It is our legal duty to protect your information. Learn more from our new Public Service Announcements. |
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Providing accurate and timely information about what matters in Franklin, MA since 2007. * Working in collaboration with Franklin TV and Radio (wfpr.fm) since October 2019 *
It is our legal duty to protect your information. Learn more from our new Public Service Announcements. |
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Video Link -> https://youtu.be/qzmB5oJQ_z4 |
"The Town of Franklin and the Metropolitan Area Planning Council will hold an economic development visioning workshop for residents from 6-8:30 p.m. next Tuesday in the third-floor training room of the Franklin Municipal Building, 355 East Central St.Continue reading the article online (subscription may be required)
The public comment session will feature a presentation by an MAPC representative on goals of the town and MAPC’s development project and the current state of economic activity in Franklin.
The town and the MAPC are undertaking a business development strategy to support business growth in Franklin’s three strategic growth locations: the downtown Franklin Commercial District; the Crossing (near Union and Cottage streets); and the Mixed Business Innovation District (near Fisher and Hayward streets).
The main goal of that project is to increase the economic activity within those older commercial areas and the town as a whole. The resulting market analysis will guide the development of a business recruitment and retention strategy including the future creation of business recruitment materials to capitalize on the market potential of these districts."
Economic Development Workshop Tuesday |
"As more and more aspects of daily life and business become connected through the internet, and as cities and towns increasingly find themselves the targets of cyberattacks, the Baker administration has announced a new effort to help each of the state’s 351 cities and towns bolster their cybersecurity readiness.
The effort will be backed by $300,000 in funding managed by the MassCyberCenter at the MassTech Collaborative, which plans to host a series of statewide workshops at which communities can get assistance developing or reviewing their cyber incident response plans and can collaborate with neighboring communities.
Speaking at the Massachusetts Cybersecurity Forum, Gov. Charlie Baker said it is critical that the state, local governments and the private sector make cybersecurity part of everything they do in an increasingly technological world.
“Most people, when they think about cybersecurity, think it’s primarily or exclusively about your phone and your laptop and your iPad and all the rest. But as we digitize more and more of our other building infrastructure - our heating systems, our cooling systems, our ventilation systems - those become, for all intents and purposes, targets,” he said. “And one of the things that we in state and local government need to do as well as our colleagues in the private sector need to do is make sure that as we digitize and electrify a lot of these processes that have typically been mechanical that we’re doing the work we need to do to ensure that they’re secure because they can be attacked.”
MassCyberCenter at the MassTech Collaborative |
"About two years ago, Todd Duval got a call from a New Bedford homeowner. The woman’s children were being attacked by relentlessly aggressive mosquitoes in her yard. The kids had sustained so many bites that the woman took them to the doctor to make sure they’d be OK.
Duval, an entomologist with the Bristol County Mosquito Control Project, visited the home. He found plastic toys scattered throughout the yard, corrugated downspout extensions on the home’s gutters and buckets for collecting rainwater that the woman used to water her tomatoes.
The containers were an ideal breeding ground for a species of mosquito that has been threatening to colonize Massachusetts for a few years: the Aedes albopictus, or Asian tiger mosquito.
The first Asian tiger mosquito in Massachusetts was found in New Bedford in 2009. Over the next few years, Duval and other mosquito trackers found the tiny day-biters buzzing around traps in increasing numbers, mostly in New Bedford, Fairhaven and, in some years, a neighborhood in Dartmouth."
"Every day, the state’s computer network is “probed” more than half a billion times by entities outside the United States looking for a weak spot in the state’s cyber protections that could allow bad actors to infiltrate the state’s information technology infrastructure.
The Executive Office of Technology Services and Security (EOTSS) and others maintain defenses against those probes, but some programs are expected to run out of funding in January when the Legislature’s last IT bond bill runs dry, EOTSS Secretary Curt Wood told lawmakers Thursday.
“We have major initiatives ongoing right now, if the money expires in January, which we anticipate, we will be stopped without any traction,” he said. “So the urgency from a funding perspective is critical.”
