2016 Security: Expect To Be Hacked, Phished, and Scammed
With hacking, phishing and scamming at all-time highs, a good defense is your best offense for the year ahead.
According to ZDNET and other sources, more than one billion personal records were accessed in 2014 alone. 2015 was another banner year for hackers that included the FBI, T-Mobile (15 million customers), ScottTrade (4.6 million customers) Excellus BlueCross BlueShield (10 million), the US Office of Personnel Management (OPM) (22 million government workers), and the IRS (last count 724,000 accesses to taxpayer account data) to name but a few. Read More . . .
Prepare Yourself: Tax Scams and Hacks.
Hackers are actively plotting to steal your most personal and valuable information, and get your tax refund to boot. Quartz has a story to make you weep – a preview of what’s to come for the unlucky. What to do? Read More . . .
Hosting Spotlight 
Lawrence Companies
Dedicated Hosting Services
A longtime client of SiteVision, Lawrence recently moved from a shared server to a dedicated server arrangement. With several sites and applications, a dedicated server became more cost-effective and provided increased security, performance and management features, as well as greater scalability and flexibility unavailable in a shared server environment. Hosting worked closely with Lawrence IT Manager, Mark Carter, to help ensure a smooth transition and to provide an optimal server setup configured to their specific requirements.
“SiteVision has proven a valuable business partner of Lawrence Companies. From our customer-facing websites to our private employee portal, we continue to trust their experience and expertise to keep our internet presence updated and secure. We have worked with many providers over the years, but consider ourselves lucky to have state-of-the-art hosting services with top notch support just down the street!”
Lawrence Companies is an employee-owned company based out of Roanoke, VA, in business since 1932. With six locations in Virginia and North Carolina, Lawrence is a multifaceted company with focuses on full truckload and flatbed transportation, corporate office moving, and is a dealer for CASE Equipment. As one of the founding United Van Lines Agents in the country, Lawrence continues to focus on moving household goods and offers a variety of Relocation Services.
SiteVision provides custom configured dedicated servers for a broad range of customers. We are a SOC 1 SSAE 16 Type II compliant firm, are VITA (Virginia Information Technology Agency) approved, and are an approved HIPPA resource. We also routinely provide specialized services such as GIS, Cloud, SAAS, ISA, Data-Driven, fail-safe or CDN hosting.
To learn more about dedicated servers go here.
SiteVision Hosting Services
for Virginia Commonwealth
Agencies and Localities Renewed
Includes ArcGIS for Server, Website Application Vulnerability Scanning, and Other Specialized Hosting Services
Roanoke VA February 29, 2016— SiteVision’s Hosting Services and Software as a Service contract has been renewed by the Virginia Information Technologies Agency (VITA) for an additional year. The contact is part of Virginia’s electronic government services program (eGov) and includes all state agencies and local government entities. The firm is also a certified SWaM Micro-business by the Virginia Department of Small Business and Supplier Diversity. Read More . . .
GIS Hosting Solutions
Navigating rapidly evolving GIS technology can often be a bit unnerving. With almost two decades of GIS application development experience, SiteVision has developed uniquely qualified shared, dedicated and custom hosting solutions for the GIS community. We offer application-specific hosting such as ESRIArcGIS map applications and database driven applications, as well as basic website hosting on shared or dedicated servers. We’re happy to answer any questions you might have, or offer a solution to meet your exact requirement. Just contact us!
In The News
MS Office 365: Lots of updates.
Document pinning, ink jotting and camera integration for Windows tablets and iOS box integration are among a host of new features for Office 365. Currently available only for Office “insiders,” the new features will presumably go out to standard users soon. ZDNET
Hybrid Tablets Go Mainstream:
Enterprise use of hybrid tablets is growing fast, according to CIO and IDC. While PCs and traditional slate tablet sales have shrunk, hybrids with detachable slates appear to be gaining traction with some 8.1 million sold in Q4 2015.
Mobile World Congress: 2,000 Exhibitors – 100,000 Attendees
From self-driving cars to submersible phones, and social robots, MWC proves an exciting showcase for new products and technologies. Bloomberg PCMag
Deep Security Flaw
Affects The Entire Internet
According to security researcher Dan Kaminsky, the glibc DNS bug is the latest of several serious flaws found in the backbone of the internet. He’s advising anybody running Linux servers to “patch this bug with extreme prejudice.” Endgadget. Dan Kaminsky
Yahoo Approaching Bidders?
In exploring its strategic options, Yahoo may have reached out, or soon will, to corporate and private equity firms seeking bids for its core business. Verizon, Comcast, AT&T and other private equity firms are among those may be interested. Bloomberg
SiteVision and city officials worked closely together to integrate the existing system to the now enhanced version. Among improvements, existing web application servers migrated to the more feature-rich ESRI ArcGIS server and Adobe Flex environments. New features include floating, pull-down menus to permit rapid switching between various base maps. The redesigned site also includes Google Map and Google Street views. Comprehensive mapping and real estate information includes property overview, images, assessments, sales history, flooding information, community attributes and incentives. Users may also print a full property report including images. 
The Community and Incentive Website Portals, a useful feature previously developed in cooperation with SiteVision, has been incorporated into the enriched site. Community information provides users with a summary of specific neighborhood information including school zones, voter precincts, trash collection, parks and recreation, neighborhoods and libraries. The incentive portal provides a summary of city, state and federal incentive programs available to a specific parcel.
