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    in Information Technology

    Justice Department seizes domains used in Nobelium-USAID phishing campaign

    The US Justice Department announced on Tuesday that it has seized two command-and-control and malware distribution domains that were used as part of a recent phishing attack identified by Microsoft last week. Nobelium, a group Microsoft and CISA believe was behind the massive SolarWinds attack, was found operating a widespread malicious email campaign that used the account of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) on mass-mailing service Constant Contact to send infected emails to thousands of recipients.  Both Microsoft and CISA released alerts about the attack and the Washington Post as well as the New York Times reported that few, if any, of the malicious emails were opened.But the Justice Department said on Tuesday that its seizure of the two domains “was aimed at disrupting the malicious actors’ follow-on exploitation of victims, as well as identifying compromised victims.” “The actors may have deployed additional backdoor accesses between the time of the initial compromises and last week’s seizures,” the government statement said. The initial attack was believed to have originated from the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service and targeted governmental as well as non-profit organizations focused on European politics. Acting U.S. Attorney Raj Parekh said the spear-phishing attack could have caused “widespread damage throughout affected computer networks, and can result in significant harm to unsuspecting individual victims, government agencies, NGOs, and private businesses.”Bryan Vorndran, assistant Director of the FBI’s Cyber Division, added that they were committed to working with domestic and international partners to disrupt attacks directed toward government agencies.

    “We will continue to use all of the tools in our toolbelt and leverage our domestic and international partnerships to not only disrupt this type of hacking activity but to impose risk and consequences upon our adversaries to combat these threats,” Vorndran said. More than 3,000 people were targeted using the compromised USAID account and the emails sent included “special alerts” and other efforts to get people to open them or download what was inside. Some of those targeted in the attacks have been critical of the Russian government while others are involved in international development, humanitarian and human rights work across Europe and the United States. The emails had a hyperlink that downloaded malware from a sub-domain of theyardservice[.]com, and from there the people behind the attack could download “the Cobalt Strike tool to maintain persistent presence and possibly deploy additional tools or malware to the victim’s network,” according to the Justice Department. “The actors’ instance of the Cobalt Strike tool received C2 communications via other subdomains of theyardservice[.]com, as well as the domain worldhomeoutlet[.]com. It was those two domains that the Department seized pursuant to the court’s seizure order,” the statement said. Cybersecurity experts like Netenrich threat intelligence advisor John Bambenek said that what is novel about the Justice Department’s actions was that they used the legal process to relatively quickly seize domains and protect its own interests in a straightforward way. “If governments can start doing this quickly, not just on APT threats but conventional cybercrime, we can have a greater disruptive effect on cybercrime,” Bambenek said. Hank Schless, senior manager of security solutions at Lookout, said that by seizing domains and command and control servers used in phishing campaigns, researchers can be given leads as to who is running the campaign and where else they might be carrying out nefarious activity. “Most threat actors likely have backups of their malicious campaigns and can spin out new versions of the same activity on different domains and servers. However, reusing the same campaign means that it will likely possess identifiable heuristics or characteristics in the future,” Schless explained to ZDNet.  He noted that the seizure of recently used domains and command and control servers helps enable proactive threat research and helps to mitigate the risk of similar attacks happening in the future. By amassing a sizable batch of threat intelligence, datasets can grow and more threats can be identified, allowing for the creation of machine learning tools that help enable automatic discovery and conviction of malicious phishing campaigns and actors, Schless said. “Since attackers often reuse bits and pieces of previous malware or even naming tactics in their campaigns, a large enough dataset will be able to identify and protect against both known and unknown threats before they reach any sort of sizable scale,” he told ZDNet.”It’s encouraging to see the Justice Department take steps that could deter threat actors from targeting US Federal agencies in particular.”

    SolarWinds Updates More

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    in Networking

    Best providers to navigate Australia's small business broadband gap in 2021

    When it comes to broadband connectivity, Australian small businesses with around 10 or fewer users are stuck in a product gap. There’s a good chance your premises’ NBN connection cannot deliver the speed your business really needs, but getting something faster can quickly get more expensive.

    Speed isn’t the only consideration for a business-grade internet connection, of course. You need reliability because downtime means not just annoyance but also lost revenue, and you need prompt support when things go wrong. You might also need dedicated IP addresses so you can set up a permanent high-speed connection to a branch office or a VPN gateway for your staff to securely work from home — after all, hasn’t that become a thing during the pandemic? You might even want to look at getting a broadband package with a proper service level agreement (SLA), where the vendor commits to standards of speed and reliability where there are penalties if they don’t deliver. For example, vendors supplying NBN connections can offer enhanced SLA options. Instead of the standard business hours fault reporting with rectification by 5pm the next business day, you can pay for fault reporting 24/7 with rectification in as little as four hours. Remember, consumer-grade broadband is provided as “best effort”, but in business, sorry isn’t good enough. Here, then, are some business-grade broadband options for SMEs.

