According to Verizon, just prior to the 45,000 union workers going on strike, everything from stolen electrical equipment in Cedar Grove, New Jersey to deliberately cut fiber-optic lines in parts of New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Maryland have been documented. Moreover, numerous reports of strikers using intimidation tactics and illegally blocking work entrances for non-union employees has been reported throughout the Northeast – with two separate incidents in Maryland resulting in the arrests of 8 picketers. Recently, Verizon Communications successfully obtained preliminary injunctions in New York, Delaware and Pennsylvania, and were in court to receive two more injunctions for Massachusetts and New Jersey to put a stop to such acts.

Verizon refuses to take these acts lightly, and has stated that they will prosecute any guilty parties to the fullest extent of the law. As an incentive, Verizon is offering up to $50,000 as a reward for any information that results in the arrest and prosecution of any parties responsible for intentionally damaging equipment, and/or assaulting or attempting to cause injury to a Verizon contractor or employee.

Verizon Communications’ Chief Security Officer, Mike Mason, called the acts “reprehensible,” and noted that not only are these acts affecting customers’ services, causing longer waits for service repair as well as longer hold times when calling Verizon service centers, the deliberate attacks on their network have affected law enforcement, paramedics, hospitals, as well as other first responders. Mason also added that Verizon is currently conducting investigations while working alongside local authorities, and will terminate any employee found to be responsible of any such acts.

The CWA and IBEW portray Verizon as the evil step-mother, who feeds and treats her own children (in this case the top five executives, who over the last 4 years received over $250 million) like royalty while starving and over-working her step-children (in this case the union members who do not want to pay a higher healthcare premium or contribute to their own pensions). It is completely understandable that union workers are upset – who wants to tighten their budget in these tough economic times? But when the actions of a handful of frustrated and angry union employees go so far as to allegedly tamper with our own public safety and first responders, something must be done immediately. As far as this writer is concerned they should throw the book at them!

Beth Israel Medical Center claims that they were charged thirty cents per minute for their long distance calls – ten times the contracted three cents per minute rate. Moreover, they were charged well over a quarter of a million dollars for services they never even used, and (here’s the real kicker) around seven MILLION dollars for services Beth Israel Medical Center pre-paid for! Altogether Beth Israel Medical Center is seeking nine million dollars in overbilling fees, and is looking for twenty-five million dollars in punitive damages.

Then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, Verizon Communications took yet another hit with the current Northeastern strike. If you work in the telecommunications industry and have not yet heard about this, then you are more than likely living under a rock. The roughly 45,000 union members of the Communications Workers of America teamed with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and went on strike to protest after unsuccessful contract negotiations with Verizon. The three main issues they could not agree upon involved employee pay increases, healthcare and pensions.

The CWA and IBEW believe that Verizon Communications is suffering from corporate greed as is asking far too much from the wrong employees – citing the fact that over the past four years, its top five executives took home $258 million after the company made $19.5 million in profits.

Verizon, on the other hand, says that they’re simply trying to stay competitive in a market that is slowly dying as more and more customers make the switch from landline to wireless services. Furthermore, despite the fact that Verizon is losing an estimated one to two million dollars for every day the strike continues, they feels the real victims are the customers and non-union employees that are being flown in from states as far away as North Carolina to help fill the gap.

So who’s really to blame? According to a Channel Partners Online Poll titled “Who’s Right?” the majority of voters (46.67%) believed Verizon Communications is, with the unions coming in at 36.67% and a mildly substantial “neither” rounding it out at 16.67%. What do you think?

The Cisco Connected World Report that was published by Cisco in November of 2010 confirmed a number of things small business owners were already suspecting. First, the boundary between personal devices and professional computers no longer exists. Second, employees want to use these devices for work. And the third thing pointed out in the Cisco Connected World Report was that employees will use their personal devices – especially smartphones – regardless of their IT policy because of they are convenient, user-friendly, and imperative for responding to emails promptly.

If you find yourself dealing with this issue, there are a few steps you can take to secure your business’ information – starting with updating your acceptable use policy to include personal devices, such as tablet computers and smartphones. Your employees likely have their own personal information stored in their devices that they want to keep private as much as your company’s information, so the policy should acknowledge that everyone will benefit from securing these devices.

Your policy should also outline your expectations for employees’ devices (i.e. users’ responsibilities and who has rights over the data stored on them). Set a clear list of conditions for using the devices in the workplace, such as requiring employees to access your company’s network strictly through a Virtual Private Network and protecting each device with a secure password.

• As one condition of your employees using their own personal devices for work, require them to install specific security applications, such as a firewall, anti-spam and anti-virus software, a VPN connection to your network, and a remote self-destruct application that erases all information stored on the device in the event that it is lost or stolen
• Clearly define the guidelines for the type of company information they can store on their devices. For instance, you might permit your staff to read and answer emails, but forbid them from viewing or downloading attachments that hold classified information
• Whether it’s via email, over the phone, or in-person, – formal or not – have your staff register their personal devices if they plan on using them for work. Likewise, if their device is lost or stolen, they should notify your business

While this won’t guarantee your staff’s devices are completely secure, it will make a dramatic difference and a large step toward safeguarding your company’s confidential information. For more information on how you can protect your business, contact one of our professional account managers today.

To adequately address security issues, it is necessary to identify and evaluate all possible avenues of entry. Also, the security of that entry point must be consistent with the stated policy of acceptable risk levels.

Practices to Prevent Security Disasters

Here are some practices that will help prevent intruders and control damages in the case that preventive measures fall short in blocking an attack:

• Secure backups – helps recover data when a break-in happens.
• Don’t put data where it doesn’t need to be – by not putting data in a location accessible from the outside world, you will prevent the increase of network damage.
• Avoid systems with single points of failure – redundancy is good, especially when handling very important data and information. A system that can be broken through any one component is not very strong.
• Stay current with relevant operating system patches – exploiting an old system is still one of the most common and effective means of breaking into systems.
• Monitor relevant security advisories – make sure that at least one person in your group is subscribed to the mailing list of advisories to keep up on what security vendors are saying about their products.
• Have someone familiar with security practices – it is important to have someone who understands network security advisories to keep abreast with security developments. This way, proper responses to security issues can be applied