Published on 2021-02-04 01:13 PM by
Izak van der Sandt
What Goes Into a Digital Signage Solution?
A digital sign can be standalone or part of a network of hundreds or thousands of signs. It can be managed one-by-one or centrally managed from a remote location. Whatever the size or scope of a digital signage solution, the basic components include:
Display: HD flat-panel screens (LCD or plasma), handling a wide range of media inputs, increasingly with touch capabilities and the ability to interact with mobile devices
Content management: Today’s powerful digital media players capable of managing video graphics, web feeds and other sources of content
Content: Sources of content include video, graphics, web feeds and more; developed in-house and/or by a media agency; may include third-party advertising
Published on 2021-03-15 11:58 AM by
Izak van der Sandt
Social distancing and self-isolating are key aspects of the attempts to flatten the curve; however, these measures are having increasingly negative impacts on businesses both locally and globally. Empower your employees that don't have to be in the office or onsite to work remotely from home.
Helping employees, customers and partners in a time of need are one of Cisco’s core values. Right now, COVID-19 is forcing many people around the world to work remotely. This is putting a sudden strain on both IT and security teams who are being tasked with providing support for an unprecedented number of offsite workers and their devices.
"Coronavirus has been a huge topic of conversation, both for us internally and for our customers,"
Recently, Cisco Webex expanded its free offerings to allow employees to stay connected to their teams and continue their business operations. In response to customers asking us for guidance, today, Cisco is broadening this offer to include security for remote employees by providing extended free licenses and expanded usage counts at no extra charge for three of our key security technologies that are designed to protect remote workers anywhere, anytime and on any device.
Gee Rittenhouse, senior vice president, and general manager of security for Cisco said in a blog post that these offers will remain in effect July 1. "Supporting our customers and partners remains a top priority, and we hope these proactive steps help companies manage the business impact and keep employees safe during this evolving situation," Rittenhouse said.
Cisco has also expanded the free licenses to the following products.
Cisco Umbrella protects users from malicious Internet destinations whether they are on or off the network. Because it is delivered from the cloud, Umbrella makes it easy to protect users everywhere in minutes. With this offer, existing customers can exceed their user limit to support an increase in remote workers, and new customers can access a free license. To have the initial 14-day period extended to 90 days, please contact the Cisco sales team.
Duo Security enables organizations to verify users’ identities and establish device trust before granting access to applications. By employing a zero-trust model, it decreases the attack surface and reduces risk. With this offer, existing customers can exceed their user limit to support an increase in remote workers, and new customers can access a free license.
Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client empowers employees to work from anywhere on company laptops or personal mobile devices. It also provides the visibility and control security teams need to identify who and which devices are accessing their infrastructure. Existing AnyConnect customers can exceed their user limit to support an increase in remote workers, and new customers can access a free license. To get started, existing and new customers should talk with a Cisco representative or partner to get the requested usage counts. For more information on implementation, please view the online documentation.
These offers will be available from now until July 1, 2020. Supporting our customers and partners remains a top priority, and we hope these proactive steps help companies manage the business impact and keep employees safe during this evolving situation.
Bing has launched a COVID-19 tracker that displays the number of confirmed cases worldwide. The data is broken down into active, recovered and fatal cases, and can be filtered by geographic region, The Next Web first reported on Monday.
Plus, if you tap on a particular country, Microsoft’s dashboard shows localized information, including the latest news stories and videos. This is quite handy for when you want to know if the local government has issued new directives for public health and safety.
Selecting a region will also show users recent news and video pertinent to the situation in that region.
Bing and other search engines have transformed their results pages into non-commercialized resource hubs for people looking for “coronavirus” information.
Published on 2018-05-25 12:56 PM by
Izak van der Sandt
In May 2018, the South African website for viewing traffic fines online known asViewFines suffered a data breach. Over 934k records containing 778k unique email addresses were exposed and included names, phone numbers, government issued IDs and passwords stored in plain text.
Breach date:7 May 2018 Date added to HIBP:24 May 2018 Compromised accounts:777,649 Compromised data:Email addresses, Government issued IDs, Names, Passwords, Phone numbers
Published on 2018-04-05 12:26 PM by
Izak van der Sandt
Cybercriminals may be getting smarter, but so are Cisco cybersecurity experts. Meet two of them in this original documentary video.
FEBRUARY 28, 2018
As a kid,Craig Williams, Director orTalosOutreach, found computers fascinating and would tinker with them. "An Apple 2GS was my first computer and I remember figuring out how to get the control panel to change the colors in second grade because they made me playNumber Munchersand I didn't like the color scheme," Williams recalls. "I got in a lot of trouble because none of the teachers knew how to change it back and I just thought that was hilarious, and from then on, I was hooked."
