Appalachia Technologies Blog

Adapting...with a smile!

It’s early March 2020, and seemingly out of the blue, our personal and professional lives began to feel the subtle, and not-so-subtle effects, of COVID. Our personal lives aside and from a professional lens...things certainly looked and felt different. Nineteen months later, we’ve adapted, but we continue to feel the impact. Is this the new lens through which we’ll view our professional worlds? Time will tell, but the business lessons we’ve learned are more important than ever.

I’d like to take a minute and share the effects COVID has had on Appalachia Technologies...and how we continue to persevere and get better despite it!

In a previous blog post, we discussed how to calculate your SPRS (Supplier Performance Risk System) score in support of your CMMC (Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification) efforts.  In that same blog, we also provided a free tool to help you calculate your SPRS score automatically.

In this follow-on blog, we’ll talk about how to provide your SPRS score to the DoD, which is a whole other chore once you’ve actually determined what your score is.  In order to access the part of the SPRS website where your score is uploaded, we first need a CAC (Common Access Card) or a DoD approved medium assurance ECA (External Certification Authority) certificate.  The primary purpose of this certificate is to ensure that the individual person entering the score is who they actually claim to be (non-repudiation), in addition to ensuring the confidentiality of the data.

The day after Thanksgiving, widely referred to as Black Friday, has marked the start of the Christmas shopping season since 1952.  Surprisingly, it wasn’t until 2012 that the Black Friday buzz was adapted to further stoke the shopping fire by promoting Cyber Monday.  Whether shoppers choose to chase the deals in person or from the privacy of their own homes, personal information is being shared in the form of email addresses, home addresses, and credit card numbers.  As the stores are preparing by stocking shelves and bulking up employee headcount, cyber criminals are also preparing to capitalize on the shopping frenzy, hoping to catch consumers with their guards down.

This month’s release of the much-anticipated CMMC 2.0 left many of us in the world of cybersecurity shaking our heads.  We have been working diligently with the defense industrial base for several years now, even before the CMMC was created, to stop the bleeding of our defense secrets to our adversaries.  As a veteran and a Patriot, I, along with many other Americans, take this very serious problem personally. 

One of the great “must reads” for us cybersecurity wonks is the annual DBIR (Data Breach and Incident Response), issued by Verizon every year since 2008.  While never dull, the DBIR is not a light read and comes in at a meaty 115 pages this year.  While we at Appalachia are delighted to stuff our horns with popcorn and study every last page, we realize that not everyone can make the time to fully digest this comprehensive treatise.  To that end, we have taken the time to write an executive summary of the DBIR for readers of our blog – because we care, and we don’t want you missing reruns or tee time.

This year’s DBIR is broken up into 8 major sections:  Introduction, Results and Analysis, Incident Classification Patterns, Industries, SMB, Regions, Wrap-up, and Appendices.  Let’s dig in by getting a sense of the sheer amount of work that the DBIR team puts in here:

We are extremely proud of the men and women in our organization who have served our country.  Coming from the Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Army, these members have taken their experiences in the military and applied it to their civilian careers.  To honor the veterans on our staff, I asked them to share - what they learned, their greatest achievement, their greatest challenge, and how we can step up to support our veterans.  Thank you, Mike, Nathalie, Jason, Derek, Joel, and Jason!

I remember the first time my dad gave me a box of tools. I was moving out for the first time, and he gave me a box filled with an old hammer, two screwdrivers (one flathead, the other Phillips head), a rusty wrench, and a tape measure. It wasn’t much but it showed me that he wanted to make sure that I was ok. He gave me those tools so that I could fix any problems that came up in my time away from him. Well, I want to do the same for you but with cybersecurity. Now I’m not your father, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t want you to be safe online, and there are tons of tools online that can help you strengthen your cybersecurity.

I started writing SSP’s (System Security Plans) well before the original Executive Order mandated deadline of December 31st 2017 and have since written at least 50 SSP’s for defense contractors of every imaginable type and size.  There wasn’t a lot of guidance on how to do this at that time, other than to have a very thorough and complete understanding of the nearly 500-page NIST 800-53 framework. 

October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, but it is also well known, among the vernacular of the younger generation, as Spooky Season. Most people are more concerned with ghosts, ghouls, and goblins than they are with the dangers lurking in the dark corners of the Internet, which is understandable. It’s more fun to think about the fake monsters than the real ones who could change your life in an instant. So, let’s make a compromise. We’re going to list the 7 scariest ghosts and monsters when it comes to cybersecurity, and we’ll try to make it as spooky as possible.

