Microsoft’s award to i3 Business Solutions recognizes its leadership in the SMB Tier.

“This award validates our commitment to delivering the right solutions for our clients,” said Mike Ritsema, president of i3 Business Solutions.  “Microsoft Office 365 Cloud solution, security and continuous process improvement are our focus for 2012.  We refuse to lock our customers into traditional and expensive on premise solutions,” he continued.

I don’t know how I got on Clare De Graaf’s mailing list – but I’m glad I did or am.  This 4 minute video says a lot about our changing culture – our children, you & me.  Technology, smart phones, online games and social media are changing all of us – especially the millennial generation.   I challenge all of us to 1.]  be aware of what’s happening  2.]  resist the change – organize our lives around the important – not the urgent.

They say, and I am saying, five years from now you will become the sum of who you associate with and the books you read.  Who are you hanging around with and what books are you reading?  I’m a slow reader and it takes work and discipline to plow through books.  That’s why I’ve consumed hundreds of books on tape and CD in my car in the last 30 years.  I’m considering subscribing towww.audible.com to accelerate my reading results.  I challenge each of us to picture the three feet of books we’ve read that will define us five years from now.  Commit now to reading a book a month – minimum!  And for 2012 reflect on who we’re hanging around with.  If I want to change or improve any area of my life – who might I associate with that could change or improve that area of my life?   I choose intentional results in all areas of my life.   Um, yes, this video has serious implications for our children and may require specific action  … and also causes me to reflect on my own life, habits and direction.

Dr. Philip Zimbardo is a world-renown psychiatrist and he’s speaking at the 2011 TED Conference.  This conference is held once a year and features short presentations by the foremost leaders and thinkers in the world in every possible field.  Whether Dr. Zimbardo is a Christian or not, his observation are worthy of our attention.  It’s obvious that experts of every stripe are now recognizing the damage both porn and video gaming are doing to men and ultimately to the woman they hope to marry.

Click here to watch the video

The ideas presented below come from my friend, Don Pearson, a Pastor of Student Ministries at Blythefield Hills Baptist Church.  Don has amazing insights into the world of teens and young adults and you’ll do well to listen. www.facebook.com/iparented

So what can you do?

Rather than simply whine about the problem, Don offers three specific steps you can take to address the issue of the demise of guys.

1. Get a copy of iParent, written by Don Pearson.  I was stunned when I read the short but powerful book that centers on how young people are being shaped by social media in ways I’d have never guessed!
2. Plan on attending the iParent discussion on Monday, January 30, 2012.  (Click here for details or put in the web address.)
3. Read Don’s blog this week.  Boys to Men, 10 great alternatives to shape real men.  (Click here or put in the web address.)

Please check these resources out and then forward this email to everyone you know.

Clare De Graaf
Author of The 10 Second Rule

Symantec has admitted that unknown perpetrators had breached its servers and stolen source code to a number of its security products despite previous claims to the contrary.

Read the full article, click here.

Hackers breached a server belonging to online retailer Zappos, allowing them access to the personal information of more than 24 million customers, the company announced.

In an email letter sent Sunday, CEO Tony Hsieh advised users to change their passwords after intruders gained access to parts of the company’s internal network through one of its servers in Kentucky. He did not indicate when or how the incursion occurred or when it was detected.

Investigators believe the hackers harvested names, email addresses, billing and shipping addresses, phone numbers and the last four digits of credit card numbers.

Click here to continue reading.

(via MLive)

Why Sherry Turkle, MIT Prof, Author of ‘Alone Together’ thinks we must discuss technology’s hidden costs :

GRAND RAPIDS — These days, everybody and their brother carries a mobile device allowing them to text a friend, “tweet the deets” or post their location for the world to see.

For Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Sherry Turkle, there’s a fundamental paradox in that social norm, whereby folks have become so busy communicating with each other that many of us have lost the ability to connect in a meaningful way.

“People are comforted by being in touch with a lot of people who they are also keeping at bay,” said Turkle, a technology and society professor, licensed psychologist and author of “Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other.”

Speaking to a standing room-only crowd in the Covenant Fine Arts Center at Calvin College, Turkle, the kick-off speaker for the college’s January Series, highlighted the hidden costs of being able to “bail out” of the real world at any moment on an iPhone or Blackberry.