Wood, Administration and Finance Secretary Michael Heffernan and Public Safety Secretary Thomas Turco pressed the House Committee on Bonding, Capital Expenditures and State Assets to advance a $1.15 billion bill authorizing funds for information technology, public safety equipment and cybersecurity projects."
"What does pineapple pizza have to do with interference by Russia and other trolls in U.S. elections?
Everything, the head of an American cybersecurity agencies says. Because foreign governments, trying to create divisiveness, want Americans to argue and will go after low hanging fruit, like pizza toppings.
From a little-known conference put on by Fordham University and the FBI this week, DHS Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Director Christopher Krebs tweeted his own hot take on pineapple pizza: Thumbs down.....
CISA breaks down the playbook of foreign influencers into five steps: targeting divisive issues (see: pineapple pizza), moving accounts into place, amplifying and distorting the conversation, making the mainstream (see: NBC News story about pineapple pizza), and taking the conversation into the real world.
Krebs said his agency is trying to strengthen the national immune system for disinformation. "How do you take the tactics, techniques, and procedures of the bad guys, and educate the American people? How do you explain, 'This is how you’re being manipulated, this is how they’re hacking your brain?'"
Pineapple pizza? Yes or No? |
"Places such as Baltimore and Atlanta have been hit with massive cyber-attacks in recent years, but it’s not just major cities that are at risk of losing data or having their systems hacked. Smaller municipalities are also targets.
According to a 2019 report from the International City Management Association, approximately one in three local governments do not know how frequently their information system is subject to attacks, incidents and breaches. Of those that do, 60 percent report they are subject to daily cyber-attacks, often hourly or more.
Tiffany Schoenike, chief operating officer for the National Cyber Security Alliance, warns smaller municipalities are just as likely as larger cities to be the target of an attack. This could include anything from sensitive data being lost or stolen to systems being locked with the only recourse paying the hacker to regain access.
“Sometimes funding levels make things worse,” Schoenike said. “This could be from not being able to afford the right kinds of technology, or not being able to hire the best people for the job.”
One of the keys to successful online processing is to ensure the site you are dealing with uses https |
"The 2018 hurricane season began like a lazy river, a handful of circles spinning in an atmosphere still sleepy from spring.
Only Subtropical Storm Alberto made contact with the U.S., splashing into Laguna Beach, Fla., at the end of May before the calendar even noted the official June 1 start date of storm season. Through August, it was called the “season of slop,” seemingly confirming forecasts for below average cyclonic activity.
But then September came, the Atlantic basin caught fire, and two coasts would face the terrifying power of wind and water.
By the last day of the 2018 hurricane season on Friday, the cyclone scoreboard included 15 named storms, including eight hurricanes and two major hurricanes of Category 3 or higher. A normal season typically has 12 named storms, including six hurricanes and two major hurricanes."
Hurricane season 2018 ends |
"Hackers stole information on as many as 500 million guests of the Marriott hotel empire over four years, obtaining credit card and passport numbers and other personal data, the company said Friday as it acknowledged one of the largest security breaches in history.
The full scope of the failure was not immediately clear. Marriott was trying to determine if the records included duplicates, such as a single person staying multiple times.
The affected hotel brands were operated by Starwood before it was acquired by Marriott in 2016. They include W Hotels, St. Regis, Sheraton, Westin, Element, Aloft, The Luxury Collection, Le Méridien and Four Points. Starwood-branded timeshare properties were also affected. None of the Marriott-branded chains were threatened.
The crisis quickly emerged as one of the biggest data breaches on record."
"Sierra Nevada founder Ken Grossman sent letters to brewers across the country to invite them to participate in a collaborative brew day on Tuesday to brew the beer. They worked with malt and hop suppliers to provide ingredient donations so participating brewers could donate 100 percent of the sales of the beer to relief efforts.
“We know that the rebuilding process will take time, but we’re in this for the long haul,” Grossman wrote in the announcement. “Our hope is to get Resilience IPA in taprooms all over the country to create a solid start for our community’s future.”
In Massachusetts, at least 11 breweries have signed up to brew the Resilience IPA.
