No Excuses, More Light, Walking Dead

Yesterday at work we had a bit of a situation. An email came into the organization that was sent to everyone that was clearly suspicious and had a potentially malicious attachment. I sent out an organization wide message instructing people to not interact with the email and to simply delete it. Well we had one employee that contacted me, saying she already clicked on the attachment.

Because of a couple conditions we escaped damage to our network but the fact that this employee carelessly clicked the file attachment was a major issue. We have utilized organization wide security training that our staff is required to complete several times a year. One of the core lessons taught is you never interact with an email that contains links or a file attachment that you are not expecting. There have been multiple cases of this behavior bringing down other offices via malware from employees being careless.

I reached out to this employee directly. Her excuse was she was trying to help a customer at the same time as she was checking her email. I told her that was not an excuse and that it is her responsibility to interact with email in a safe manner, always. I followed up sending an organization wide reminder of the importance of following these guidelines which have been reinforced repeatedly via our training programs. Our job is to make our end users as paranoid as possible when it comes to network security. I have been told that many think I am “mean” because of the tone of my communications as a result. I could care less, it’s my job. If somebody takes down our network through their negligence it could cost them their job and make me look like I am not doing mine.

Several weeks ago I noticed my small lamp in the great room was broken. My suspicion is the cleaning ladies inadvertently knocked it off the table and didn’t tell me. (has happened before) So that light which is normally on a smart switch was missing in action ever since.

For some reason I had not gotten around to getting a replacement until last night. I went to Home Goods where I have bought a number of accessories since moving into the house. I bought a simple and inexpensive lamp that appealed to me. Once I plugged it in I confirmed this was an upgrade to the space. I like it more than what it replaced.

I randomly discovered that there is a new Walking Dead series on Netflix, Those That Live. It is the story of Rick and Michon. When Rick apparently died in the original Walking Dead series it sort of marked the downhill slide of the series IMO. I have seen some of the other spin offs from the show and they lost their appeal to me. However I always loved Rick’s character so I decided to give this 6 episode series a try.

A couple shows in I am enjoying it. Of course nothing is going to capture the feeling of when the show first came out. The entire country was fascinated by it. However this spinoff appears to be decent, at least so far. Hopefully it’s good enough I can make it to the end.