Being able to connect with anyone, instantly, on social networks like Twitter or Facebook, creates the “illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship,” something she calls the “Goldilocks Effect” — connection made to measure; the ability to hide at will.

This cultural shift is becoming evident in people who would rather text than talk to one another, such as teens who find a phone call “too real time” for them.

The pressure to respond to text messages or emails immediately is resulting in shorter, simplistic bursts of communication, which is poor training for people growing up in a world that’s become increasingly complex. “It’s like we’re putting ourselves all on cable news,” she said.

Moreover, people are so compelled by the blinking light on their phone that they’ll rudely interrupt a meeting or disregard their safety to check it while driving, because, she says, “their mobile device feels like the place of hope in their life — the place where something good will come.”

In teens, feelings of isolation are an important part of learning to cope with emotions, but young people nowadays are losing comfort with being alone, which Turkle said allows someone gather themselves in a kind of refreshing solitude that can become the wellspring for creativity.

As result, a kind of “I share, therefore I am” ideal has developed, whereby the validation of a feeling becomes part of establishing it, she said.

“Your contact list becomes like a list of spare parts to support a fragile adolescent or adult self. You almost don’t feel you had the feeling until you had it validated by sharing it,” she said.

“There is a great psychological truth: if you don’t teach your children to be alone, they will only know how to be lonely.”

Turkle hopes to spark a cultural conversation about the effects of “inappropriate fantasies of substitution” for real life inherent in certain technologies, but counsels that framing the in terms of an addiction is self-defeating because the only remedy becomes to “quit cold-turkey.”

Instead, she suggested that rather than shun someone critical of our technological trajectory as a “Luddite,” we should consider them to be someone who knows that “just because we’ve grown up with the Internet, doesn’t mean the Internet is grown up.”

Calvin’s January Series continues Thursday with John Varineau, associate conductor with the Grand Rapids Symphony, who will discuss the uses and misuses of music.

The award-winning afternoon lecture series also features presidential adviser David Gergen and runs through Jan. 24.

E-mail Garret Ellison: localnews@grpress.com, or follow him on Twitter.

Join i3 Business Solutions on January 12th for:
Seven Security Risks Every Executive Should Consider
Executive Briefing

Join i3 Business Solutions Thursday, January 12th, from 12-1pm. Our keynote speaker, Brandon Fannon, is a digital forensic expert at Axiom Investigative Services, LLC and President at Mainstay Data Services, LLC.

Join us for great conversation and get an insider’s view of the latest technology:

• Security threat vectors
• Business technology risk management
• Technology Forensics – who can find what where & when?

Featuring: Brandon Fannon

• Digital Forensic Expert at Axiom Investigative Services, LLC
• AccessData Certified Examiner (ACE)
• Certified Computer Examiner (CCE)
• Computer Hacking Forensic Investigator (CHFI)
• Data Recovery Expert Certification (DREC)
• EnCase Certified Examiner (EnCE)

Brandon will share amazing stories digital forensics and the reality of our digital paradise and answer the question, “How safe and secure is my data?”

Click Here to Register

The i3 Christmas Party Pub Crawl was held December 20^th.  Customers, friends and staff of i3 not only celebrated the holidays, they also generously donated the following:

$585 was donated to the following local charities.  i3 Business Solutions is matching that amount andissuing checks to:

• HELP Pregnancy Crisis Aid Center:              $1,000
• Angel Tree Ministries Christmas Gifts            $  100
• Mel Trotter Missions Christmas Dinners        $  100

Kathy Labozzetta had this to say, “It was a lot of fun celebrating this Christmas holiday with loyal clients, employees and friends.  I had a wonderful time and was grateful for everyone’s generosity towards these worthy West Michigan charities.”

Mike Ritsema reflected on the event, “Ah, the i3 2011 Christmas Pub Crawl checks one off the bucket list. I must be some sort of generational sitcom junky and have enjoyed Taxi, Mash, Cheers, The Cosby Show, Seinfeld & The Office.  I was an avid Cheers watcher 20+ years ago and would love to visit the Boston Pub. I guess I fancied myself more Sam or Dr. Crane than Cliff or Norm. Regardless, what a great time filling the Monarch Club with good cheer … literally ‘where everybody knows your name.’  The whole evening had a lot of energy!  Thanks for attending, supporting local charities and contributing to our 2011 Christmas celebration.”

