Tag Archive for: Snap

Medicaid, SNAP Could Become Key Cyber Attack Targets

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In the future, cyber warfare is increasingly likely to target federal services that help everyday residents meet their basic needs, per a new report.

The report, which is authored by researchers from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, points out that traditionally, cyber defense has focused on sensitive military and intelligence infrastructure. But that may be changing, according to their research, which involved tabletop exercises with cyber and foreign policy experts, as well as a public survey.

Adversary nations and non-state actors — such as cyber criminals, political extremists and “lone wolf” actors — may all seek to use cyber attacks to “destabilize” the federal government. Disrupting essential food and medical assistance services like SNAP and Medicaid could spark chaos and distrust in the federal government’s abilities. This could exacerbate polarization and make residents more open to believing misinformation and disinformation, cyber and foreign policy experts told the researchers.


Such attacks would be extra impactful if timed to strike during sensitive political moments, such as elections or foreign policy crises.

Attackers might also try to cause panic and economic disruption by hitting federal economic supports, like the Small Business Administration’s small and medium-sized business grant programs. They could also try to hack and manipulate federal economic data to create confusion in financial markets.

“Experts saw federal agencies that support economic activity as being most susceptible to cascading effects, with even small intrusions creating fear and panic likely to undermine trust and confidence in the federal government,” the report reads.

Experts also predicted that non-state actors would want to enhance polarization by hacking into public health research. Based on that research, attackers could then spread public health misinformation and disinformation. The resulting confusion would likely cause the public to doubt government health decisions and question the administration itself. Attackers could also try to deliberately deepen existing social divisions on…

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SnapAV rebranding as Snap One

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SnapAV, distributor of a multitude of security, A/V, and networking products and the owner of smart home tech maker Control4, announced on Tuesday that it is rebranding as Snap One.

In a briefing with members of the media ahead of the announcement, Kordon Vaughn, VP of Marketing for Snap One, said that given the evolution of the industry and company itself, the name SnapAV just did not fit anymore.

“We’ve been kicking this around, thinking about this for quite a while and we said, ‘ok, what are our priorities? What are our goals?’ All of these things boiled down to these two thoughts: the first is we want our name to reflect who we are and embrace our aspirations for the future,” Vaughn explains.

After considering this, Vaughn says they felt the name ‘Snap One’ best encapsulated who the company is and what they want to accomplish in the marketplace, which is to be the “one” partner that integrators can depend on. 

“We first took on the name ‘Snap’ to represent our mission to make our partners’ lives easier. Every interaction an integrator has with us needs to be simple, a ‘snap,’ so that was the purpose of our founding and that remains our purpose today. As we think about our aspirations for the future and boil that down into a simple sentence it is this: it is to be an integrator’s most valued, most trusted partner – the one they keep coming back to again and again because they depend on us because we solve the problems for them.” 

Having a name that resonated with integrators beyond the AV market also factored into the rebranding decision, according to Vaughn.

“We’ve had instances where we’ve gone to tradeshows, had conversations with potential new customers and they said, ‘oh, I thought you were an A/V company. You sell all these different things that I can use in my business?’ he says. “Clearly, we’re moving away from that – we’ve been doing it as company for some time – but the name kind of got in the way.”

Vaughn says that the rebrand will have relatively little impact on how integrators interact with the company on a day-to-day basis and that things will remain business as usual from that…

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Oh, snap! There goes the snowblower

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You may have heard that we’ve had some weather here in Massachusetts, as in three feet of snow weather.

Early this morning I give the snowblower a pull, the grip snaps off in my hand, the cord disappears inside, and the neighbors hear that McNamara fellow utter a relatively mild curse word.

Maybe the 15-year-old machine was telling me that four passes at clearing the driveway in 24 hours was at least one too many.

I don’t mean to call out Toro here, because I’m a big fan of their equipment … and, well, the 15 years. It’s just that I didn’t need this right now.

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Network World Paul McNamara