    We haven’t listed every single option because there are a plethora of smaller NBN resellers with broadly similar offerings. Nor have we listed every option from the vendors we chose. Here are just some highlights that are featured in their offerings. If you see an add-on you like with one vendor’s product, ask others if they can provide it too. This is intended as a guide for shopping around — especially if you’re thinking about adding phone services or data service add-ons, such as email, security, or backups. Let’s face it, it’s all about the NBN or avoiding it For better or worse, the majesty of the national broadband network means that almost every premises in Australia has access to a broadband connection that delivers roughly the same basic performance options regardless of retail vendor. The problem is, however, some premises are more basic than others. What’s potentially on offer at any particular location will be a subset of what NBN calls Traffic Class 4 (TC4). The available speeds will be limited by the connection technology that’s in place. What each vendor then offers to sell will be some subset of that. The range of wholesale NBN options available for each connection technology, from fibre to the premises (FttP) to fixed wireless (FW) and satellite (Sat). 
    Image: NBN
    Typically, a retail vendor will offer a plan at 50Mbps download and 20Mbps upload speeds (50/20), and one at 100/20. A post-installation line test will confirm the actual speeds that can be delivered. Getting anything faster on the NBN relies on the luck of having better technology provided at your location, such as fibre to the premises, or at least to the basement, or HFC. In the case of FttP, speeds up to 1000/400 might be available, depending on the vendor. This is why every vendor will ask for your address before even thinking about offering higher speeds. If your business needs more than what your luck-of-the-draw NBN can provide, you have two choices. Under the NBN Technology Choice Program, you can pay to upgrade your location to full fibre. As the company warns, however, “costs can vary greatly” and that could easily run into the thousands of dollars, especially outside inner city locations. That said, under the NBN Business Fibre Initiative, “an estimated 90% of business locations within the NBN network footprint” are now eligible for a connection to the company’s Enterprise Ethernet plan with no upfront connection cost to your provider if you sign a 36-month contract. Or you can look at what the vendors themselves can provide using their own non-NBN connectivity options. Once again it’s all about where you are and what gear they already have in your area. Either way, if your business is located in premises you rent or lease, you’ll also need to check with the owner to confirm that you’re allowed to do any work required as part of the installation. The need for speed, and especially symmetry “High-quality symmetrical upload and download speeds are vital for consistent business-grade day-to-day functions such as video conferencing or utilising cloud-hosted platforms and services,” says NBN on its website. Which is to say, even NBN says that NBN’s generic business broadband options are not completely suitable for business. If your business generates large data files rather than just downloading them from others, good upload speeds are vital. Think graphics, videos, or large scientific data sets. You’ll also need good upload speeds if you’re participating in video conferences rather than merely watching someone else’s video stream. Each platform will list its recommended link speeds for effective use. Remember that three employees joining the conference from their own desks counts as three streams, not one. In these cases, the broadband plan’s upload speed is the one you should really be concerned about, not the download speed.

    Currently the fastest NBN, plus bonus entertainment packages

    Image: Asha Barbaschow/ZDNet

    Optus offers the two standard NBN speed choices, 50/20 and 100/20, starting at AU$75 and AU$95 per month, respectively. If you have an eligible FttP or HFC service then there’s also the so-called Superfast with a “typical busy period” speed of 215Mbps down and 18.5Mbps up for an extra AU$35 per month, and the “Ultrafast” at 250Mbps down and 37.5Mbps up for an extra AU$55. All plans include unlimited data and automatic fail-over to the Optus LTE/4G network in the event of a failure, with the switch happening in one to six minutes. They also include the Optus-branded Wi-Fi modem, but you’ll need to stay connected for 36 months otherwise you will be charged for it. Your main upsell options are the “Ultimate” pack with a Wi-Fi booster to extend the range through your premises, and a security add-on to monitor Wi-Fi connections for threats; or the “Entertainer” pack with a Fetch TV set-top box and one premium channel pack. Or you can pay for both. All plans also include the Optus Sport and OS Fitness video streaming channels, with Premier League and UEFA Champions League matches live, plus the UEFA Nations League, UEFA Europa League, and European Qualifiers. Optus can boast that it’s currently rated number one for NBN average download speeds by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, although of course, that may not last forever. If you want symmetrical speeds, though, you’ll be needing something from their Optus Evolve suite of products. Given that they’re targeting “corporate offices”, that’s probably not for your small business.