A great time was had by all,

Kathy Labozzetta
Mike Ritsema
i3 Business Solutions

iBahn provides broadband business and entertainment access to guests of Marriott International Inc. and other hotel chains, including multinational companies that hold meetings on site. Breaking into iBahn’s networks, according to a senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the matter, may have let hackers see millions of confidential e-mails, even encrypted ones, as executives from Dubai to New Yorkreported back on everything from new product development to merger negotiations.

More worrisome, hackers might have used iBahn’s system as a launching pad into corporate networks that are connected to it, using traveling employees to create a backdoor to company secrets, said Nick Percoco, head of Trustwave Corp.’s SpiderLabs, a security firm.

The hackers’ interest in companies as small as Salt Lake City-based iBahn illustrates the breadth of China’s spying against firms in the U.S. and elsewhere. The networks of at least 760 companies, research universities, Internet service providers and government agencies were hit over the last decade by the same elite group of China-based cyber spies. The companies, including firms such as Research in Motion Ltd. (RIM) and Boston Scientific Corp., range from some of the largest corporations to niche innovators in sectors like aerospace, semiconductors, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology, according to intelligence data obtained by Bloomberg News.

Article from Bloomberg.com

This kind of thinking is very common during a merger or an acquisition or when the company is rushing out a new product. Since systems and networks are continuously evolving and getting more complicated, it is always difficult to retrofit security at a later date. Security should be considered from the start, not afterward.

2. We’ll Do Privacy Later

The same is true regarding the erroneous thinking about security: It might seem more important to get a new Internet service up and running and to start building up the online buzz before all the privacy policies and protections are in place. Organizations have to comply with a mishmash of regulations to ensure user privacy, so it’s best to have all the ducks in a row before the regulators come knocking.

3. Encryption Is Enough

After practically every data breach, the organization is criticized for not encrypting the data. While it’s important to protect sensitive data, it’s important to think about the architecture and make sure the network is still secure. Insiders have to still be monitored to ensure they aren’t abusing their privileges. People expect encryption to solve all problems, forgetting that implementation flaws, such as improperly storing the keys, can render encryption moot.

4. One Tool to Defend Them All

Pick the security technology, and there’s someone out there convinced that it is the cure-all and the only thing needed for security utopia. It doesn’t exist. While there are excellent antivirus, intrusion prevention, network monitoring and forensics tools available, none of them can do everything. Security tools are specialized, and there is no silver bullet. Focus on layered security, not a one-size-fits-all approach.

5. Security Must Be Perfect

Some executives have the attitude that if security can’t be guaranteed, then it’s not even worth talking about, putting the security professional in a position of having to downplay security risks or over-promising security. Organizations need to have metrics to measure risks and decide when it’s “good enough” and focus on other areas. Security is about balancing protection and cost.

6. Security Is Easy … DIY Security

It’s easy to look at the landscape and available technology and conclude that it can’t be that hard to take charge of security. However, it’s best to let people who have done it many times and know what they are doing take charge of security, instead of handing it over to someone who may not know how to deal with rough spots or unexpected situations. “How hard is that?” Plenty hard. Leave security to the professional.

7. Find and Patch Is Sufficient

While regular testing is necessary to look for and patch flaws, it’s not a replacement for having security by design. All penetration testing is doing is plugging holes to harden a broken product, which forces the organization to always be reactive. True security is making sure the common issues are not in the application in the first place and addressing subtle, more complex problems that are discovered down the road.

8. We Aren’t a Target

Wrong! Practically every organization, big and small, in all industries is a target. The threat actor can be the frustrated insider, disgruntled ex-employee, a person out to make a political point, a cyber-criminal looking for the fastest way to make money or corporate spy. The Sonys of the world aren’t the only ones under attack. Small credit unions and mom-and-pop operations are targeted, too.

9. No One Knows About It

Security by obscurity sounds good in theory. If the attacker can’t just Google the software you are running to find known vulnerabilities, then surely, it’s safe from attack. The most common attack vector is cross-site scripting and SQL injection, attacks that are easily preventable, but often overlooked by developers. If an attacker really wants to get in, they will do the research necessary.

10. We Just Need to Train the Users

It’s another idea that sounds good in theory, but it’s no excuse to skimp on the technology. Users need to be taught to not click on dodgy attachments, but they also shouldn’t be seeing those files in their in-box in the first place. It’s difficult for the savviest Internet user to identify some of the latest scams. While technology can be patched, the human brain can’t.