by Scott Muniz | Oct 8, 2021 | Security
This article was originally posted by the FTC. See the original article here.
Have you seen ads on social media that offer to “help” you sign up for a government program that will give you a “free” device and internet service in exchange for money or personal information? While there is a real government program to help people connect during the pandemic, there’s no payment required to enroll. That’s just a scam.
The real government program is called the Emergency Broadband Benefit Program. Aimed at helping households connect during the COVID-19 pandemic, it gives people a one-time discount to help them buy a laptop, desktop computer, or tablet. The program also gives people monthly discounts for internet service. But it’s free to sign up for this program.
Government impersonators can look and sound like the real deal — using things like government names (in this case, the FCC) and government seals to get you to open your pockets or share your personal information. Here are some ways to thwart scammers’ attempts to impersonate the FCC’s Emergency Broadband Benefit Program:
- Only apply through the FCC and its listed providers. The only real way to sign up for the Emergency Broadband Benefits Program is at GetEmergencyBroadband.org. If another company says it can sign you up for this program, check first to see if they’re an approved provider.
- Don’t pay up front to get “free” connected devices or services. The Emergency Broadband Benefit program is free to sign up for those who qualify. Never pay to sign up to get benefits.
- Don’t give your financial or other personal information to someone who calls, texts, or emails and says they’re with the FCC. If you think a call or message could be real, stop. Call the Emergency Broadband Support Center at 1-833-511-0311 to check.
Did you pay a scammer? Act quickly to try to get your money back. If you think someone has gotten into your accounts or has your personal information, visit IdentityTheft.gov. There, you’ll get the steps to find out if your identity has been misused, and how to report and recover from identity theft.
Spotted this scam? Report it to the FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov.
Brought to you by Dr. Ware, Microsoft Office 365 Silver Partner, Charleston SC.
by Contributed | Oct 8, 2021 | Technology
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
This series highlights Microsoft Learn Student Ambassadors who achieved the Gold milestone and have recently graduated from university. Each blog features a different student and highlights their accomplishments, their experience with the Student Ambassadors community, and what they’re up to now.
Today we’d like to introduce Vivekkumar Parmar who is from India and recently graduated from Dharmsinh Desai University.
Gold Student Ambassador: Vivekkumar Parmar
Responses have been edited for clarity and length.
When you first joined the Student Ambassadors community in 2018, did you have specific goals you wanted to reach, such as a particular skill or quality? What were they? Did you achieve them? How has the community impacted you in general?
When I joined, I didn’t have any prior experience hosting events and giving seminars on technical topics, but I was very excited to share my knowledge with fellow students. What I saw and experienced at my campus was that students were building amazing projects as part of a curriculum or even for self-learning or as a hobby, but once the development was completed, the code used to reside on a code repository hosting service like GitHub, but there was no practical usage of it. If it had been deployed on a cloud service platform and made available to anyone on the internet, then that same project could have been useful to solve real life problems, so after I became a Student Ambassador, I decided to make the cloud my primary area of focus and conducted various workshops and seminars on Azure. In order to host events on Azure, I had to first learn the concepts, so I explored this domain in depth and gained a thorough understanding, which has helped me in my career too.
What is an accomplishment that you’re the proudest of and why?
I’m proudest of the very first event that I hosted in February 2019 at my university, “Introduction to Cloud Services”. Since I didn’t have any prior experience in event management and delivering speeches, with the help of my classmates (shout out to them – Kaushal, Hardik, Sameer, Utsav & Virat), we planned and successfully organized the event which was attended by 80+ students.
Now why is that event very special to me? That event planted the seeds of cloud at my university. At that time, most of the students on my campus were not familiar with cloud technologies. There were a few technical clubs, but I don’t remember any event being hosted around the cloud domain. With my event, Azure was introduced in our university. It was a half day event. We started with introducing the cloud, Azure, and its services and also had a hands-on workshop at the end. [Thanks to Microsoft for those Azure student credits and Subway meal support!!] Students were really amazed to see various services offered by Azure and how they could implement it in their college projects. After attending that event, a few students took a deep dive into Azure. I used to receive messages from them regarding their queries, and I felt very proud to see them using various Azure services in their projects.
What are you doing now that you’ve graduated?
I’m passionate about cloud computing and community building. Currently, I’m mentoring a few tech communities of my university and am planning to take a few Azure certification exams in the coming months. I would like to start my career as a DevOps engineer and later become a developer advocate/evangelist. I would love to continue to speak occasionally on Azure, Cloud, DevOps, etc. to share my knowledge.
If you could redo your time with the Student Ambassadors community, is there anything you would have done differently?
