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In what seemed to be major news for only a brief period of time, over 500 million Facebook account details were leaked last week. The data included things like profile names, Facebook ID numbers, email addresses, and phone numbers. While this data may be online in other forms the combined data together makes it a treasure trove for phishers and scammers.

If you were using any Microsoft products on Monday (March 15th) you may have been party to the outage that took down services such as Office 365 and Teams worldwide.

The outage was caused by an Azure authentication error (you can learn more here) and lasted roughly 14 hours.

The third stimulus package (dubbed The American Rescue Plan of 2021) is expected to go to the House today for a final vote – in fact by the time this article goes live it may have already – and then it is expected to be signed into law by President Biden.

COVID related hardware shortages and merchandising shortages in general are not new, since the beginning of the pandemic we have seen shortages in food, toilet paper, cleaning products and even personal protective equipment (PPE) frontline workers desperately needed to stay safe.

We have talked about several major ransomware events over the past year, but these were far from unique. Ransomware and cyber security events have been on the rise lately and it’s been made abundantly apparent that NO ONE is immune to them.

From the yet to be officially validated Kia Motors attack, to the narrowly avoided disaster with a Florida Water Plant.

Most of us rely heavily on technology to accomplish our goals, whether it be at work or at home. Computers have made so many things in life more accessible, from learning to banking to downtime (though too much idle scrolling is the antithesis of productivity).

But have you ever stopped to think if you’re really getting the most from the technology you use? Often we get stuck in a rut and don’t really explore what else may be out there.

As a technology provider we’re well versed in supporting the Microsoft suite of products, and Outlook especially is a business staple. Whether you have made a one-time purchase with Office 2019 or are using the subscription model plan with Microsoft 365, both products include Teams, Outlook, OnePoint, SharePoint and Word.

There has been a lot of debate surrounding when things will get back to “normal” and what normal will even look like, but one thing we think is here to stay is the remote workforce.

While many jobs will go back to the office, the benefits of working from home and having a remote work staff cannot be downplayed.

In most situations where a massive hack or breach has occurred, trying to get a handle on what has been compromised or even what is still compromised can be a challenge.

It’s unfortunately been our experience that in most cases things almost end up being worse than they initially look.

When you’re talking about IT for businesses there’s a wide range of normal, for some businesses their normal is having in-house IT staff. For many though their IT operational needs are such that having a dedicated staff devoted to the job just doesn’t make financial sense.