USA creates ‘do not buy’ list of software from Russia and China

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USA creates ‘do not buy’ list of software from Russia and China.

The United States Department of Defense is working on a software “do not buy” list to block vendors who use software code originating from Russia and China, a top Defense Department acquisitions official said on Friday

Ellen Lord, the under secretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, told reporters the Pentagon had been working for six months on a “do not buy” list of software vendors. The list is meant to help the Department of Defense’s acquisitions staff and industry partners avoid buying problematic code for the Pentagon and suppliers.

“What we are doing is making sure that we do not buy software that has Russian or Chinese provenance, for instance, and quite often that’s difficult to tell at first glance because of holding companies,” she told reporters gathered in a conference room near her Pentagon office.

The Pentagon has worked closely with the intelligence community, she said, adding “we have identified certain companies that do not operate in a way consistent with what we have for defense standards.”

Lord did not provide any further details on the list.

Lord’s comments were made ahead of the likely passage of the Pentagon’s spending bill by Congress as early as next week. The bill contains provisions that would force technology companies to disclose if they allowed countries like China and Russia to examine the inner workings of software sold to the U.S. military.

The legislation was drafted after a Reuters investigation found that software makers allowed a Russian defense agency to hunt for vulnerabilities in software used by some agencies of the U.S. government, including the Pentagon and intelligence agencies.

Security experts said allowing Russian authorities to look into the internal workings of software, known as source code, could help adversaries like Moscow or Beijing to discover vulnerabilities they could exploit to more easily attack U.S. government systems.

Lord added an upcoming report on the U.S. military supply chain will show that the Pentagon depends on foreign suppliers, including Chinese firms, for components in some military equipment.

She said the Pentagon also wants to strengthen its suppliers’ ability to withstand cyber attacks and will test their cyber security defenses by attempting to hack them.

The Pentagon disclosed the measures as the federal government looks to bolster cyber defenses following attacks on the United States that the government has blamed on Russia, North Korea, Iran and China.

The Department of Homeland Security this week disclosed details about a string of cyber attacks that officials said put hackers working on behalf of the Russian government in a position where they could manipulate some industrial systems used to control infrastructure, including at least one power generator.

Australia generally follows US advice on cyber security matters.

Australia’s attitude to Huawei, for example, changed after the 2011 meeting between Barack Obama and Julia Gillard. Australian authorities are likely to be briefed on this new list, and to consider it seriously.

Source: https://www.itnews.com.au/news/usa-creates-do-not-buy-list-of-software-from-russia-and-china-499245

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Protecting your personal data from Open Records Directory Sites

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Protecting your personal information can help you reduce the risk of identity theft.

Privacy protection in the digital age has become much more complicated and risky than it used to be. In the pre internet days, if people wanted to access your public records, they had to visit the county clerk’s office in person. Today, most government information about you that contain highly sensitive personal data is available on the internet via Open Records Directory Sites.

Hacker Privacy

Most of these Open Records Directory Sites provide an opt out for you to remove your data from their databases. If they do not remove your data from their databases after your request you can submit a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). In our requests we had no problems with any of these sites and our data was removed within the hour or up to 48 hours after the request.

The problem with having your personal information easily accessed online is that hackers and other criminals will leverage this information to guess your passwords, account names and steal your identity.

Here are a few opt out links:

White Pages Public: https://www.whitepages.com/suppression_requests

White Pages Premium: https://support.whitepages.com/hc/en-us/articles/115010106908-How-do-I-edit-or-remove-a-personal-listing-

Spokeo: https://www.spokeo.com/optout

Discoverthem: https://discoverthem.com/removal.php

Speedyhunt: https://speedyhunt.com/removal.php

Mylife: email to: removalrequests@mylife.com and read instructions at: https://what-is-privacy.com/2016/01/how-to-get-out-of-mylife-directory-site/

Radaris.com: https://radaris.com/page/how-to-remove

Intelius: Read Instructions at: https://www.reputationdefender.com/blog/privacy/how-remove-information-intelius-and-protect-your-privacy

Using service companies for a monthly fee that claim they will remove your personal data from the Open Records Directory Sites, we found these companies were not effective. Doing it yourself was effective.

