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No company is immune from hackers—even a toy company. Hong Kong based VTech got hit by a hacker recently. This company makes techy educational toys for kids, and its database got breached.

Customers go to the Learning Lodge store and download content to their children’s VTech devices. The devices for downloading to are a tablet, watch and action camera.

But recently, this gateway store was attacked.

Some customers’ private information—now in the hands of the hacker—may put them at risk for being vi

If you’re going to drone on and on about how you got hacked by a cyber thief, maybe it’s because you played with your new drone—you know, those rad little flying devices that hover via remote control over your street? Yes, they are hackable.

If you don’t have a drone, don’t be surprised if you get one as a gift this season, as Americans are spending tens and tens of millions of dollars on them.

First off, if you spot a drone, before you go, “Wow, cool, there’s a drone! Kids, come look at this!” co

Greta Roberts, CEO Talent Analytics, Corp.

When beginning a new predictive analytics project, the client often mentions the importance of a “quick win”.  It makes sense to think about delivering fast results, in a limited area, that excites important stakeholders and gains support and funding for more predictive projects.  A great goal.

It’s the implementation of the quick win in a predictive project that can be difficult. There are at least 2 challenges with using a traditional quick win approach

A group of people who are actively collaborating to commit identity fraud is known as an identity fraud ring. These rings are generally made up of two or more career criminals, often including family members or close friends. These rings work by members either stealing a victim’s identity or sharing personal information such as a date-of-birth or Social Security number. Though many fraud rings occur in large cities, there are a surprisingly high number of rings found in rural areas.

According to

Chinese Politburo is trying to manage markets and flow of money.

And, they are failing miserably.

The CDS events, Credit Default Swaps created a big crack in the US Capitalistic System.. in 2008/2009.

Money or Wealth is very slippery and difficult to manage or control.

India's new prime minister Modi was promising discovery and prosecution of India's Dark Money or Number 2 as it is called locally. But, Modi's efforts to discover dark money with India's powerful have not yielded results, at least not

The only certainty is uncertainty. The Uncertainty Paradox!

I finished last year writing about our tendency towards impulsiveness and our counter-tendency towards indecisiveness. Both are very real and are played out under different circumstances EXCEPT the underlying issue is ‘uncertainty’.

Impulsiveness is a problem because we fail to consider the uncertainties well enough while indecisiveness raises its ugly head because we can see all the uncertainties. The solution? A little bit of effort to

Accelerate Your Startup: It’s Time to Floor It

Source:

David Skok

In the two previous articles I presented, David Skok discussed the first two of three key phases in a startup life cycle: finding a product/market fit, then determining a repeatable and scalable sales model.

Once you’ve determined that the sales funnel process you’ve designed is working in a repeatable and scalable way, with a viable business model — i.e. for SaaS businesses, the cost to acquire a customer (CAC) is less than a third

Accelerate Your Startup: Adding Gas to the Tank

Source:

David Skok

Different phases of a startup’s lifecycle require different approaches to spending. In David Skok's previous post, he talked about the first phase: finding product/market fit where he described how entrepreneurs should have a laser-like focus on finding it, and why they should conserve cash to get there. In this post, he talks about the search for a scalable and repeatable sales model.

Identify a Repeatable, Scalable Sales Model

You’

Accelerate Your Startup: Get the Right Product/Market Fit

Source:

David Skok

As a VC and five-time entrepreneur, David Skok frequently sees two common mistakes being made by startups:

1. Companies spend too much attempting to grow the business when it’s not ready for such growth; or

2. Companies don’t spend enough money when the business is ready to scale.

It’s, therefore, a CEO’s responsibility to decide when to hit the startup accelerator pedal. There are times when it makes sense to step on the ga

Increasing cyber-hazards have been accompanied by another trend; Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance (GRC) focused on IT (referred to as IT GRC) is changing. More and more organizations have been turning to a risk-based approach.

Traditionally, IT is comprised of a variety of underlying functions. These functions include:

• IT Asset Management, commonly used to inventory servers, computers, and other technology hardware;
• IT Risk Management, including vulnerability and threat identification an

Wow, a lawyer in Memphis got scammed by his secretary—she embezzled over $362,000 from him, says an article on wreg.com. Attorney Jerry Schatz hired Teresa Sumpter, 48, in July of 2013.

