Tag Archive for: beat

A new crop of shopping tools aims to help consumers beat the supply chain crunch

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“I’ve never been a gambler, but I can absolutely say there’s a thrill to getting something that you know seconds later will be gone,” he said. “It’s almost indescribable. It’s the opposite of FOMO [the fear of missing out]. There’s a huge dose of serotonin the second you get that ‘order completed’ screen.”

Where people once fought over luxuries like concert tickets and Supreme drops, now they’re fighting for household essentials and medical supplies. The grayed-out “purchase” button on websites everywhere is emblematic of a consumer era when virtually everything is at our fingertips, but also perpetually just out of reach.

In response, a small but dedicated community of programmers, journalists and social media content creators has sprung up to announce whenever a retailer such as Amazon or Walmart have restocked, or “dropped,” more product. Over the course of the pandemic, these stock hunters have devised ever more sophisticated methods for learning about impending drops earlier and earlier — and for notifying what has become a loyal following numbering in the hundreds of thousands for some accounts.

Demand for their services is so high, some have transformed stock-hunting into a full-time job, earning a bit of cash every time a user clicks an alert or pays for a subscription feature. Every in-stock notification acts as a dinner bell ringing across the internet, prompting a mad scramble as shoppers try to shave precious seconds off their efforts to secure a Covid test, a game console or a popular children’s toy. For many, it’s even become its own form of entertainment.

“Just getting the gaming console is kind of a game in itself,” said Marc Holgate, founder of the tracking app HotStock.io.

As long as supplies remain tight, the incentive for shoppers to turn to these tools will continue to grow. And the more people flock to these tools, the harder it may become for other shoppers to avoid using them for fear of missing out on an important shopping advantage.

The rise of professional stock hunters

What many widely followed stock hunters have in common is that they began as ordinary consumers themselves, looking for a coveted item.

Matt Swider, a New York-based technology…

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“You need to beat all of us to beat one of us.” The US Cyberspace Solarium transitions to a not-for-profit. US Federal Trade Commission plans 2022 rule-making.

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At a glance.

  • “You need to beat all of us to beat one of us.”
  • The US Cyberspace Solarium transitions to a not-for-profit.
  • US Federal Trade Commission plans 2022 rule-making.

National Cyber Director speaks at Cyber Beacon 2021.

The Cyber Beacon 2021 conference was hosted (virtually) by the National Defense University’s College of Information and Cyberspace, aka the “Cyber War College.” The US Department of Defense reports that recently confirmed National Cyber Director Chris Inglis appeared at the conference to discuss his new office’s objectives and undertakings. The goal of the office, he stated, is to “bring coherence, connectivity [and] leverage for all the parts that are already in this space, such that we propose, if you’re a transgressor in this space, you’ve got to beat all of us to beat one of us.” He went on to say that this approach indicates a shift in how the nation has been defending against cyberthreats in the past. “You need to beat all of us to beat one of us,” he stated, coining what some are calling a new motto. 

Cyberspace Solarium Commission plans transition to not-for-profit organization.

The Cyberspace Solarium Commission closed out its term on Tuesday night and, as SC Media reports the cybersecurity policy development effort accomplished what it set out to do, having codified approximately forty measures into law. With the commission’s term, agreed upon in the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act, now completed, leadership announced plans to convert the group into a nonprofit, affectionately called Cyber Solarium 2.0, in order to continue its work of pursuing recommended measures. Co-chairman Representative Mike Gallagher stated, “There’s no question it’s not going to be the same as 1.0…but I think because we’ve gotten the ball rolling with our colleagues…because we’re not starting from scratch. I’m still fairly confident that we’re going to be able to make progress next year.” That said, he admitted the group had already tackled most of the simpler measures, so future recommendations might be more difficult to codify. Future focus will be on Systemically Important Critical Infrastructure, as well as the establishment of a bureau of cyber…

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How to Beat Hackers Targeting Backups with Ransomware Attacks

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If your business is like most, chances are it has a pretty good backup strategy. You’re probably backing up critical data regularly, and that’s a good thing. But it’s not nearly enough. In fact, if your backups haven’t yet been targeted by ransomware, it’s only a matter of time.

Ransomware attacks grew by more than 365% in 2019 alone, and a growing number of those target backups. If you are attacked, your business could be forced to decide whether to pay the ransom. Plenty of people are doing just that, and it’s expensive. One recent report found that the average cost of getting back to normal, including the ransom, costs nearly $1.5 million.

There are very good reasons why hackers are attacking backups: They know that the data in those backups are the keys to the kingdom, and they are extremely profitable.

“It’s big business. In fact, it’s one of the bigger software ventures where you can make money quickly, and the bad guys know it,” said Marc Staimer, a storage industry analyst at Dragon Slayer Consulting. “It’s organized, state-sponsored crime, and like any business, they reinvest the profits in R&D and go after anything that threatens those profits.”

The result is a high-stakes cat-and-mouse game that sees backup vendors figuring out how to stop one type of threat, only to have hackers come up with new ways to get at backups. It’s a never-ending cycle.

The Game of Whack-a-Mole Begins

So how did we get to this place? Ransomware has been a problem for a long time, but hackers didn’t get around to effectively targeting backups with ransomware attacks until a few years ago. In 2017, the industry got a big shock with the Veeam ransomware incident, which put everyone on high alert. As one of the largest backup vendors in the world, hackers knew it was a good target. Hackers who found the backup repositories on the network would delete them, and then detonate ransomware’s payload so the data could no longer be recovered.

Bolstered by that success, hackers kept pushing the envelope, and backup vendors pushed back. First, they did what they could to educate their customers to make sure backups were up-to-date and tested often,…

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