The Netflix docudrama film The Social Dilemma describes Facebook as “The problem beneath all other problems.” As this is a security/technical blog we are not in the business of bashing or praising social media, but it goes without saying that Facebook has become omnipresent in the daily lives of literally billions of people.  The same is also true of Instagram and WhatsApp, two other massive social media properties which were also unavailable for about six hours on October 4^th.  When something that big falls that hard, there are always unforeseen and unintended consequences.

If you’ve watched any sci-fi movie, you probably understand the perceived dangers of the digital world. Primarily the unrealistic dangers of artificial intelligence. Now, I’m not saying that AI won’t be a threat in the future but it’s important to note that right now the people using the Internet pose a much bigger threat than an incoming Robo-Apocalypse. And I’m not just talking about cybercriminals. Regular, everyday human error is what poses the most dangerous threat to your company’s cybersecurity. Don’t believe me? Well then, let’s take a quick look.

Today, we toast our company as we mark 17 years in business.  Last year, we boasted that we didn’t just survive 2020 but we thrived – and 2021 has raised the bar higher as we celebrated a number of achievements:

Have you ever wondered where all those weird holidays come from? Like, who got to decide that April 23^rd was National Talk Like Shakespeare Day? Or that Squirrel Appreciation Day would fall on January 21^st? Or that the last Friday of every April would be National Hairball Awareness Day? An entire day to make sure that your feline friends aren’t spewing wet clumps of hair on to the floor seems like a waste of time, but do you know what isn’t? An entire month dedicated to cybersecurity. Now that’s a topic worthy of a holiday!

Over the weekend, the Colonial Pipeline, one of the largest US pipelines and a major supplier for the East Coast, was hit by a cyber attack. A ransomware attack caused the company to shutdown operations as they work through the necessary steps to respond and recover, however the impact is expected to be significant if fuel terminals experience outages as a result in disruption to their supply.  The Colonial Pipeline supplies diesel, gasoline, and jet fuel.  The US government has issued an emergency waiver to allow an exemption for drivers related to hours of service, as well as exemptions related to fuel transportation via tanker ships.  To compound the supply issues further, the US is experiencing a shortage of fuel truck drivers, areas of the US are opening up further from COVID restrictions which is expected to increase travel, and we are approaching the summer travel season which notoriously increases fuel demands.

The Technology Behind Cryptocurrency Will Do Much More In Time.

There are enough new technologies today that it can be hard to keep up with all of them. One technology that is leaving a lasting mark is blockchain. The technology behind the ever-popular cryptocurrency Bitcoin (and every other cryptocurrency), is quickly becoming a household name. Here is a brief look into blockchain technology, how it works, and what kind of innovations businesses can use to make it work for them

The late American author Kurt Vonnegut once wrote, “New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become.” Written in the 20th century, it has been put in practice by 21st century businesses. As the Internet has grown, the amount of companies expanded, and the amount of data that those companies collect has grown exponentially, especially now that there is a market for such data.

Profitability is less the measure of being able to turn a profit, and more the measure of how much profit you can make. For the successful small business, the integration of technology can dictate what kind of annual margins you are looking at. For the new company, however, it can be something even more critical: the difference between setting a course for success, or wallowing in failure. Today we analyze the cost difference between hosting your IT in-house, or choosing to host it in the cloud.

Despite what detractors say, regulations are in place for good reason. They typically protect individuals from organizational malfeasance. Many of these regulations are actual laws passed by a governing body and cover the entire spectrum of the issue, not just the data involved. The ones that have data protection regulations written into them mostly deal with the handling and protection of sensitive information. For organizations that work in industries covered by these regulations there are very visible costs that go into compliance. Today, we look at the costs incurred by these organizations as a result of these regulations, and how to ascertain how they affect your business.

How much does your business rely on technology to keep your organization running forward? As business technology becomes more complex, it’s becoming increasingly popular for organizations to have their own internal IT departments to manage and maintain it. Yet, small businesses don’t often have the necessary funds for such a feat. How can your company afford quality IT service? You can start by pursuing managed IT solutions from a managed service provider.

The password isn’t nearly as secure as it used to be. Hackers have begun to take advantage of extremely powerful solutions designed to brute force their way into accounts by using software to rapidly guessing thousands of passwords per second, making it extraordinarily difficult to prepare yourself for them.

What’s the best way to guarantee that passwords aren’t going to be the downfall of your company? A great start is by taking a close look at password best practices and two-factor authentication.