    View Now at Optus

    If you’re in Adelaide, you’re really in luck

    TPG’s business plans start with a somewhat minimalistic NBN12 product, with 12Mbps download speed and a mere 1Mbps upload for AU$70 a month. That’s not enough for even one stream of reliable video conferencing, and it’s truly glacial if you have data to upload. But it might handle one or two workers with some point-of-sale transactions or other lightweight cloud services.The usual 50/20 and 100/20 products start at AU$80 and AU$100 a month, respectively. At that price there’s a 500GB per month data cap (250GB peak and 250GB off-peak), though it includes unlimited local and standard national calls. Add AU$10 per month for unlimited data, and another AU$10 per month for unlimited calls to mobiles.All of TPG’s NBN plans have a AU$100 set-up fee unless you sign an 18-month contract. There’s no charge for moving up or down speed. All business plans come with a static IP address.TPG also offers unlimited symmetrical fibre connections to “TPG lit buildings (excludes data centres)” at 400Mbps for an advertised AU$400 per month (plus GST so it’s actually AU$440 per month), and 1Gbps for an advertised AU$800 per month (actually AU$880).The bandwidth can be split among up to four services, so customers can allocate dedicated bandwidth to voice, or to links to branch offices, or specific cloud services.There’s a 99.95% availability SLA, backed by outage restoration targets and rebates. Contract terms are 24 months and up. If you’re in Adelaide, and specifically the CBD or North Adelaide, TPG has unlimited 1Gbps fibre for AU$400 per month (really AU$440) as part of the Ten Gigabit Adelaide network.

    View Now at TPG

    An all-Australian operation with an army of happy customers

    Image: Aussie Broadband

    Competitors envy Aussie Broadband’s customer satisfaction ratings. Customers like its all-Australia support and clarity of communications.Business NBN packages are sold as a simple-to-understand selection from the options NBN gives Aussie. They start at AU$80 per month for 50/20 speeds, ranging up to AU$430 per month for 1000/400, all with unlimited data. Optionally, upgrade to priority or even 100% guaranteed bandwidth, or add on NBN’s enhanced SLA.Aussie also offers its own Fast Aussie Fibre product, providing symmetrical speeds and a 1:1 contention ratio. Speeds start at 250/250 for AU$300 per month (plus GST so it’s really AU$330), through to 1000/1000 for AU$800 (really AU$880), then through 2Gbps and 5Gbps options, all the way up to 10Gbps symmetric for AU$5,000 per month (really AU$5,500).Fast Aussie Fibre comes with a 99.95% uptime SLA, and zero set-up fee if you sign for 36 months, although 12 and 24 month contracts are available.

    View Now at Aussie Broadband

    An independent fixed wireless network provides another choice

    Image: Spirit IT

    The rapidly-growing company formerly known as Spirit Telecom has transformed into an integrated IT and telco business. For some businesses, the ability to bundle internet, internal networks, voice, security, support, and applications into a single supported package could be a key advantage.Spirits offers the usual NBN TC4 and non-NBN symmetrical fibre products, from AU$130 and AU$420 per month, respectively, with the potential to use “all possible options out there in the market”.Another key difference is their Sky-Speed Internet, Spirit’s own fixed wireless network along Australia’s east coast. Starting at AU$300 per month and offering speeds of 25/25 up to 1000/1000, this might be a good option for high-speed broadband in regional areas.All business customers are supported by the company’s Australian support team, assisted by the network operations centre in Makati in the Philippines.Spirit says its core target market is customers with between 50 and 500 users, but for businesses with demanding data requirements they might be worth a look.

    View Now at Spirit IT

    Australia’s original telco is wherever you are

    Image: Asha Barbaschow/ZDNet

    It must be said: No matter what connectivity technology you want, or what add-ons you’re after, Telstra will be able to sell it to you. To describe Australia’s biggest telco’s product range as comprehensive is an understatement.That means it’s complex, and you’ll soon discover subtleties. One example is that the “Business NBN plans” sold to small businesses are slightly different from the “Business Broadband plans on the NBN network” sold to business and enterprise customers.If faster asymmetric NBN speeds are available at your location, prices range up to AU$450 per month for 1000/400.Symmetrical fibre links are available in the Telstra Internet Direct (NBN Enterprise Ethernet) and Telstra Internet Direct Lite (Telstra fibre) products, with a wide range of quality of service options. You’ll have to get a quote for your location.Telstra also offers a vast range of small business apps, including Microsoft 365, MYOB Essentials accounting, cybersecurity, digital marketing support, and even 24/7 general tech support.

