Scam requests for W-2's

Numerous scams have been happening through emails. The scam consist of requests for W-2 information from individuals. The scam emails are designed to look like they was sent from a CEO or other excuitive member, asking for employees W-2 information.  The FBI and IRS have posted warnings about this criminal activity and have stated the volume of the scam emails have increased drastically. 

Already Victimized

In a previous blog I discussed the growing need to move as many devices as possible over to the 5ghz band. Since that blog post, a customer of ours experienced some issues in his environment that I would like to share with you.  This is a warehouse environment where handheld scanners are used for the purpose of inventory.  There was an area in one of his facilities where the scanners did not work consistently.  After some investigation we determined the default configuration of the scanners was to utilize the 2.4ghz band.  With the use of a wifi scanner we could see that the local AP (servicing the scanners in that area) was configured to use channel 6 on the 2.4ghz band. We could also see additional unknown SSIDs also using channel 6 with strong signal strength.  At this point we had a few choices.  First, we could change to either channel 1 or 11.  This would cause us to re-channel the rest of the facility.  Second, we could ask the neighbor to change to a different channel but same as us, this would likely cause them to re-channel. Finally, we could investigate utilizing the 5ghz band.  In this case we were fortunate that the scanners are dual band and could be reconfigured to use the 5ghz band.  After we made the change the connection issues were resolved.  Keep in mind there are 24 non-overlapping channels in the 5ghz band and only 3 in the 2.4ghz band so it is much easier to find a channel with no interference.

So, you planned out your year, financially, focusing maybe on stabilizing your position in the market or growing your foot print.  You’ve crossed your “T’s” and dotted your “I’s” on your budgets, sales quotas and projected projects for the upcoming year.  You’re ready to start the year out with a bang…or are you?  Did you think to add technology upgrades to plan for increasing revenue and market share? 

To Splunk or not to Splunk is the question that a lot of customers have been asking themselves, as well as, what is machine data and why do I care. The answers to those questions differ wildly between organizations.  Splunk, since its beginning has always wanted to be an application that makes all machine data accessible, usable, and valuable to everyone in an organization, and it shows.  Use cases and company logos using Splunk vary tremendously. Over 10,000 customers in 100 countries, including 80 of the Fortune 100, are using Splunk today.