EDIT: The original version of this post stated that there had been no power outages in Texas at the time of publication. This was not accurate. We have changed the relevant lines to reflect the truth. We apologize if this caused any confusion.

-- 6:12 pm, 02/03/22

The National Weather Service has issued a hazardous winter weather warning for the Cincinnati area until 7:00 am on Friday, February 4th.

It's no secret that the last few years have been especially dire when it comes to cybercrime. Several large scale ransomware attacks, in which cyber criminals use advanced encryption to lock a person or organization out of their own data until they pay a ransom, have rocked the country.

We've covered both smart factories and industry 4.0 in recent posts. Yet, both of these phenomena are industry specific variations of a much larger technological trend that could disrupt both manufacturing and everyday life. Usually called the internet of things (IoT), this label describes the use of internet-connected hardware in the real world, which then uses a network's signal to communicate with other hardware in the environment.

Last week, we discussed the rise of smart factories, which are modern day manufacturing operations that use top of the line computing and technology to streamline their operations. In truth, however, smart factories are but one aspect of something much larger and more significant--something that has come to be known as the fourth industrial revolution or industry 4.0. The concept was first coined and explored by World Economic Forum founder, Klaus Schwab, in his aptly titled 2017 book.

2021 saw two large ransomware attacks on the industrial sector. The first was an attack on the Colonial Pipeline, which ended in a $4.4 million payout and nearly disrupted fuel supplies around the world. The second threatened to shutdown the world's largest meat producer, JBS SA, which is located in Brazil.

In August, we covered a ransomware attack on Kaseya, a large managed IT provider, that led to security issues for about 1500 businesses around the globe. That episode shows how one attack can induce problems throughout an entire supply chain. 2021 has cascaded one problem after another onto manufacturing supply chains in the United States and elsewhere.

Quick Announcement: We're switching gears this week and moving onto a new sector--manufacturing. Stay tuned for additional announcements.

With the new year approaching, many firms are considering how best to protect their enterprises on the IT front.

Quick Announcement: Following the testimony of Frances Haugen to the US Senate, Facebook's vice president of integrity, Guy Rosen, published a blog post in which he defended Facebook's policies against hate speech, claiming that the prevalence of hate speech on the platform has dropped 50% over the past nine months.

Even though we usually focus on issues of technology, cybersecurity, and business on this blog, we're going to do something a little different today. We are going to explore the legal issues surrounding the controversies relating to Facebook that began last week.

On September 16th, the VoIP service provider VoIP.ms; located in Quebec, Canada; was hit with a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. VoIP systems employ internet signals to send information over telephones and other communication devices, rather than conventional landlines.