    View Now at Telstra

    Getting the speed you paid forThe overall performance of any data network depends on its weakest link. Once you start looking at broadband internet connection speeds in the hundreds of megabits per second or more, the weakest link may well be something else. For the very best results, use a wired connection for every device on your office network. Make sure all your ethernet switches have ports rated for 1Gbps. Use quality Cat 6 ethernet cables and make sure to test every one of them. Dodgy connectors or kinks in the cable can dramatically reduce the data speed. If you prefer wireless, make sure all your wireless routers, access points, and extenders are correctly configured, and located where they’re getting as direct a signal as possible. Perhaps even use a Wi-Fi network mapping tool to make sure you’re not trying to use the same channel as other nearby networks, including those on the other side of a shared wall, or on the floor above or below. Some routers can automatically switch to vacant channels, some can’t. What counts as a business? Generally, business broadband plans are available to anyone with an Australian Business Number, or a company or other organisation with an Australian Company Number. This includes sole traders, even if they work from home. A vendor’s non-NBN options will usually have restrictions, however. Non-NBN business connections may only be available to commercial buildings, not apartment buildings or individual homes, for example. Shop around but don’t penny-pinch All prices in this guide are those listed by the vendors on their websites at the time of publication, excluding any time-limited special offers. NBN is currently discounting its pricing to vendors, for example, with a cheaper price for the first six months of a new NBN connection, and those discounts are being passed on by vendors to a greater or lesser degree. Always shop around, and always consider the price of broadband as just one component of your overall IT spend. It may well be that a broadband package costing a few dollars more includes extras that a cheaper vendor would be charging a lot extra for. If you’ll be using the NBN for your phone service as well, check how that can be packaged with data connectivity. Make sure to check the call rates too, especially if you make a lot of international calls or calls to mobiles. 10 bucks extra per month to move from capped data to unlimited, or to jump up a whole speed range, should be a no-brainer. If a long-term contract is required, be sure to find out whether you can change the plan, how often, and whether a fee is involved. Make a note of when the contract is due to end, and know what the subsequent monthly charge will be, should you decide to continue on a month-to-month basis. We recommend getting a detailed quote that includes all one-time charges as well as a firm estimate of monthly charges, including taxes and fees. Related Coverage More

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    in Networking

    Best internet provider in Australia 2021: Top ISP picks

    When it comes to broadband connectivity, Australian small businesses with around 10 or fewer users are stuck in a product gap. There’s a good chance your premises’ NBN connection cannot deliver the speed your business really needs, but getting something faster can quickly get more expensive. Speed isn’t the only consideration for a business-grade internet connection, of course. You need reliability because downtime means not just annoyance but also lost revenue, and you need prompt support when things go wrong. You might also need dedicated IP addresses so you can set up a permanent high-speed connection to a branch office or a VPN gateway for your staff to securely work from home — after all, hasn’t that become a thing during the pandemic? You might even want to look at getting a broadband package with a proper service level agreement (SLA), where the vendor commits to standards of speed and reliability where there are penalties if they don’t deliver. For example, vendors supplying NBN connections can offer enhanced SLA options. Instead of the standard business hours fault reporting with rectification by 5pm the next business day, you can pay for fault reporting 24/7 with rectification in as little as four hours. Remember, consumer-grade broadband is provided as “best effort,” but in business, sorry isn’t good enough. Here, then, are some business-grade broadband options for SMEs.

    We haven’t listed every single option because there are a plethora of smaller NBN resellers with broadly similar offerings. Nor have we listed every option from the vendors we chose. Here are just some highlights that are featured in their offerings. If you see an add-on you like with one vendor’s product, ask others if they can provide it too. This is intended as a guide for shopping around — especially if you’re thinking about adding phone services or data service add-ons, such as email, security, or backups.

    Fastest NBN, plus bonus entertainment packages

    Optus offers the two standard NBN speed choices, 50/20 and 100/20, starting at AU$75 and AU$95 per month, respectively. If you have an eligible FttP or HFC service then there’s also the so-called Superfast with a “typical busy period” speed of 215Mbps down and 18.5Mbps up for an extra AU$35 per month, and the “Ultrafast” at 250Mbps down and 37.5Mbps up for an extra AU$55. All plans include unlimited data and automatic fail-over to the Optus LTE/4G network in the event of a failure, with the switch happening in one to six minutes. They also include the Optus-branded Wi-Fi modem, but you’ll need to stay connected for 36 months otherwise you will be charged for it. Your main upsell options are the “Ultimate” pack with a Wi-Fi booster to extend the range through your premises, and a security add-on to monitor Wi-Fi connections for threats; or the “Entertainer” pack with a Fetch TV set-top box and one premium channel pack. Or you can pay for both. All plans also include the Optus Sport and OS Fitness video streaming channels, with Premier League and UEFA Champions League matches live, plus the UEFA Nations League, UEFA Europa League, and European Qualifiers. Optus can boast that it’s currently rated number one for NBN average download speeds by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, although of course, that may not last forever. If you want symmetrical speeds, though, you’ll be needing something from their Optus Evolve suite of products. Given that they’re targeting “corporate offices”, that’s probably not for your small business.

