network security
- HP Wolf Security solution offers:
- “new breed of endpoint security”
- Safeguard PCs, printers and people from cyber predators
- Unites existing HP security offerings under new brand
- Technologies include:
- Self-healing firmware
- In-memory breach detection
- Threat containment via virtualization
- Cloud-based intelligence
- Remote recovery from firmware attacks
- Threat data collection
- Alerts
- Next-gen anti-virus
- Is offering online training and resources for dealers to sell new solution
- Is planning a series of virtual “road shows” for dealers and their customers
Twin Valley Management Taps Business Strategy & Tech Experts for Board
- Announced the appointment of two new board members: Lisa Spadafora Thompson, partner at Axiom Consulting Partners, and Jay Brodsky, Chief Digital Officer for American Geophysical Union
- Adds outside technology and business strategy expertise to help guide the company's next phase of growth
- Organization has been transformed and scaled from $8 million to over $120 million, now the largest family-owned broadband and managed IT company in Kansas
Finastra extends partnership with Be | Shaping the Future with managed services cloud proposition
- Extends long-standing partnership with Be | Shaping the Future (Be), an international group providing consulting, IT and digital engagement services
- move will see Be providing managed services – through its Germany-based subsidiary Be | Shaping the Future GmbH – for Finastra's treasury and capital markets software (Fusion Kondor and Fusion Risk) deployed in the cloud across Germany, Austria and Switzerland (DACH)
Filevine Acquires Contract Lifecycle Management Leader, Outlaw
- Filevine, that they have acquired Outlaw
- Outlaw became the G2.com #1 Momentum Leader in contract management by reimagining document creation, editing, and realtime end-to-end collaboration
- Believe that the future of legal work will be one where contracts, databases, and documents are merged together
AdvoLogix Releases New Enterprise Legal Management Offering Highlights include: AI Assisted ...
- Released a new product offering specifically tailored to the Enterprise Legal Management industry
- New offering includes an Artificial Intelligence tool to assist with spend management, as well as custom reporting features. In addition the platform is home to a Legal Services Provider Portal as well as offering easy application integrations
- Founded in 2006, AdvoLogix is a leading law practice and legal matter management solution that helps law firms, general counsel and state and local governments automate unique business processes and simplify legal matter management
Cybersecurity Update
- Colonial Pipeline Company, headquartered in Alpharetta, Georgia, was hit by ransomware and forced to shut down its fuel pipeline operation that spans 5,500 miles from Houston, TX to Linden, NJ. This may cause a further spike in gasoline cost.
- Judge Eldon E. Fallon sentenced Edward Tolliver of New Orleans, LA to 124 months in federal prison for making and selling fake credit cards using stolen identities he acquired from Dark Web sites.
- SmileDirectClub, headquartered in Nashville, TN, notified an unknown number of patients their PHI may have been exposed after “systems outage”
- Owners of Tesla beware! Two researchers are warning that a hacker can use a specially equipped drone to remotely hack into and take control of the Tesla car, using the TBONE exploitation.
- The federal Department of Health & Human Services’ Office For Civil Rights reported:
- March there were 1,116,997 patients that had their PHI exposed due to breaches
- April has 2,121,186 patients impacted
- Flashpoint is reporting that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is behind ransomware campaign using a hacking group called Emen Net Pasargard.
- The Rochester Community Technical College of Minnesota notified 5,392 students that their info was exposed after cyber security incident.
- Check Point Research is warning that billions of Android-based mobile devices are exposed due to a security vulnerability in Qualcomm’s Mobile Station Modem chips
- Dell Computer announced it has patched flaws in vulnerable firmware that shipped in millions of laptops, tablets and desktop PCs since 2009.
- Peloton Corp., headquartered in New York City, NY, is notifying millions of customers of its Peloton fitness equipment that their info may have been exposed due to newly discovered vulnerability.
- Aprima suffered outages of its cloud-based EHRs due to ransomware attack on MednetwoRX data center in Dallas, TX.
- Lourdes Hospital of Binghamton, NY notified an unknown number of patients that their PHI was exposed after its CaptureRX pharmacy claims processing solution was hacked.
- West Penn Hospital of Pennsylvania announced that former employee, Guy Caley, was convicted of 44 felony and 45 misdemeanor counts for illegal actions which exposed the identities of patients.
- Mandiant Threat Intelligence is reporting of new security vulnerabilities found in Intel and AMD computer processor chips, that bypass fixes that companies issued to correct the past Spectre and Meltdown hacking attacks.
- Wolfe Eye Clinics of Iowa notified an unknown number of patients that their PHI may have been exposed due to cyber attack.
- SEIU 775 Benefits Group of Washington notified 140,000 patients that their PHI was exposed after cyber attack.
- Nexelis Group, headquartered in Seattle, WA, notified an unknown number of patients of Pacific Biomarkers that their PHI was exposed after malware attack.
- Medtronic, with US headquarters in Minnesota, notified an unknown number of patients that their PHI may have been exposed after cybersecurity incident.
- Rx Pharmacies, headquartered in Tri-Cities area of Washington, notified an unknown number of patients that their PHI was exposed after email phishing attack.
- Truesec Security Consulting is reporting that the Russian government is backing Evil Corp., a cybercrime organization.
- The US State Department has fined Honeywell Corp., headquartered in Charlotte, NC, after some of its employees allegedly leaked plans for the F35 and F22 Raptor and other aircraft designs to the Chinese government.
- Health Aid, headquartered in Parma, OH, notified 140,000 patients that their PHI was exposed after cybersecurity incident.
- Scripps Health of San Diego, CA notified an unknown numbers of patients that their PHI may have been exposed after a ransomware attack.
- Midwest Transplant Network, headquartered in Westwood, KS, notified 17,000 patients that their PHI was exposed after ransomware attack.
- Gifford Health Care of Vermont notified an unknown number of patients that their PHImmay have been exposed after a cybersecurity incident.
- Faxton St. Luke’s Healthcare of Utica, NY notified 17,655 patients that their PHI may have been exposed after cybersecurity incident.
- Orthopedic Associates of Dutchess County in New York notified 330,000 patients that their PHI was exposed after cybersecurity incident.
- BakerHostetler published ransomware report:
- Average initial ransomware demand is now $4,583,000
- In healthcare, average ransomware payout is $910,335
- Average forensic investigation cost = $58,963
- HIPAA fines range from $100,000 to $6.85 million
- The Alaska Court System was forced offline after cybersecurity incident.
- Netskope Security is warning that ransomware could be inserted into a network by using malicious Microsoft Office files. The malware could be embedded in MS Excel, MS Word, MS PowerPoint, etc
