Not many people know exactly what happens when they send a text message or make a call from their cell phone. The behind the scenes of telephony can seem complex and headache inducing but there are some things you should probably know about it. One of these things you should be made aware of is a set of signaling protocols developed in 1975 cleverly named the Signaling System Number 7, or SS7.
What is Net Neutrality Day?
Tomorrow, July 12th, is Net Neutrality Day of Action. This is when the some of the world’s largest tech companies including Amazon, Facebook, Google, etc will predominantly place content on their websites talking about Net Neutrality.
If you are a CEO who is looking to sell your company, you normally focus on revenue, income and EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) to derive your asking price. That is beginning to change now. Bloomberg recently wrote that major banks are hiring hackers to vet potential Merger and Acquisition deals. (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-26/bankers-are-hiring-security-experts-to-help-get-deals-done? )
What Goes into the Massive Fireworks Displays on the 4th of July?Every 4
th of July in many cities all over the United States there are massive fireworks displays for thousands to see. One of the biggest is right in our backyard in Boston, Massachusetts. The Independence Day celebrations in Boston are so large that it takes around 4 days to install the explosives but much longer for the pyrotechnician to plan and design the firework display to make it look amazing and go off seamlessly.
10th Annual MSP 501 Ranking and Study Identifies World’s Most Progressive MSPs in Information Technology
Thrive ranks among the world’s most progressive 501 Managed Service Providers (MSPs), according to MSPmentor’s 10th-annual MSP 501 Worldwide Company Rankings. The top MSP 501 companies ranked this year include organizations from around the world and from diverse technology and business backgrounds. Collectively, they amassed $14.48 billion in total revenue (based on 2016 results), up more than 15 percent from a year earlier.
New Massive Global Cyber Attack PetyaA massive Cyber attack started in Ukraine last night. As far as we know it started spreading in Ukraine, but has now gone global. It has hit some of the largest banks in Ukraine as well as the power grid. At the time of this writing many companies throughout Europe are also being hit. This is very much like WannaCry in that it uses the EternalBlue attack that was stolen from the NSA. Once you have been encrypted your desktop goes into a DOS prompt and requests that you give $300 in bitcoins and send them to a specific address. Once your machine becomes infected it scans the network to try to infect other machines in your organization. There have been reports that it has encrypted 5,000 machines in 10 minutes, so this is spreading fast.
Inside Microsoft’s Sleeping Giant Part 2 of 4
In part 1 of this series, I detailed some of the background and terminology around Azure Active Directory which among items functions powers Office365. I recently heard some feedback that some of the large SSO providers are having trouble competing with Azure AD’s Premium suite simply due to the large install base of Office365. At last count, we understand that the number of active users is well over 100 million. The understanding is that while Azure AD may not be able to go toe-to-toe with the larger SSO vendors on features, the pre-existing installs and existing Microsoft relationships is what is winning deals.
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Thrive Named to CRN’s 2017 Solution Provider 500 List
CRN®, a brand of The Channel Company, has named Thrive to its 2017 Solution Provider 500 list. The Solution Provider 500 is CRN’s annual ranking of the largest technology integrators, solution providers and IT consultants in North America by revenue.
The Solution Provider 500 is CRN’s predominant channel partner award list, serving as the industry standard for recognition of the most successful solution provider companies in the channel since 1995. This year, for the first time since 2010, the complete list will be published on CRN.com, making it readily available to vendors seeking out top solution providers to partner with.
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How low are you willing to CybeRTO and CybeRPO? Part 1 of 3When it comes to security and a business continuity plan there are two things companies care about the most, CybeRTO (Sigh Ber To) and CybeRPO(Sigh Ber Po). For people who are not in the IT world this might sound a bit like a foreigen language. RPO and RTO are very common in the IT world and are a pretty simple thing to understand once it has been broken down for you.
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5 Things to Look for When Choosing a New IT Service Provider
There is no question that technology today is always changing at a rapid pace. When you are running a business it can get pretty stressful when you are trying to grow the business and stay on top of the necessary technology at the same time. Thankfully, there are plenty of options that can help take some stress off your shoulders. One of the most popular helpful options is outsourcing to an IT service provider. Looking for the right provider can be a pretty daunting task, how are you supposed to trust someone to keep your business’s technology running? Here are the top 5 things you should look for in a service provider that will help ease your mind.