    View Now at Optus

    If you’re in Adelaide, you’re really in luck

    TPG’s business plans start with a somewhat minimalistic NBN12 product, with 12Mbps download speed and a mere 1Mbps upload for AU$70 a month. That’s not enough for even one stream of reliable video conferencing, and it’s truly glacial if you have data to upload. But it might handle one or two workers with some point-of-sale transactions or other lightweight cloud services.The usual 50/20 and 100/20 products start at AU$80 and AU$100 a month, respectively. At that price there’s a 500GB per month data cap (250GB peak and 250GB off-peak), though it includes unlimited local and standard national calls. Add AU$10 per month for unlimited data, and another AU$10 per month for unlimited calls to mobiles.All of TPG’s NBN plans have a AU$100 set-up fee unless you sign an 18-month contract. There’s no charge for moving up or down speed. All business plans come with a static IP address.TPG also offers unlimited symmetrical fibre connections to “TPG lit buildings (excludes data centres)” at 400Mbps for an advertised AU$400 per month (plus GST so it’s actually AU$440 per month), and 1Gbps for an advertised AU$800 per month (actually AU$880).The bandwidth can be split among up to four services, so customers can allocate dedicated bandwidth to voice, or to links to branch offices, or specific cloud services.There’s a 99.95% availability SLA, backed by outage restoration targets and rebates. Contract terms are 24 months and up. If you’re in Adelaide, and specifically the CBD or North Adelaide, TPG has unlimited 1Gbps fibre for AU$400 per month (really AU$440) as part of the Ten Gigabit Adelaide network.

    View Now at TPG

    An all-Australian operation with an army of happy customers

    Competitors envy Aussie Broadband’s customer satisfaction ratings. Customers like its all-Australia support and clarity of communications.Business NBN packages are sold as a simple-to-understand selection from the options NBN gives Aussie. They start at AU$80 per month for 50/20 speeds, ranging up to AU$430 per month for 1000/400, all with unlimited data. Optionally, upgrade to priority or even 100% guaranteed bandwidth, or add on NBN’s enhanced SLA.Aussie also offers its own Fast Aussie Fibre product, providing symmetrical speeds and a 1:1 contention ratio. Speeds start at 250/250 for AU$300 per month (plus GST so it’s really AU$330), through to 1000/1000 for AU$800 (really AU$880), then through 2Gbps and 5Gbps options, all the way up to 10Gbps symmetric for AU$5,000 per month (really AU$5,500).Fast Aussie Fibre comes with a 99.95% uptime SLA, and zero set-up fee if you sign for 36 months, although 12 and 24 month contracts are available.

    View Now at Aussie Broadband

    An independent fixed wireless network provides another choice

    The rapidly-growing company formerly known as Spirit Telecom has transformed into an integrated IT and telco business. For some businesses, the ability to bundle internet, internal networks, voice, security, support, and applications into a single supported package could be a key advantage.Spirits offers the usual NBN TC4 and non-NBN symmetrical fibre products, from AU$130 and AU$420 per month, respectively, with the potential to use “all possible options out there in the market”.Another key difference is their Sky-Speed Internet, Spirit’s own fixed wireless network along Australia’s east coast. Starting at AU$300 per month and offering speeds of 25/25 up to 1000/1000, this might be a good option for high-speed broadband in regional areas.All business customers are supported by the company’s Australian support team, assisted by the network operations centre in Makati in the Philippines.Spirit says its core target market is customers with between 50 and 500 users, but for businesses with demanding data requirements they might be worth a look.

    View Now at Spirit IT

    Australia’s original telco is wherever you are

    It must be said: No matter what connectivity technology you want, or what add-ons you’re after, Telstra will be able to sell it to you. To describe Australia’s biggest telco’s product range as comprehensive is an understatement.That means it’s complex, and you’ll soon discover subtleties. One example is that the “Business NBN plans” sold to small businesses are slightly different from the “Business Broadband plans on the NBN network” sold to business and enterprise customers.If faster asymmetric NBN speeds are available at your location, prices range up to AU$450 per month for 1000/400.Symmetrical fibre links are available in the Telstra Internet Direct (NBN Enterprise Ethernet) and Telstra Internet Direct Lite (Telstra fibre) products, with a wide range of quality of service options. You’ll have to get a quote for your location.Telstra also offers a vast range of small business apps, including Microsoft 365, MYOB Essentials accounting, cybersecurity, digital marketing support, and even 24/7 general tech support.