Yes. I wasn’t able to interact much with Student Ambassadors from other regions. I would have loved to collaborate with Student Ambassadors from all over the world and host global hackathons and initiate projects with them.
If you were to describe the community to a student who is interested in joining, what would you say about it to convince him or her to join?
Rather than a program, I would describe Microsoft Learn Student Ambassadors as a family, a family of like-minded, amazing people from all around the world who are passionate about technology and always excited to share their knowledge and learn something new.
Being part of this community will give you an immense opportunity to represent yourself, your local community, and your university at a global level. It’ll help you grow and strengthen your skill set. And most importantly, you’ll create valuable memories that will stay with you for a very long period!
What advice would you give to new Student Ambassadors?
If you’ve recently joined this community, then first of all, congratulations and welcome! Here are few words of advice from my own experience:
- Don’t be shy. Interact as much as you can with fellow students at your college, other Student Ambassadors from across the globe, and the program team. You’ll learn many things just by communicating with them.
- “Every expert was once a beginner.” It’s never too late to start something new. You may face challenges and obstacles in the beginning, but don’t be afraid. Have faith in yourself. Members of our community are very helpful. You can reach out to anyone for help, and I’m sure that you’ll definitely find the solution.
- Participate in various events and activities going on in Teams [Editor’s note: this is the platform through which the Student Ambassadors and the program team communicate and collaborate] and hackathons, etc. as per your interests. Acquire knowledge and do some mini-projects to get hands-on experience and later share it with others by hosting events, writing blogs, or creating video tutorials. Microsoft Learn is one of the best platforms on which to gain a deep understanding of Microsoft technologies.
- Don’t just host events for the sake of doing it or achieving milestones. Enjoy that experience and live that moment that you experience even if only one attendee out of all the participants does something extra after attending your event like exploring in depth a particular technology that was taught, building a project around it, or winning hackathons using any of those technologies. That feeling of happiness and pride you feel will put you on cloud nine. Trust me!
Do you have a motto in life, a guiding principle that drives you?
“Learning is a lifelong process”, so keep exploring something new every day.
What is one random fact few people know about you?
Since my early teen years, I wanted to have martial arts training because it helps you build focus, discipline, and mental and physical strength. But unfortunately, I never got an opportunity. Hopefully someday if I get the time and chance to pursue it, then I’m up for it!
Best of luck to you in the future, Vivekkumar!
by Scott Muniz | Oct 8, 2021 | Security, Technology
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
The National Security Agency (NSA) has released a Cybersecurity Information (CSI) sheet with guidance to help secure the Department of Defense, National Security Systems, and Defense Industrial Base organizations from poorly implemented wildcard Transport Layer Security (TLS) certificates and the exploitation of Application Layer Protocols Allowing Cross-Protocol Attacks (ALPACA). A malicious cyber actor with network access can exploit this vulnerability to access sensitive information.
CISA encourages administrators and users to review NSA’s CSI sheet on Avoiding Dangers of Wildcard TLS Certificates and the ALPACA Technique for more information.
by Scott Muniz | Oct 7, 2021 | Security, Technology
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
On October 7, 2021, the Apache Software Foundation released Apache HTTP Server version 2.4.51 to address Path Traversal and Remote Code Execution vulnerabilities (CVE-2021-41773, CVE-2021-42013) in Apache HTTP Server 2.4.49 and 2.4.50. These vulnerabilities have been exploited in the wild.
CISA is also seeing ongoing scanning of vulnerable systems, which is expected to accelerate, likely leading to exploitation. CISA urges organizations to patch immediately if they haven’t already—this cannot wait until after the holiday weekend.
by Contributed | Oct 7, 2021 | Dynamics 365, Microsoft 365, Technology
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Dynamics 365 Sales helps teams better understand business relationships, take actions based on insights, and close opportunities faster. One of the many ways the app helps sales teams succeed is enabling them to build segments for use in assignment rules to ensure leads and opportunities are routed to the right sellers.
What is a segment?
A segment is a collection of leads and opportunities that are grouped together based on certain conditions, such as location, deal value, language, and product. You can create segments for both lead and opportunity entities. For details, see this article: Create and activate a segment.
You can use segments in assignment rules and sequences. With segments, you can choose the set of characteristics a lead or opportunity should have in order to get assigned to relevant sellers or to connect to a certain sequence, without the need to create the same conditions repeatedly.
When a new lead or opportunity is created in Dynamics 365 Sales and matches the conditions of a specified segment, it will automatically become a member of that segment, and will assign to sellers and connect to a sequence based on how you build your organization’s process automation.