Conduct a search engine search on your name and see the search results. Make a list of the companies selling your information and locate their opt out procedure. Most are listed in their terms of use or privacy notification pages. Follow their instructions and your personal information will be removed.

Hackers and other criminals leverage every bit of information they can find on you to add to their tools of stealing and destroying your life, and the lives of others.

You are the best tool on protecting yourself.

Together with cyber security experts that want to help you and with technology we can all work together to prevent the hackers and other criminals from destroying our lives. They can make many mistakes and still win, if we make one mistake we lose. Getting your personal information off these Open Records Directory Sites is one step in the right direction on protecting you.

Contact us today to see how Adept Secure can help you with these problems and many more.

Learn More About Adept Secure

Call us toll free 1-888-392-9623

Social Media Disinformation Bots, Sockpuppets and Trolls the new additions to Cyber Security

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The problem for Cyber Security with social media these days is the huge amount of disinformation spread to you by Bots, Sockpuppets and Trolls.

A bot is a computer program that behaves like humans. It performs automated tasks, and were developed to help you feel more comfortable when interacting with automated software systems.

But all too often, automated bots have been built to deceive, especially within the social media software systems. Not only do these bots pretend to be real people, but they spread misinformation, malware and ransomware. These bots are well known for coordinating social media harassment campaigns.

Hacker Software

Not only have individuals been victims to these coordinated bot attacks, but corporations and governments too. In addition to bots, there are two other categories you have to watch out for; sockpuppets and trolls.

A sockpuppet account is created by one individual in order to appear like the account is controlled by a second, distinct individual. The second individual could be a real person, or is a poser that simply masks the identity of the real account creator. What distinguished a sockpuppet from a bot is that the sockpuppets are at least partially controlled by a human, where bots are fully automated via software code. Often a human controls multiple sockpuppet accounts, writing different content from each one, or sending or resending the same content from all of them. There are various tools available to someone who wants to coordinate mass content across multiple accounts.

A troll is an account setup that starts quarrels or just upsets people by posting inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic content in social media systems.

By leveraging all three of these Cyber Attack account systems, Bots, Sockpuppets and Trolls; one human can overwhelm the information seeking public quit easily.

A good example of this is the Delta Airlines over reaction decision to end their NRA relationship based on what they believed was a main stream demand by the majority of Americans to do it. Their decision cost them $50 million dollars in lost sales tax savings by upsetting the Georgia conservatives. To think that a few people can leverage these Cyber Attack account systems and suddenly your targets (Delta Airlines and others) believe you have every American Citizen on the planet supporting you. These are very valuable cyber attack tools!

FedEx did not follow Delta Airlines because they were obviously protected by very good Cyber Security experts that confirmed the Bots, Sockpuppets and Trolls that attacked them with misinformation and who these human attackers where. Which probably saved Fedex millions of dollars in not upsetting individuals, governments and businesses for unnecessary actions at that time. Information is power.

What can you do when attacked?
Rule number 1 – do not get excited.
Rule number 2 – do not over react.
Rule number 3 – you will need to add protection from Social Media Disinformation Bots, Sockpuppets and Trolls to your Cyber Security Planning and software systems.

Contact us today to see how Adept Secure can help your organization with these problems and many more.

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Call us toll free 1-888-392-9623

Permit Software

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What is Permit Software?

Permit software is best defined as a software activity tracking system designed specifically for meeting the needs of governmental agencies such as Cities, Counties and States that are responsible for giving authorization via official records and documents to do something.
Permit is a common name of the record and document of the authorization given to you from the government agency.

Permit software handles all processes via a Graphical User Interface and provides for a multi-user, multi-task environment. Permit software also is a part of other software systems that go together such as planning software, code enforcement software and public works software. The reason why is based on how the laws of authorization are created and how the governmental agencies are tasked to provide these services to their communities.