    View Now at Telstra

    Let’s face it, it’s all about the NBN or avoiding it

    For better or worse, the majesty of the national broadband network means that almost every premises in Australia has access to a broadband connection that delivers roughly the same basic performance options regardless of retail vendor. The problem is, however, some premises are more basic than others. What’s potentially on offer at any particular location will be a subset of what NBN calls Traffic Class 4 (TC4). The available speeds will be limited by the connection technology that’s in place. What each vendor then offers to sell will be some subset of that. Typically, a retail vendor will offer a plan at 50Mbps download and 20Mbps upload speeds (50/20), and one at 100/20. A post-installation line test will confirm the actual speeds that can be delivered. Getting anything faster on the NBN relies on the luck of having better technology provided at your location, such as fibre to the premises, or at least to the basement, or HFC. In the case of FttP, speeds up to 1000/400 might be available, depending on the vendor.This is why every vendor will ask for your address before even thinking about offering higher speeds. If your business needs more than what your luck-of-the-draw NBN can provide, you have two choices. Under the NBN Technology Choice Program, you can pay to upgrade your location to full fibre. As the company warns, however, “costs can vary greatly” and that could easily run into the thousands of dollars, especially outside inner city locations. That said, under the NBN Business Fibre Initiative, “an estimated 90% of business locations within the NBN network footprint” are now eligible for a connection to the company’s Enterprise Ethernet plan with no upfront connection cost to your provider if you sign a 36-month contract. Or you can look at what the vendors themselves can provide using their own non-NBN connectivity options. Once again it’s all about where you are and what gear they already have in your area. Either way, if your business is located in premises you rent or lease, you’ll also need to check with the owner to confirm that you’re allowed to do any work required as part of the installation.

    The need for speed, and especially symmetry

    “High-quality symmetrical upload and download speeds are vital for consistent business-grade day-to-day functions such as video conferencing or utilising cloud-hosted platforms and services,” says NBN on its website.Which is to say, even NBN says that NBN’s generic business broadband options are not completely suitable for business.If your business generates large data files rather than just downloading them from others, good upload speeds are vital. Think graphics, videos, or large scientific data sets.You’ll also need good upload speeds if you’re participating in video conferences rather than merely watching someone else’s video stream.Each platform will list its recommended link speeds for effective use.Remember that three employees joining the conference from their own desks counts as three streams, not one.In these cases, the broadband plan’s upload speed is the one you should really be concerned about, not the download speed.

    What can you do to ensure you get the speeds you paid for?

    The overall performance of any data network depends on its weakest link. Once you start looking at broadband internet connection speeds in the hundreds of megabits per second or more, the weakest link may well be something else.For the very best results, use a wired connection for every device on your office network. Make sure all your ethernet switches have ports rated for 1Gbps. Use quality Cat 6 ethernet cables and make sure to test every one of them. Dodgy connectors or kinks in the cable can dramatically reduce the data speed.If you prefer wireless, make sure all your wireless routers, access points, and extenders are correctly configured, and located where they’re getting as direct a signal as possible.Perhaps even use a Wi-Fi network mapping tool to make sure you’re not trying to use the same channel as other nearby networks, including those on the other side of a shared wall, or on the floor above or below. Some routers can automatically switch to vacant channels, some can’t.

    What counts as a business?

    Generally, business broadband plans are available to anyone with an Australian Business Number, or a company or other organisation with an Australian Company Number. This includes sole traders, even if they work from home.A vendor’s non-NBN options will usually have restrictions, however. Non-NBN business connections may only be available to commercial buildings, not apartment buildings or individual homes, for example.

    Should you shop around and penny-pinch?

    All prices in this guide are those listed by the vendors on their websites at the time of publication, excluding any time-limited special offers.NBN is currently discounting its pricing to vendors, for example, with a cheaper price for the first six months of a new NBN connection, and those discounts are being passed on by vendors to a greater or lesser degree.Always shop around, and always consider the price of broadband as just one component of your overall IT spend. It may well be that a broadband package costing a few dollars more includes extras that a cheaper vendor would be charging a lot extra for.If you’ll be using the NBN for your phone service as well, check how that can be packaged with data connectivity. Make sure to check the call rates too, especially if you make a lot of international calls or calls to mobiles.10 bucks extra per month to move from capped data to unlimited, or to jump up a whole speed range, should be a no-brainer.If a long-term contract is required, be sure to find out whether you can change the plan, how often, and whether a fee is involved. Make a note of when the contract is due to end, and know what the subsequent monthly charge will be, should you decide to continue on a month-to-month basis.We recommend getting a detailed quote that includes all one-time charges as well as a firm estimate of monthly charges, including taxes and fees.

    ZDNet Recommends More

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    in Information Technology

    USDA delays release of wholesale prices for beef and pork after ransomware attack on JBS confirmed by White House

    The fallout from the cyberattack on global meat producer JBS continued on Tuesday as the White House officially identified it as a ransomware attack and reports emerged of other downstream effects from the shutdown of the company’s IT systems. JBS released a statement on Monday admitting that “some of the servers supporting its North American and Australian IT systems” were brought down by an “organized cybersecurity attack” on Sunday. The company is the second largest meat and poultry processor in the United States and accounts for nearly one quarter of all the beef produced in the country as well as one fifth of all pork.JBS has shut down all of the affected systems and contacted the White House on Tuesday, according to a statement from deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. While the initial JBS statement did not say it was a ransomware attack, Jean-Pierre confirmed that it was and told reporters on Tuesday the company had already gotten a ransom demand from an organization “likely based in Russia.” She did not say whether JBS plans to pay the ransom or not.”The White House is engaging directly with the Russian government on this matter and delivering the message that responsible states do not harbor ransomware criminals,” Jean-Pierre said during a briefing on Air Force One.  She added that the White House is working with the Department of Agriculture, the FBI and CISA on helping JBS while also coordinating with meat suppliers across the country in case supply is affected by the attack. Government officials in Australia are also working with the company to remedy the problem. 