Let’s take an example to understand how it works.
Define segment conditions
The following segment is defined with simple conditions, to catch all leads coming from the company’s website and that have an email address.
A segment can also include more complex parameters, using groups of AND/OR conditions or a link to a related entity. For example, you can create a segment that will capture all opportunities that are interested in printers or monitors, and that are related to one of two relevant accounts.
Simulate segment members
You can simulate the results based on existing data in your system, to make sure the segment will catch the lead or opportunity with the desired characteristics. The simulation results are not actual members of that segment and are just an example of the types of leads the segment will capture when it is activated.
Important highlights and limitations
- A lead or opportunity will be evaluated for a segment when it is created, and again when it is being updated. For example, a lead can enter the system without a populated email address, but after going through a nurturing process, an email address will be added, and the lead will become a member of the “Nurtured leads from website” segment in the above example.
- Your segment must be activated to catch new leads or opportunities.
- A lead or opportunity can become a member of only one segment. If a lead matches the conditions of more than one segment, it will randomly become a member of one of them.
- When a lead is added to a segment and assigned to a seller or connected to a sequence, it can’t be added to a different segment, seller, or sequence.
How to use a segment in assignment rules
When creating assignment rules for a lead or opportunity, you can use a segment to define the type of record that will be assigned to sellers via each rule. You can create multiple rules based on the same segment and add specific conditions to each rule to match your business process.
In the following example, we can select the “Nurtured leads from website” segment. This means that all leads that will become members of that segment will be assigned to sellers by this rule’s conditions.
We can add another condition to that segment that will route the hot leads from the segment to the most experienced sellers.
For this scenario, we can create two rules: one rule to capture hot leads from the segment, and another rule to catch all remaining leads from the segment.
By placing the rule for assigning hot leads above the default rule, hot leads will be evaluated first and will be assigned to experienced sellers. The rest of the leads will be assigned by the default rule.
Next steps
For more information about segments, read the documentation:
The post Automatically route deals to the right sellers by using segments in assignment rules appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.
Brought to you by Dr. Ware, Microsoft Office 365 Silver Partner, Charleston SC.
by Contributed | Oct 7, 2021 | Technology
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Are you looking to modernize your on-premises databases to Azure SQL? Join Alexandra Ciortea, Raymond Truong, Wenjing Wang, and Anna Hoffman to understand how you can size your Azure SQL target accordingly, based on the current performance and business requirements. We will walk you through several approaches and models that can suit your needs.
by Scott Muniz | Oct 7, 2021 | Security, Technology
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS A
lock (
) or
https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.
by Scott Muniz | Oct 7, 2021 | Security, Technology
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
In coordination with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the Federal Chief Information Security Officer Council (FCISO) Trusted Internet Connections (TIC) Subcommittee, and the General Services Administration, CISA has released Trusted Internet Connections 3.0 Remote User Use Case. The Remote User Use Case provides federal agencies with guidance on applying network and multi-boundary security for agencies that permit remote users on their networks. In accordance with OMB Memorandum M-19-26, this use case builds off TIC 3.0 Interim Telework Guidance originally released in Spring 2020.
The TIC 3.0 Remote User Use Case considers additional security patterns agencies may face with remote users and includes four new security capabilities:
- User Awareness and Training,
- Domain Name Monitoring,
- Application Container, and
- Remote Desktop Access.
In conjunction with the Remote User Use Case, CISA has also released Response to Comments on TIC 3.0 Remote User Use Case and the Pilot Process Handbook. These additional documents provide feedback on the Remote User Use Case and describes the process by which agencies should conduct TIC 3.0 pilots.
CISA encourages all federal government agencies and organizations to review the TIC 3.0 Remote User Use Case and visit the CISA TIC page for updates and additional information on the TIC program.
by Scott Muniz | Oct 6, 2021 | Security, Technology
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Mozilla has released security updates to address vulnerabilities in Firefox and Firefox ESR . An attacker could exploit some of these vulnerabilities to take control of an affected system.
CISA encourages users and administrators to review the Mozilla security advisories for Firefox 93, Firefox ESR 78.15, and Firefox ESR 91.2.
by Scott Muniz | Oct 6, 2021 | Security, Technology
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
The Apache Software Foundation has released Apache HTTP Server version 2.4.50 to address two vulnerabilities. An attacker could exploit these vulnerabilities to take control of an affected system. One vulnerability, CVE-2021-41773, has been exploited in the wild.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) encourages users and administrators to review the Apache HTTP Server 2.4.50 vulnerabilities page and apply the necessary update.
Recent Comments