Fast forward a few decades and Williams still lights up when talking about computers, but now it's not just fun and games. It's his passion. Williams is serious about security and if you want to get him fired up, ask him about security stereotypes. "One that always come around is people think that in order to get into cybersecurity, you need to be a criminal. Absolutely not!"
His colleague,Franc Artes, an architect in the Security Business Group, feels exactly the same way. "You meet people and they say things like ‘so you used to break into things, and now you're doing it legitimately.' Well no, but thank you very much," says Artes. "It is a very bad stereotype to see."
Both Williams and Artes make it their mission to not only help secure Cisco customers, but also stay one step ahead of cybercriminals. In fact, Artes is a reserve detective with law enforcement reserves. "I do a lot of teaching on cybercrime investigation, forensics, and security in general," says Artes. "If you're going to catch a cybercriminal, you should know how they break into bank accounts or people's email accounts, or cell phones."
Cisco's Talos Team, the industry-leading threat intelligence group, has seen all kinds of new threats in 2017. Take for example the Nyetya attack. Williams says that's the type of attack that keeps his team up at night and very different than WannaCry. "If you looked at the way WannaCry worked, WannaCry is alike a 1986 rusty Honda Civic," Williams explained. "If you look at a Ferrari, that would be Nyetya. Nyetya was polished, fast, and efficient."
When attacks like these happen, it's the job of defenders, people like Williams and Artes, to react and respond quickly. "We're a lively bunch," Artes says describing his co-workers. "It's also an amazing group of individuals, especially within Talos."
Published on 2017-05-16 10:22 AM by
Izak van der Sandt
On May 12, 2017, many organizations around the world and the critical systems they depend on were victims of malicious “WannaCrypt” software. Microsoft is working to ensure they are taking all possible actions to protect their customers. Below we have given further details of the threat and steps every individual and business should take to stay protected. Additionally, Microsoft is taking the highly unusual step of providing a security update for all customers to protect Windows platforms that are in custom support only, including Windows XP, Windows 8, and Windows Server 2003. Customers running Windows 10 were not targeted by the attack today.
In March, Microsoft released a security update which addresses the vulnerability that these attacks are exploiting. Unfortunately, the malware appears to have affected computers that have not applied the patch for these vulnerabilities. While the attack is unfolding, we remind users to install MS17-010 if they have not already done so. Microsoft anti malware telemetry constantly monitors for such threats, and alerted us to this attack. These systems gave us the visibility and context around the attach, allowing Windows Defender Antivirus to deliver real-time defense. Through automated analysis, machine learning, and predictive modeling, Microsoft was able to protect many up-to-date systems against this malware.
Steps to prevent and protect against this threat
To get the latest protection from Microsoft, upgrade to Windows 10. Keeping your computers up-to-date gives you the benefits of the latest features and proactive mitigation built into the latest versions of Windows.
We recommend customers that have not yet installed the security update MS17-010 do so as soon as possible. Until you can apply the patch, we also recommend two possible workarounds to reduce the attack surface:
Consider adding a rule on your router or firewall to block incoming SMB traffic on port 445
Windows Defender Antivirus detects this threat as Windows Defender Antivirus as of the 1.243.297.0 update. Enable Windows Defender Antivirus to detect this ransom-ware. Windows Defender Antivirus uses cloud-based protection, helping to protect you from the latest threats.
Use Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection, which has machine learning capability that blocks dangerous email threats, such as the emails carrying ransom-ware.
For enterprises, use Device Guard to lock down devices and provide kernel-level virtualization-based security, allowing only trusted applications to run, effectively preventing malware from running.
Reinstall the VPN client using the .MSI file and not the .EXE file. This will bypass Windows 10 checking the compatibility. Next just make the registry edits.
In WindowsWindows 10, a common problem with the Cisco VPN client has been an inability to enable the adapter. That is easily resolved within regedit.exe by editing the following string:
Published on 2020-11-23 10:21 AM by
Izak van der Sandt
The internet is great for catching up with what your friends are doing on Social networks, but more than that, the internet is a great source of information. There are countless websites out there that are geared to make you smarter and more brilliant for either a low or no cost.
Published on 2015-11-02 12:30 PM by
Izak van der Sandt
Under oceans across the world, hundreds of shipwrecks lie silent and forgotten. Having set sail to discover, trade, or wage war, the boats never reached safe harbour and exist now as time capsules beneath the waves.