    Bloomberg News and The Counter reported that the attack was already so damaging that the Department of Agriculture was unable to release the wholesale prices for beef and pork, affecting thousands involved in the agriculture market. “Packer submission issues” was cited as the main reason for the delay in releasing the report. In the data that was released, daily cattle slaughter estimates showed that there was a 27,000 drop in heads of cattle compared to last week. JBS alone handles about 22,500 cattle each day, according to Bloomberg.The JBS statement said the company’s backup servers were not affected and that at the moment, there is no evidence “that any customer, supplier or employee data has been compromised or misused as a result of the situation.” The company admitted that there may be delays of “certain transactions with customers and suppliers.”The Counter reported that JBS, which is based in Brazil but operates in more than 20 countries, was forced to shut down shifts at multiple processing plants across the United States and Australia, where it is also one of the biggest suppliers of pork and beef. In multiple Facebook posts, JBS said it was shutting down plants in Iowa, Utah, Colorado, Minnesota, Texas, and Nebraska. Many online noted that the company has digitized significant parts of its operations, from its IT systems down to some factory tools used for the processing of meat. The U.S. Cattlemen’s Association took to Twitter to provide updates, explaining that there were reports of “livestock haulers in line, at plants, waiting to unload and being redirected to nearby yards.” The situation began to draw political condemnation as many noted how dangerous it was for the country to have nearly 25% of its meat production coming from one company relying on one software platform. Powerful Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley wrote on Twitter that he was demanding updates from JBS about the situation and that the company “needs to normalize operations as soon as possible for farmers and consumers.”Cybersecurity analysts drew parallels to the recent ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline that left much of the East Coast scrambling for gas for days. But many said this attack was worse because unlike gas, food will spoil and many ransomware attacks take weeks to recover from. “The recent JBS cyberattack — along with the Colonial Pipeline and Apple/Quanta cyber attacks that preceded it — demonstrate that your organization needs to make cybersecurity a boardroom priority, if you haven’t done so already,” said Neil Jones, a cybersecurity evangelist with Egnyte. “For years, cybercriminals have attacked targets for financial gain, but now we’re seeing an alarming pattern of debilitating attacks on our food, critical infrastructure, and IP supply chain, which can have a crippling impact across the US economy,” Jones added.BitSight CTO Stephen Boyer said in an email that 40% of food production companies face an increased risk of a ransomware incident due to poor patching practices. Food companies are also reportedly taking longer to patch vulnerabilities than the recommended industry standard, leaving them at higher risk, Boyer wrote. Over 70% of food production companies are at an increased risk of ransomware due to their overall security performance, according to BitSight’s analysis. The Associated Press noted that the Campari Group was hit with a ransomware attack last year while Molson Coors also announced that it was attacked in March.  Purandar Das, co-founder of cybersecurity firm Sotero, explained that this is the second attack in a row on a critical industry and shows how vulnerable infrastructure and supply chain systems are. “What used to be isolated attacks on siloed systems has now escalated into broad attacks that are rendering systems useless,” Das said. He added that the big concern now is that these attacks will become more targeted in order to leave certain industries inoperable for large periods of time. “The private sector needs to reevaluate their cybersecurity approach and invest in long-term programs and technology,” Das told ZDNet. “It needs to be a long-term investment with the understanding that not doing so will impact their operations and eventually their revenue streams. Cybersecurity can no longer be an afterthought.” More

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    in Artificial Intelligence

    The potential of artificial intelligence to bring equity in health care

    Health care is at a junction, a point where artificial intelligence tools are being introduced to all areas of the space. This introduction comes with great expectations: AI has the potential to greatly improve existing technologies, sharpen personalized medicines, and, with an influx of big data, benefit historically underserved populations.

    But in order to do those things, the health care community must ensure that AI tools are trustworthy, and that they don’t end up perpetuating biases that exist in the current system. Researchers at the MIT Abdul Latif Jameel Clinic for Machine Learning in Health (Jameel Clinic), an initiative to support AI research in health care, call for creating a robust infrastructure that can aid scientists and clinicians in pursuing this mission.

    Fair and equitable AI for health care

    The Jameel Clinic recently hosted the AI for Health Care Equity Conference to assess current state-of-the-art work in this space, including new machine learning techniques that support fairness, personalization, and inclusiveness; identify key areas of impact in health care delivery; and discuss regulatory and policy implications.

