Tag Archive for: change

Here’s why Louisiana wants residents to change passwords after OMV hack — and how to do it | News

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After a massive data breach exposed at least 6 million Louisiana Office of Motor Vehicles records, state officials are recommending anyone who holds a Louisiana drivers license change all of their passwords. 

That’s a huge undertaking for most people, but digital security experts say it’s a recommendation worth following for the millions of Louisianans whose personal information, including social security number and drivers license data, is exposed on the internet. 

Why should you change your passwords?

The personal information exposed in the OMV hack has the potential to arm someone with everything they need to access an online account except for the password, said Abe Baggili, an LSU professor and cybersecurity expert. 

Many online services ask users to fill out security questions about personal details as a way to confirm someone’s identity during a password reset. The OMV hack exposed enough information that a hacker could now answer those questions or figure out the answers, Baggili said. 

A hacker with access to the leaked personal information could also now craft an extremely sophisticated phishing email in an attempt to steal usernames, passwords, credit card numbers and other data, Baggili said. 

“You fall victim to this because it looks super legitimate, it looks like it’s coming from the right place and it looks like they have enough information about you to make it believable that they know who you are,” Baggili said.

How should you change your passwords?

The solution is fairly simple and is something people should probably already be doing, Baggili said. 

“We live in an age where at this point and time a password manager is essential,” Baggili said. 

Password managers secure all your passwords in one place, can alert you if a password has been leaked anywhere online and can allow you to quickly and easily change passwords to be more secure. Many internet browsers offer password managers built in to the browser, but a dedicated, seperate password manager are considered more secure.

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PSI Fee Change Goes Into Effect on January 1

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Starting January 1, flight schools and FBOs that administer the online aviation knowledge tests will see their cut of the $175 fee drop from $65 to $22 per test. That’s roughly a 70 percent drop in revenue for the businesses in question.

At the present time PSI Services LLC, owned by Lifelong Learner Holdings (LLH), is under contract with the FAA to provide the tests. In years past, there were two other companies, CATS and LaserGrade, but they have gone out of business, giving PSI the monopoly.

On November 18 PSI contacted the flight schools and FBOs to advise them of the fee change. The flight schools and FBOs are third-party providers that offer tests to their customers as a convenience and have no say in the cost of the tests. FBOs and schools contacted by FLYING said the $22 will not cover their costs of administering the tests, therefore they will likely cease to proctor them.

READ MORE: Flight Schools Consider Dropping Knowledge Tests

“This will really damage the fabric of general aviation flight training,” says David St. George, executive director of the Society of Aviation and Flight Educators (SAFE). St. George has been a flight instructor and designated pilot examiner for decades and was one of the first aviation stakeholders to express concern about the impact the change in fee structure will have on the third-party vendors. He describes them as the small mom-and-pop FBOs that provide aviation testing as both a convenience to their customers and as a means to bolster the income during inclement weather when there isn’t a lot of flying.

“There are some 800 of these small testing facilities in the United States, some of them in very out of the way places,” he told FLYING. “They rely on that income from the tests.”

St. George noted that there has also been an increase in knowledge test taking over the past three years or so because of the number of persons desiring to be commercial drone pilots. “If you look at the FAA database on pilot certificates, you will see about half of them are drone pilots now.”

St. George sent a letter to the FAA’s Airman Testing Standards Branch, AFS-630, expressing his…

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How to change your computer’s settings to stop spying programs

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You can go into your PC or Mac settings and restrict to access your camera, mic, and location.

Your phone knows a lot about you. It tracks your movement, browsing habits, downloads, and more. Go here for a trick to know when your phone’s camera or microphone is being used.

You also need to worry about social media apps, voice assistants, and smart TVs from listening and recording what you have to say. Tap or click for steps to put a stop to it.

Phone apps ask permission to access your camera, mic, and location. You can go into your phone’s settings to grant or restrict these permissions. Did you know you can do the same for your PC or Mac? Here’s how:

How to change app permissions on Windows

Windows has a Privacy page where you can fiddle with your app permissions. It just takes a few clicks.

Change app permissions on Windows 11

• Go to Start > Settings > Privacy & security.

• Under App permissions, select an option (for example, Location). Then choose which apps can access it.

• You can also use the Recent activity dropdown menu for each permission to show which apps are accessing them.

Change app permissions on Windows 10

• Go to Start > Settings > Privacy.

• Under App permissions, select an option (for example, Microphone). Then choose which apps can access it.

There are many permissions on the list, including access to your calendar, files and folders, email, music library, notifications, and webcam. Consider whether an app truly needs the access level it requests by default.

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As Climate Change Looms, IT Has Many Parts to Play

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As we approach the end of 2022, one of the prevailing stories has been the weather. As scientists predicted, the effects of climate change can be seen in our historic weather patterns and events. The western United States has continued to experience a megadrought, now in its 22nd year. Unprecedented heat waves hovered over Europe and China. Heavy rain and floods drenched other parts of the United States, in particular Yellowstone National Park. Hurricanes Ian and Nicole slammed into Florida, South Carolina, and moved up the eastern coastline. Hurricane Ian’s winds were clocked at 150 miles per hour, making it tied for the fifth-strongest hurricane ever to make landfall in the U.S. Each of these weather incidents caused billions of dollars in personal, commercial and governmental damage. We know climate change will affect information technology in many direct and less obvious ways, as weather events can have profound impacts on IT services, infrastructure and planning across the board — in education, government and business.

Information technology plays a central role in forecasting weather. Technology aids forecasting by providing information on transportation safety, agriculture and utilities before, during and after weather events. Supercomputers allow the National Weather Service to predict ever-changing weather patterns with enough confidence to issue watches and warnings. High-performance computing (HPC) allows agencies to utilize multiple supercomputers to process extremely complex calculations. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s computer, called Hera, was listed in 2020 by Top500.org as the 88th top supercomputer in the world, based on a Cray CS500 with a compute capacity of 45 million hours per month with 63,840 cores and a total scratch disk capacity of 18.5 Petabytes. One Petabyte is the equivalent of 1,000 Terabytes.

Once dangerous weather is forecast and tracked, technology is critical to our ability to assess damage and mobilize any necessary resources. As Ntirety CEO Emil Sayegh said in a contributed piece for Forbes in April 2022, “Almost every organization should prepare…

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