When they took to the seas, some of these vessels were the state of the art, laden with some of the most advanced technology of their era. Now, thanks to the most advanced tech of our time, some long-sought wrecks are finally being found and explored for the first time.
TechRepublic talked to the teams behind some of the most high-profile shipwrecks to be discovered in recent years to find out how they've located the ships and uncovered their secrets—including a 2,000 year old device that may have been the world's first computer.
Published on 2015-11-02 12:30 PM by
Izak van der Sandt
The 2015 Rugby World Cup and Cybersecurity
Teams have gone through months of preparation, including diet, sleep and fitness analysis, with much of this data gathered through manual and automated wearable means. Before the game, video analysts working parallel to the coaches and players consume hours of tape to understand offensive and defensive plays, reviewing all the data and creating plays to counter
Published on 2015-10-30 07:21 AM by
Izak van der Sandt
Decommissioning systems for disposal or resale requires the secure deletion of data originally stored on the drives; however, the process of doing this is often based more in superstition than in science. These methods may have had some utility 20 years ago, but are not valid for newer drive formats.
Before moving forward, there are a few considerations to be mindful of in this inquiry.
From a data security standpoint, destroying hard drives is preferable to wiping them. This is not always possible, and — depending on your level of precaution — you may want to wipe the drives before handing them off to a third party for destruction.
The data on the drive should be encrypted to begin with, particularly on solid-state drives. Data recovery is basically impossible in cases where the drive data is encrypted.
Published on 2015-10-30 07:21 AM by
Izak van der Sandt
When massive organizations likeSony,Home Depot, and theOffice of Personnel Managementare hacked they grab equally massive headlines. Yet, while they rarely grab headlines, small and middle-market companies are particularly susceptible to hacks, said Chris Crellin, Vice President of Product Management atIntronis, a data protection firm, because many SMBs can't afford to employ a security team, or are uninformed of the risks posed by attackers.
"A lot of companies rely on the idea of 'security through obscurity,'" said Crellin. "They're focused on running their business and probably don't spend a lot of time thinking about hackers."
These attackers probably aren't interested in any one particular small business, said Crellin, but they tend to rely on a shotgun strategy. "Small and middle-market businesses are targets because there are so many of them. It's like a thief in a parking lot looking for one unlocked car." If your organization is unlocked, he said, you're a likely target.
Published on 2015-10-29 07:26 AM by
Izak van der Sandt
IBM researchers said they overcame stubborn challenges in building computer memory out of carbon instead of silicon, which could allow for systems that are faster and sturdier than conventional flash memory or RAM.
Carbon electronics research began at the end of the 20th century, but there were at least two nagging problems. The material must survive at the high temperatures needed in the circuit manufacturing process and in the data read/write process. Also, it must be pliable enough to quickly change states — from a zero to a one and back — yet stable enough to remain non-volatile when needed.
Published on 2015-10-28 12:28 PM by
Izak van der Sandt
Anna Kournikova (2001)
The Anna Kournikova virus is so named because it tricked its recipients into thinking they were downloading a sexy picture of the tennis star. Financial damages associated with Kournikova were limited, but the virus had a big pop culture impact: It became a plot point in a 2002 episode of the sitcom Friends
Published on 2015-10-23 01:58 PM by
Izak van der Sandt
The Internet of Screens has arrived.
For years businesses have tried to use general purpose workstations to manage their digital signage networks. They failed. Time and time again expensive equipment, complex setup procedures, and ongoing maintenance headaches conspired against them and stood in their way of achieving a very basic goal: a simple, scalable, and secure screen network that anyone could use to communicate effectively with people where and when it matters most.
The days of general purpose computing are finally giving way to a new era where cost-effective, single purpose devices can be used as simple, reliable appliances that do one job, and do it well.
Brand marketers and retail networks use the technology to publish digital signage content on screens inside their stores. Health clinics, university campuses and other kinds of venues use it to engage and entertain their visitors. It's part of a growing technology arena called place-based media that is rapidly turning TV screens outside the home into location-specific media channels. High quality animated content now takes only seconds to create. Text, video and images can be mixed and matched into hundreds of possible screen designs. Content creation is easy and quick - no experience required.
Easily create and display professional looking contenton multiple displays from one central log in account
Enable your team to easily make real-time updatesand changes to your content through our industry leading content management system.
Deploy digital signage with zero set-up costsa hassle free set-up process and no messy project management
Promote products, services and provide an additional revenue stream through wide range of options including targeted place-based ads, multi-media and much more.
Position your Company as an innovator and thought leader by providing cutting edge, value added contentto your customers
Differentiate your organization by having a fully branded digital signage solution specific to your marketing requirements