Little did he know that his assistant would end up stealing checks from his trust account, forging her signature on them, and opening three credit cards—all in his name. And she named herself as an authorized user.

And what did this conniving little pill do with the stolen money? Sumpter bought several vehicles, pa

The Fracturing of the European Union

 Source:

Peter Schwarz

Global Research, December 29, 2015

World Socialist Website

It is 70 years since large parts of Europe lay in ruins. Great power aspirations, nationalism and fascism made the continent the focus of two world wars, which together claimed nearly 100 million victims. Now, these same tendencies are spreading once again.

Everywhere in Europe, the ruling elites are moving sharply to the right. They are boosting military spending, taking part in the

Have you ever tried to take a picture or video of someone with your phone without them knowing? Sometimes it’s possible, but sometimes it’s not. Well, maybe you knew it was coming: “Ghost apps” are available that let you take images and videos without the target’s knowledge. You can then hide the images and videos in secret folders.

You can now spy on people with apps like Private Ninja Cam, Stealth Cam and Top Secret Camera. Scary enough, many users of these apps use this technology on sexting a

A Crisis Worse than ISIS? Bank “Bail-Ins” Begin…”Your Life Savings Could be Wiped out in a Massive Derivatives Collapse”.

Source:

Ellen Brown

While the mainstream media focus on ISIS extremists, a threat that has gone virtually unreported is that your life savings could be wiped out in a massive derivatives collapse. Bank bail-ins have begun in Europe, and the infrastructure is in place in the US. Poverty also kills.

At the end of November, an Italian pensioner hanged himself after his entire €100,

Burglars actually peruse social media to see who’s on vacation. In fact, 69 burglars were interviewed by Edith Cowan University in Australia, and perusing social media kept coming up as a way to find victims.

Keep your cyber mouth shut till you return. Here are more tips:

Get to know your neighbors. This way they’ll be more inclined to ask a stranger, who’s loitering around your yard, what they’re doing there.

Don’t show off. Like anyone else, burglars are attracted to the niftiest house on the blo

The “Dirty Work” of the International Monetary Fund, Lays the Groundwork for Worldwide Financial Conquest

The criminal behavior of IMF executives

Source:

The IMF is the leading international monetary agency whose public purpose is to maintain the stability of the global financial system through loans linked to proposals designed to enhance economic recovery and growth.

In fact, the IMF has been under the control of the US and Western European stat

At LogicManager, we are firm believers that embracing risk management can result in two boons: ease of mind and success. On a related note, we recently came across an article by Carl Richards in The New York Times titled “For True Freedom, Learn to Deal with Uncertainty.”

“Right now, I’m working really hard on both having goals and accepting the reality of uncertainty,” Richards says. “In fact, I embrace the uncertainty and say to myself, ‘given that goal, and given the uncertainty, what’s to be

If the person you are sending an e-mail to pretty much instantaneously receives it, how on earth can you unsend or cancel it? Well, you have several options.

Criptext

• This is a browser plug-in that works for Chrome and Safari.
• Your message including attachments will be encrypted.
• You will know when it’s been opened.
• You can recall messages and assign them expiration times. The recall, of course, comes after the recipient has possibly opened the message, but if they’re, for instance, away from their c

Are you a cyber-blabber? Even a post about your daily afternoon foray to the sub sandwich shop could get you in trouble: A burglar reading this knows when to rob your house. But it doesn’t end there. STOP THE MADNESS!

The Giants: Facebook and Twitter

• Be careful what you post on Facebook and tweet about. It can be used against you in court, even something as innocuous as: “I’m training for my very first 10K.” Not good if you’re suing someone who hit your car for back pain and suffering.
• Lawyers will

The Runaway Derivatives Time Bomb: A 1,200 Trillion Dollar Derivative Market, Big Banks Manipulate Interest Rates, Currency Markets, Commodity Markets…

Source:

Washington's Blog

This short, incisive article was originally published on Washington’s Blog in 2014. It deals with the “criminality” and “blatant manipulation” of Wall Street and gives us a better idea as to why the global economy is in such a catastrophic state.

Runaway derivatives – especially credit default swaps (CDS) – were one of them