Author: Edie Okamoto

  • Cyber Warfare attacks by Russians are happening all over the US

    Down the Rabbit Hole we go.
    Down the Rabbit Hole we go.
    The US Government released a report and recommends that all citizens and companies take pre-cautions.

    The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recommends that network administrators review the IP addresses, file hashes, and Yara signature provided and add the IPs to their watchlist to determine whether malicious activity has been observed within their organizations. The review of network perimeter net flow or firewall logs will assist in determining whether your network has experienced suspicious activity. When reviewing network perimeter logs for the IP addresses, organizations may find numerous instances of these IPs attempting to connect to their systems. Upon reviewing the traffic from these IPs, some traffic may correspond to malicious activity, and some may correspond to legitimate activity. Some traffic that may appear legitimate is actually malicious, such as vulnerability scanning or browsing of legitimate public facing services (e.g., HTTP, HTTPS, FTP). Connections from these IPs may be performing vulnerability scans attempting to identify websites that are vulnerable to cross-site scripting (XSS) or Structured Query Language (SQL) injection attacks. If scanning identified vulnerable sites, attempts to exploit the vulnerabilities may be experienced.

    Commit to Cybersecurity Best Practices

    A commitment to good cybersecurity and best practices is critical to protecting networks and systems.

    Here are some questions you may want to ask your organization to help prevent and mitigate against attacks.

    1. Backups: Do we backup all critical information? Are the backups stored offline? Have we tested our ability to revert to backups during an incident?

    2. Risk Analysis: Have we conducted a cybersecurity risk analysis of the organization?

    3. Staff Training: Have we trained staff on cybersecurity best practices? 4. Vulnerability Scanning & Patching: Have we implemented regular scans of our network and systems and appropriate patching of known system vulnerabilities?

    5. Application Whitelisting: Do we allow only approved programs to run on our networks? 6. Incident Response: Do we have an incident response plan and have we practiced it?

    7. Business Continuity: Are we able to sustain business operations without access to certain systems? For how long? Have we tested this?

    8. Penetration Testing: Have we attempted to hack into our own systems to test the security of our systems and our ability to defend against attacks?

    For the full document with more valuable advice:  Click

  • Happy Holidays and A Merry Xmas 2016

    Happy Holidays and Merry Xmas

    Happy Holidays 2016

    We have a lot to be thankful for.  We enjoyed eight years of relative peace. Yes, even though the stock market has reached new all-time heights, mostly only the top 25% within the world economy are affected by that. However, during the Obama administrations many people in the middle class and even the impoverished have made small strides.  More

    Hope that we can improve our own lives.

    The housing crisis and the cost of education problems have not been adequately addressed, but at least everyone knows about it.  People are no longer suffering in silence, all alone. There are amazing new companies who are working hard on addressing it.  For instance the Khan Academy provides assistance for free that literally change people’s lives.  Here is one example of their many Thank You letters the Khan Academy deservedly received.  Robyn, December 4, 2013: “I am currently in high school, trying to get into university for engineering. I just recently started using Khan Academy, and I am already hooked. I just wanted to say that it is truly amazing what you are doing. If there was ever such a thing as a saint: you would be one. Providing the world with easy access to education is something that nations upon nations have failed to do, yet you accomplished starting with just some simple videos available for any one to access. Thank you for restoring my faith in people.”   More

    Amazing scientific breakthroughs that will change our future

    In 2016, Scientists have tested the world’s first minimally invasive brain-machine interface, designed to control an exoskeleton with the power of thought and gets people with paralysis back on their feet.  More

    In 2016, 3D Printing research shows promises for medicine and manufacturing that are mind-boggling.  In the future organs and bone may well be printed from your own tissues and thus move medicine into an entirely different sphere. More

    Artificial Intelligence had several major breakthroughs, not least of which is that Google’s AI engine reorganized “itself” to write a better translation system.  And this indicates that AI is here to stay at an entirely different level.  More

    Social Trends that bring families together

    At the home front things have changed as well.  Now for the first time in since the year of 1880 more children and young adults (18 to 34 year olds) live with their parents than live away from their parents.  More  The economy that squeezes the life-style of most Westerners (75%) financially, combined with the aging of the baby boomers is moving families closer together.

    The ever shrinking middle

    Yes, the share of the middle class has been shrinking and unless corporate officers start waking up to the fact that a shrinking middle class means a shrinking customer base, this trend will continue for years to come.  More

    We enjoy enough food, clean water (most of us, ahem, Flint), a roof over our heads and more of us have our families with us.  Life is good, we can always go online and improve it ourselves.  So now think about all the good things in your life and share them with your family over some cookies.  Merry X-mas or Happy Holidays, whichever you prefer.

  • Trump’s austerity programs starts with his musical artist line-up at the inauguration … and his Steve Mnuchin is sure to watch every 27 cents

    Trump fan and cover song singer Beau Davidson agrees to entertain at Trump Inauguration
    Trump fan and cover song singer Beau Davidson agrees to entertain at Trump Inauguration
    Trump proves at inauguration that he is “one of the people.”

    The International Business Times:  “A bank established by President-elect Donald Trump’s choice for Treasury secretary, Steve Mnuchin, once tried to foreclose on a 90-year-old Florida woman over a $0.27 payment mistake, reported Politico Thursday. Critics in the story allege that OneWest, founded by Mnuchin and partners, took advantage of the 2008 housing collapse by buying out risky loans from mortgage lender IndyMac and, in turn, getting help from Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) to cover the costs.”  (full article)

    And now they report:  “Democrats are focusing on Mnuchin’s tenure at OneWest, a bank he took over at the height of the financial crisis that has been dubbed a “foreclosure machine” that profited from the real estate collapse. The Wall Street Journal said no Republicans have expressed any opposition to Mnuchin, who likely will be vetted by the Senate Finance Committee. Bloomberg reported Mnuchin, 53, already has met with Republican Sens. Orrin Hatch of Utah and Chuck Grassley of Iowa.”