For Wormtown Brewery in Worcester, it was an easy decision, brewmaster Ben Roesch said."
For more about Resilience IPA visit Sierra Nevada's page |
"Americans are now voting in the first major election since Russians launched a broad assault on the 2016 presidential campaign.
And while election officials and security experts remain vigilant through Election Day, voters have a critical role in the fight to keep elections safe and accessible.
The average voter shouldn’t be too concerned about foreign interference in elections, said Maurice Turner, a senior technologist at the nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington, D.C. But, he said, that doesn’t mean she should be passive about secure elections.
By understanding the system, its flaws and what needs changing, voters can call for accountability from election officials and state policymakers.
Election Information for Nov 2018 |
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"The brewing industry’s rapid growth in MetroWest over the past few years has reflected the overall growth of the industry.
But for awhile, one of the larger MetroWest communities – Marlborough – went without a brewery as they continued to open in smaller surrounding communities such as Hudson and Westborough.
But now that’s changing. By the end of this year, it’s expected there will be three breweries operating taprooms in the city, with a fourth planning to open in the spring of 2019. Marlborough is about to become a destination for craft beer fans throughout the state.
That is intentional, said Meredith Harris, executive director of the Marlborough Economic Development Corp. Last year, the corporation took out advertisements in beer magazines, offering incentives in the form of small business loans and help with permitting, to try to attract a brewery or two to downtown."
"Massachusetts has received millions of dollars in federal funding to bolster election security, but most of it will not be spent until after the November election.
The Bay State has received $7.9 million from the federal government, which election officials plan to spend on voting equipment, voter registration systems and cybersecurity, according to documents shared with Wicked Local. About 81 percent of the money, however, will be spent after the upcoming midterm election.
State officials, nonetheless, say the federal dollars -- while helpful -- are not vital to running a safe and accurate election.
“We were already spending money and resources from our existing budget on cybersecurity, so we were not dependent on the federal funding for 2018,” wrote Debra O’Malley, spokeswoman for Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin’s office. “This additional funding will be used to add to our existing preparations and for future elections.”
MA election security improvements scheduled for after November |
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"Massachusetts voters cast ballots on paper, but that doesn’t mean the system is immune to cyberattacks – voting technology is just one piece of a puzzle.
Over the last few years, several news reports have discussed the security of American voting systems. A 2016 Wired article warned that direct-recording electronic voting machines are “scarily easy targets.” And in April, Vox reported Congress wants states to use paper ballots for security reasons. But either way, WCVB-TV reported last year that officials believe the Massachusetts voting system is not vulnerable to hacks.
That may be in part because the state is already using a paper ballot system, not the reportedly insecure e-voting machines. But more than 96 percent of the state’s precincts use optical scanning machines to tabulate votes, based on data made available by Verified Voting."
voting booth at FHS gymnasium |
"Facebook revealed Wednesday that tens of millions more people might have been exposed in the Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal than previously thought and said it will restrict the user data that outsiders can access.
Those developments came as congressional officials said CEO Mark Zuckerberg will testify next week, while Facebook unveiled a new privacy policy that aims to explain the data it gathers on users more clearly — but doesn’t actually change what it collects and shares.
In a call with reporters Wednesday, Zuckerberg acknowledged he made a “huge mistake” in failing to take a broad enough view of what Facebook’s responsibility is in the world. He said it isn’t enough for Facebook to believe app developers when they say they follow the rules. He says Facebook has to ensure they do.
Facebook is facing its worst privacy scandal in years following allegations that Cambridge Analytica, a Trump-affiliated data mining firm, used ill-gotten data from millions of users through an app to try to influence elections."
FranklinMatters.org/ |
Data Privacy Day began in the United States and Canada in January 2008 as an extension of the Data Protection Day celebration in Europe. Data Protection Day commemorates the Jan. 28, 1981, signing of Convention 108, the first legally binding international treaty dealing with privacy and data protection. Data Privacy Day is observed annually on Jan. 28.
Data Privacy Day is here; do you know where your data is? |