Permit Software

Permits can be very easy to obtain, to very complex to obtain. Simple permits to combination permits – multiple permits in one permit are expected to be easily created and managed within the permit software processes. The following are some examples of the processes that are expected to be handled with any Permit Software system.

1) Permit application and update
2) Permit status inquiry and update
3) Permit fee calculations and receipting
4) Impact fee calculations and tracking
5) Public notifications
6) Plan review routing and tracking
7) Condition setting and tracking
8) Permit approval notification
9) Permit issuance
10) Inspection recording and tracking
11) Easement tracking
12) Bond tracking
13) Code Enforcement tracking
14) Variances
15) Waiver and modification issuance
16) Record Land Plat tracking
17) Professional trade licensing and tracking
18) Subcontractor affidavits
19) Public correspondence
20) Property Parcel data inquiry and update
21) Approval and acceptance at all stages of development
22) Managing reports
23) Ad hoc inquirers for reporting purposes
24) Provides for numerous types and subtype of permits and allows for unique update, inquiry and tracking for each type and subtype of the permit.
25) Maintenance provided for each permit activity record.

Why Adept Technologies’ Permit Software?

Adept Technologies’ Permit software is a USA developed and controlled automated process software system. Eighteen years ago after the W2K scare the founders of Adept Technologies left companies that focused on government permit software. The main reason why they left was based on mergers and acquisitions of the whole industry into off shore owned companies. The permit software being licensed within the Industry was expensive and badly developed. The management of these companies did not understand the industry, and did not care about their employees that worked in the trenches. So the founders of Adept Technologies left with years of knowledge of how NOT to run software companies focused in this industry.

Working with numerous governmental agencies such as Cities, Counties and States; Adept Technologies’ Permit software was developed, implemented and supported since the beginning of Adept Technologies. As the company grew it created numerous other enterprise software systems, but the focus has always been based on permit software.

Learn more about Adept Technologies’ Permit software: https://www.adepttech.com/permitsoftware.html

Contact us today to see how Adept Enterprise can help your organization.

Call us toll free 1-888-392-9623

Adept Workflow A. I. Based Technology

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Adept Workflow is a flexible work management system built into all the Adept Enterprise modules.

Customized workflows allow multiple users to track and manage deadlines, requested inspections and tasks that are automatically assigned based on the type and subtypes of all record activities. Staff can easily monitor action items and task outcomes and track project status, meeting agendas and correspondence that has been sent.

Photographs, documents and other materials are easily linked to individual records so all relevant information is instantly accessible within the system.

Whenever an activity record is generated, a user simply can select workflow options for a particular activity record or the system can be set-up with pre-defined timelines to automatically activate when a record is generated.

Setting-up a customized workflow for an activity record takes 5 easy steps. The workflow is labeled, the main task folders created, specific tasks are outlined in a task sequence, users assigned and lastly, the appropriate status for each task is selected.

Adept Workflow

Adept Workflow Features

 ~ Template designed and attached to projects
 ~ Data is centralized and shared between multiple departments
 ~ Search tasks and workflows by User, Status, Tracking number, Start and End dates
 ~ Changes in a specific task status updates all other member’s tasks in the workflow
 ~ Email directly from the workflow application
 ~ View complete task history
 ~ Alert notifications for task due dates, changes and critical information
 ~ Updates to documents and photograph records which are automatically linked
 ~ Assign user authentication levels for permissions
 ~ Quick search by Pending, Current, Behind Schedule, Stopped and Completed tasks

Bottom Line, the Adept Workflow is an A.I. based system that automatically routes tasks to the person, group, department or division responsible for the completion of the task based upon triggers in the Adept Enterprise system. This saves a huge amount of time in completing mission critical jobs, by the Adept system assigning, routing and alerting tasks to the correct responsible party.

Contact us today toll free 1-888-392-9623 to find out more on how Adept Technologies can save you money by utilizing our technology.