Happy Halloween from the Comrise Team !

On behalf of Comrise, we’d like to wish the Comrise community a happy (and a safe) Halloween!

Comrise kicked of the holiday earlier today with some inner office trick-or-treating (actually mostly treating )

It was an interesting day at work as many of our employees came to work dressed up in costumes.

One colleague came dressed as a human spider web, another as a Halloween hallmark card, and another employee came with a monkey on his back..literally. He was the man with the yellow hat from Curious George! See some of the pictures below!

For those of you not familiar with Curious George, here’s the link (http://pbskids.org/curiousgeorge/)

Anyways, for those of you in need of a last minute costume idea, we decided to include some costume ideas, however, be wary, these are not your traditional costume ideas; these are what we like to consider the top 10 “Halloween IT Costumes” (broken down by theme) Enjoy!

Oh and if you have any other creative costume ideas..IT-related, feel free to leave a comment! Happy Halloween !!!!!'

Official Mascots:

• the Linux penguin
• the Drupal drop

Unofficial Mascots:

• the Apple colorwheel (spinning colorwheel of death)
• the Microsoft paper clip
• the BSOD (blue screen of death)

More Personalized:

• Your Favorite Relational Database
• Your Favorite Programming Language

More Abstract: (bonus points for difficulty!)

• Object-oriented languages
• Inheritance
• Open-source

Comrise goes to NMSDC Conference

The National Minority Supplier Diversity Council (NMSDC) held their annual conference just this past week in Miami. My experience at the conference increased my awareness of diversity in the work place. It was so great to see thousands of faces that represented all different and unique backgrounds with the purpose of fostering mutually beneficial business relationships.

Revisiting some highlights of the conference, I especially recall Scott Page, a well known and admired professor from University of Michigan, who provided insight on diversity in the work force. Professor Page emphasized the importance of diversity over ability. Diversity in the work place gives birth to different views and ideas as well as challenges people to think on a higher level. Not only is diversity the right and moral way to live and work, but it brings real measurable profit to the workplace. At Comrise, we fully embrace this concept and make full use of the diverse nature of our staff. It is this diversity of people and ideas that makes Comrise so successful!

It is for these same reason, many companies are increasingly turning to diverse vendors for resources, such as talent acquisition or marketing and promotions. After having attended the NMSDC Conference, I better understand the importance of these Supplier Diversity Managers and see how they serve as advocates for improving the quality of their respective workplaces.

All in all, the conference was a complete success for Comrise and we look forward to being more involved in the NMSDC - we have lots of work ahead of us!

Job Search V. Self Search

The raging flood of unemployment is still drowning many Americans in a land of hopelessness. The unemployment rate still rests at 9.6% with what seems like no intention of improvement. Those of us who are lucky enough to have a job in this current economic state certainly have something to be grateful for. As for those individuals that are fighting for their chance to get their foot in the door, hang in there! The stresses of job hunting very easily takes over people’s mind as pressure from family and society builds up and a sense of failure begins to define them.

But wait…

We somehow have forgotten the bigger picture in life. Some may recall being in that ever-lasting 9.6% of people unemployed and waking up every morning with the thought of, “Oh my God, I am unemployed, what am I doing with my life?” But how about turning that anxiety into a sense of excitement of, “How can I use my free to time not only job search but also self search?” Many times we get caught up in the actions of searching for a job that we forget to think about our careers and life goals.

Here are some helpful tips in making the most of these tough employment times:

1. Define or redefine your career path to remind yourself why you became interested in it and how you can excel in it.
2. Create a target list in terms of what kind of position you are looking for and with what kind of company you would want to work for.
3. Put together a schedule of how many applicable positions you want to apply to and stick to it.
4. Equally important: define your life goals and make sure your career is in line with it.
5. Then, ask yourself if the job you are applying for will serve as a tool to help you move further OR if you are signing off to become a tool for your job.
6. Most importantly… just enjoy life! We often get caught up in the thoughts of being unemployed and the actions of applying to jobs that we forget to make the most of that time we have to ourselves.

I’ll leave you with this note: introspection is one of the most important steps of job hunting. “Your work is to discover your world and then will all your heart give yourself to it.” - Buddha

Stuxnet and the Tech World

Alright, so, Stuxnet. If you haven’t already heard about it, it’s the hot (tech) topic of the day, and it’s pronounced just like you think [stʌksnέʔ]. Stuxnet is a computer worm, a piece of malware that was apparently engineered to target energy infrastructure systems. It’s been reported in India, Pakistan, Indonesia, and most notably Iran.

I won’t discuss the ethical or political implications of Stuxnet and the imitators it’s sure to inspire, nor will I talk about Myrtus or 19790509 embedded in the code. I will, however, touch upon the technical implications of the worm and what it means for the computing world, including the job market.

First, the nature and scope of the architecture of Stuxnet seems to indicate not the work of a single or even a handful of individuals, but a highly-organized team of developers. Imagine your team, or a team you’ve seen, a team of 10 developers. Maybe some pair programming for specific functions, and you’ve got a team of highly-intelligent developers creating a complex and sophisticated piece of engineering explicitly for the purpose of infecting computer systems. This is a significant escalation – you’ll notice that the words used in the press and online to describe malware are the same as are used to describe nuclear weapons – in the production process, in the ‘malware arms race’ as it were.

What does this mean for the tech industry? Time to invest in Symantec*. Or start studying computer security. If the offensive side of malware production has kicked it up ten notches, then the defensive side is sure to attempt to catch up. For every one virus that’s out there, there are hundreds of companies with systems and databases that they’d like to keep secure. And now that malware is targeting not only software but also industrial control systems, there are going to be lots of companies out there who’ll be willing to pay more to keep their systems secure. And companies like Symantec are going to have to adjust (probably in size, certainly in sophistication) to keep up with these new technological demands.

Second, Stuxnet infects not only systems connected to the internet and internal networks, but also isolated systems via USB drive. Turns out all those spy movies and TV shows where someone like Sydney Bristow or Michael Westen breaks into a secure facility and then all they have to do is insert a thumb drive into a computer to steal files or plant a virus are more accurate than I usually give them credit for.

What does this mean for you? If you work in a secure facility (whether it’s for the military or for an investment bank or a pharmaceutical company – any facility with information on the inside that isn’t supposed to be on the outside), and you see a USB drive in the parking lot or in the lobby, don’t put it into your computer. Curiosity not only killed the cat, but it also shut down the uranium enrichment facility. If you just can’t stand the suspense, do it on your personal, isolated, not-connected-to-anything laptop, and then be prepared to clean and patch it diligently.

What will the actual consequences be? Only time will tell. But this will probably go down as a significant moment in the history of malware, and is certainly a significant moment right now for the field of cybersecurity.

*Disclaimer:
This is a technology blog, not a finance blog. Please take any financial advice presented here with a grain of salt and at your own risk.