    Clearly this proves that Mnuchin is the best possible person to “Make America Great Again.” Those old ladies don’t need their homes and the value their husbands created while the husbands were still alive can “trickle down” much easier when the Banks repossess the properties, instead of  allowing the survivors to remain in her home until their deaths.  Sure she could have gifted the property to her 40 something year-old grandchildren, who may be able to pay off some of their student loans.  Anyway, a Bankers’ job is to keep as much money as they can and Mnuchin is so worthy of being admired for his “sticky fingers.”  He took a 27 cents error and gained all the equity for the bank from that 97 year old lady’s home. What astounding commitment to business!

    Trump is also proving that he is sincere about saving money, by hiring the lounge lizard Beau Davidson, who already has enchanted him at his private estate in Mar-a-Lago, a twenty acre membership club that offers dining, bridge, croquet, tennis, spa and entertainment shows.  If Beau, who looks a little like a man who previously worked for the Chippendales in LA, is good enough for the millionaires and billionaires at Mar-a-Lago, he is good enough for Trump’s inauguration party.  A Choir from Utah will sing as well to bring a type of Christian atmosphere to the celebrations. They will probably do it for (their) god, so it is in the budget.  Surely the Trump children will be there but they will not set up meetings about gaining access. Just like they will do in their non-profit set up for the very purpose they will request that the donors provide proof of funds prior to having a lunch with them where they will hear them out about their concern that they hope their daddy can help them with.  They are absolutely aware of the need to keep up appearances.

    Obama meanwhile recently had his last extravaganza at the White House in October 2016.  It was quite amazing and “élite.”  Here you can watch it for yourselves, it was awesome, and the line up shows that Obama has a lot of amazing friends, it was all “Love and Happiness” there.

    Trump signals with his celebration that times, are going to focus on the “economy” – kicking out 97 year old ladies from their homes for $0.27 errors in their checks. Trump has drained the swamp and has installed his oligarch friends at every corner. Judging by the celebratory tone of McConnell who forbade the voters to find out about the Russian hacking before the election, Times they are A’Changing. So go home and hug your family and know that you best enjoy your life right now.  Happy Holidays and we’ll see you at the other side.

  • Trump’s drains the swamp of lobbyist for corporations and replaces them with the corporate officers and bankers

    Trump and Icahn get an "A" for honesty
    Trump and Icahn get an “A” for honesty
    Icahn and Trump are well known for expressing their feelings and opinions without filters.

    Bravo?   They are not politically correct and that is what their voters wanted, right?

    It is obvious for people in the know to see what attracts them to each other. They are both single-mindedly focused on their own profit. They are both honest about it and have a devil make care attitude.  They are completely unapologetic about any trails of victims they may leave in their wake.  They are bullies and they are honest about it.  If they can get away with something they not only will try the practically must try.  They love the “Game of Business.”   Trump promised to get rid of lobbyists and by golly he sure seems to keep his promise.  Instead of having lobbyists who want who appeal to Congress to create lenient laws that allow for more profit for the 1%.  They indeed get rid of the lobbyists and replace them with the 1%.  What a practical idea.  The Trump voters must be so very pleased.  Trump is keeping his promise to drain the swamp of middle men.  The swamp of government is now honestly run by and for the corporations and venture capital firms and banks, and the 1% who have paid for everything anyway.  The honesty that Trump brings to government is laudable indeed.  No more pretense.  Just making sure that the hyper-wealthy get what they need and want more efficiently and faster than ever.

    Just one thought. We know that these old men don’t care about the future because in the future they are most likely dead.  They are old and they will die and this is one last fling before they go.  But what about the 40, 30, 20, 10 year olds in the world?

    A world that run by people who lack humanity typically erodes healthy middle class.  The old men may not care, but without a middle class you have no stability.  If we look at countries who lost their middle class we are always looking at war.  Trump wants to spend a $1 Trillion dollars on improving the nuclear arsenal – without even getting intelligence briefings.   We wonder what Mnuchin, Gingrich, Tillerson, and Icahn think about that?  We hope to find out soon what vision these creators of the new gilded age have in mind for the US and the world. Hopefully they have a vision that goes beyond their own bank accounts.

    Hillary Clinton is gone and many agree that her loss was due to due to a confluence of factors and successful efforts to sabotage her campaign. People just didn’t like her very much.  The FBI didn’t like her, Putin didn’t like her, the Public didn’t like her, even Democrats didn’t like her, her campaign staff fought about her, and the media certainly didn’t like her. She was a hard worker, but people didn’t warm up to her.  The warmed up to Trump.  They were amused by Trump.  No one was amused by Hillary, not even SNL. Her portrayal was often nasty and a bit weird. Trump’s portrayal was that of an all familiar American Uncle, reminiscent of Rob Reiner’s politically incorrect TV dad in the show “All in the Family.”

    Not many people really know Hillary as she keeps very private and opens up to very few people, many of whom are also intensely private. The acclaimed and award-winning Investigative Reporter for the New York Times and The Washington Post, Ronald Kessler, sheds light on how she how Hillary Clinton was perceived by the service details who spent much time with her. It could explain why the Secret Service seemed so adamant that she ought not be president unless it was unavoidable:   Why the West was Lost – First Family Detail

    Whatever we may think about Trump at least he is honest about being corrupt. Maybe that is a step forward?  Or, perhaps we will have Trump, the politically incorrect man and his politically incorrect friends run the country into the ground – honestly.