Tag Archive for: Advance

Biden Presses Computer Chips Case in Advance of Senate Vote

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WASHINGTON — 

Calling semiconductors “the building blocks for the modern economy,” President Joe Biden on Monday asked Congress to move quickly and send him a bipartisan bill designed to boost the computer chips industry and high-tech research in the United States.

The Senate was originally expected to take a critical vote in the evening to advance the legislation, but Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., announced that storms on the East Coast had disrupted travel plans for several senators and that he would be delaying the vote until Tuesday morning. The bill needs support from at least 60 senators to clear procedural hurdles and place it on a path to final passage later this week, giving Biden a signature win on legislation his administration says is necessary to protect national security and help the U.S. better compete with China.

The bill provides about $52 billion in grants and other incentives for the semiconductor industry as well as a 25% tax credit for those companies that build chip plants in the U.S. Supporters say those incentives are necessary to compete with other nations that are also spending billions of dollars to lure manufacturers.

The pandemic has underscored how much the United States relies on semiconductor manufacturers abroad to provide the chips used in automobiles, computers, appliances and weapons systems. The Biden administration has been warning lawmakers they need to act before leaving for their August recess to ensure the companies invest in U.S. fabs instead of building the plants elsewhere.

Biden, who is still recovering from COVID-19, held a virtual roundtable with members of his administration and industry leaders about the merits of the bill. He said that a shortage of semiconductors was the primary driver of rising automobile costs, which are a core component of the inflation gripping the country.

Biden said the U.S. relies on Taiwan for the production of the most advanced chips and that China was also starting to move ahead of the U.S. on the manufacturing of such chips.

“America invented the semiconductor. It’s time to bring it home,” Biden said.

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told him that chip manufacturers are…

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Scientific advance leads to a new tool in the fight against hackers

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Scientific advance leads to a new tool in the fight against hackers
Using the laws of quantum physics, the researchers developed a new security protocol that uses a person’s geographical location to guarantee that they are communicating with the right person. Position-based quantum encryption, as it is called, can be used to ensure that a person is speaking with an actual bank representative when the bank calls and asks a customer to make changes to their account. This is an artistic representation of the security protocol. Credit: Alex Bols, University of Copenhagen, The Quantum for Life Centre.

A new form of security identification could soon see the light of day and help us protect our data from hackers and cybercriminals. Quantum mathematicians at the University of Copenhagen have solved a mathematical riddle that allows for a person’s geographical location to be used as a personal ID that is secure against even the most advanced cyber attacks.

People have used codes and encryption to protect information from falling into the wrong hands for thousands of years. Today, encryption is widely used to protect our digital activity from hackers and cybercriminals who assume false identities and exploit the internet and our increasing number of digital devices to steal from us.

As such, there is an ever-growing need for new security measures to detect hackers posing as our banks or other trusted institutions. Within this realm, researchers from the University of Copenhagen’s Department of Mathematical Sciences have just made a giant leap.

“There is a constant battle in cryptography between those who want to protect information and those seeking to crack it. New security keys are being developed and later broken and so the cycle continues. Until, that is, a completely different type of key has been found,” says Professor Matthias Christandl.

For nearly twenty years, researchers around the world have been trying to solve the riddle of how to securely determine a person’s geographical location and use it as a secure ID. Until now, this had not been possible by way of…

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NEW TECH: DigiCert Document Signing Manager leverages PKI to advance electronic signatures

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Most of us, by now, take electronic signatures for granted.

Related: Why PKI will endure as the Internet’s secure core

Popular services, like DocuSign and Adobe Sign, have established themselves as convenient, familiar tools to conduct daily commerce, exclusively online. Yet electronic signatures do have their security limitations. That’s why “wet” signatures, i.e. signing in the presence of a notary, remains a requirement for some transactions involving high dollars or very sensitive records.

Clearly, a more robust approach to verifying identities in the current and future digital landscape would be useful. After all, conducting business transactions strictly online was already on the rise before Covid 19, a trend that only accelerated due to the global pandemic.

And this is why DigiCert recently introduced DigiCert® Document Signing Manager (DSM) – an advanced hosted service designed to increase the level of assurance of the identities of persons signing documents digitally.

I had the chance to learn more about this new tool from Brian Trzupek, DigiCert’s senior vice president of product DigiCert is best known as a Certificate Authority (CA) and a supplier of services to manage Public Key Infrastructure. And PKI, of course, is the behind-the-scenes authentication and encryption framework on which the Internet is built.

Trzupek outlined how DSM allows for legally-binding documents with auditability and management of signers. “It adds trust and security into each signature, with the ability to easily work with third-party signing workflows such as Adobe, DocuSign, or other signing workflow platforms,” he says.

As digital transformation has quickened, it has become clear that electronic signatures are destined to become even more pervasively used to conduct business remotely. DigiCert is bringing PKI to bear to help make that happen.  Here are the main takeaways from our discussion:

Leveraging PKI

The experience on many signing platforms goes something like this: you receive a document via email, you select a signature font, and then you click to insert that signature on highlighted areas of the document. You conclude by clicking submit and when the document…

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Lorain County JVS business students advance to national event | Lorain County

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Lorain County JVS students in the business academy, recently competed in the virtual Business Professionals of America (BPA) State competition, with three students advancing to the national level.

Cheyenne Cartwright, senior in the marketing and entrepreneurship program, competed in the advanced interview skills event and will head to the national competition this summer.

“The competition this year was more difficult than last year,” said Cartwright. “Since everything was virtual, it was hard to show your true self and all of your portfolio accomplishments, but I achieved further goals than I did last year, and I’m really proud of that.”

Jennifer Pebworth, marketing and entrepreneurship instructor, shared that even with all the changes and challenges surrounding this year’s judged competitions, she was proud to have students who wanted to participate and even more proud of their achievements.

“This year’s virtual state competition wasn’t what the students had wished for,” Pebworth said, “but they proved their resilience by doing their best.”

When Cartwright thinks about the next level of competition, she can’t hold back her excitement. “It is a huge honor! The event will be virtual, which is kind of sad, but I understand it too. The most important thing, is the three of us that are competing, are doing it together.”

Students that are advancing to nationals, and those that placed in the top 10, are listed below by associate school district.

 Amherst

Woody Decker, web and graphic design senior, placed ninth in the advanced desktop publishing event and is advancing to nationals

Clearview

Damian Garcia and Dawson Fries, web and graphic design juniors, placed seventh in the podcast team event

Columbia

Evin Elliott and Elijah Rosas, web and graphic design seniors, placed eighth in the website design team event

Elyria

Chase Lee, web and graphic design junior, placed seventh in the podcast team event

Firelands

Eduardo Diaz, cybersecurity and networking senior, placed first in the computer security event and is advancing to nationals

North Ridgeville

Zackary Hart, web and graphic design junior, placed seventh in the podcast team…

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