    Nearly 1,400 people virtually attended the conference to hear from thought leaders in academia, industry, and government who are working to improve health care equity and further understand the technical challenges in this space and paths forward.

    During the event, Regina Barzilay, the School of Engineering Distinguished Professor of AI and Health and the AI faculty lead for Jameel Clinic, and Bilal Mateen, clinical technology lead at the Wellcome Trust, announced the Wellcome Fund grant conferred to Jameel Clinic to create a community platform supporting equitable AI tools in health care.

    The project’s ultimate goal is not to solve an academic question or reach a specific research benchmark, but to actually improve the lives of patients worldwide. Researchers at Jameel Clinic insist that AI tools should not be designed with a single population in mind, but instead be crafted to be reiterative and inclusive, to serve any community or subpopulation. To do this, a given AI tool needs to be studied and validated across many populations, usually in multiple cities and countries. Also on the project wish list is to create open access for the scientific community at large, while honoring patient privacy, to democratize the effort.

    “What became increasingly evident to us as a funder is that the nature of science has fundamentally changed over the last few years, and is substantially more computational by design than it ever was previously,” says Mateen.

    The clinical perspective

    This call to action is a response to health care in 2020. At the conference, Collin Stultz, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science and a cardiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, spoke on how health care providers typically prescribe treatments and why these treatments are often incorrect.

    In simplistic terms, a doctor collects information on their patient, then uses that information to create a treatment plan. “The decisions providers make can improve the quality of patients’ lives or make them live longer, but this does not happen in a vacuum,” says Stultz.

    Instead, he says that a complex web of forces can influence how a patient receives treatment. These forces go from being hyper-specific to universal, ranging from factors unique to an individual patient, to bias from a provider, such as knowledge gleaned from flawed clinical trials, to broad structural problems, like uneven access to care.

    Datasets and algorithms

    A central question of the conference revolved around how race is represented in datasets, since it’s a variable that can be fluid, self-reported, and defined in non-specific terms.

    “The inequities we’re trying to address are large, striking, and persistent,” says Sharrelle Barber, an assistant professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at Drexel University. “We have to think about what that variable really is. Really, it’s a marker of structural racism,” says Barber. “It’s not biological, it’s not genetic. We’ve been saying that over and over again.”

    Some aspects of health are purely determined by biology, such as hereditary conditions like cystic fibrosis, but the majority of conditions are not straightforward. According to Massachusetts General Hospital oncologist T. Salewa Oseni, when it comes to patient health and outcomes, research tends to assume biological factors have outsized influence, but socioeconomic factors should be considered just as seriously.

    Even as machine learning researchers detect preexisting biases in the health care system, they must also address weaknesses in algorithms themselves, as highlighted by a series of speakers at the conference. They must grapple with important questions that arise in all stages of development, from the initial framing of what the technology is trying to solve to overseeing deployment in the real world.

    Irene Chen, a PhD student at MIT studying machine learning, examines all steps of the development pipeline through the lens of ethics. As a first-year doctoral student, Chen was alarmed to find an “out-of-the-box” algorithm, which happened to project patient mortality, churning out significantly different predictions based on race. This kind of algorithm can have real impacts, too; it guides how hospitals allocate resources to patients.

    Chen set about understanding why this algorithm produced such uneven results. In later work, she defined three specific sources of bias that could be detangled from any model. The first is “bias,” but in a statistical sense — maybe the model is not a good fit for the research question. The second is variance, which is controlled by sample size. The last source is noise, which has nothing to do with tweaking the model or increasing the sample size. Instead, it indicates that something has happened during the data collection process, a step way before model development. Many systemic inequities, such as limited health insurance or a historic mistrust of medicine in certain groups, get “rolled up” into noise.

    “Once you identify which component it is, you can propose a fix,” says Chen.

    Marzyeh Ghassemi, an assistant professor at the University of Toronto and an incoming professor at MIT, has studied the trade-off between anonymizing highly personal health data and ensuring that all patients are fairly represented. In cases like differential privacy, a machine-learning tool that guarantees the same level of privacy for every data point, individuals who are too “unique” in their cohort started to lose predictive influence in the model. In health data, where trials often underrepresent certain populations, “minorities are the ones that look unique,” says Ghassemi.

    “We need to create more data, it needs to be diverse data,” she says. “These robust, private, fair, high-quality algorithms we’re trying to train require large-scale data sets for research use.”

    Beyond Jameel Clinic, other organizations are recognizing the power of harnessing diverse data to create more equitable health care. Anthony Philippakis, chief data officer at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, presented on the All of Us research program, an unprecedented project from the National Institutes of Health that aims to bridge the gap for historically under-recognized populations by collecting observational and longitudinal health data on over 1 million Americans. The database is meant to uncover how diseases present across different sub-populations.

    One of the largest questions of the conference, and of AI in general, revolves around policy. Kadija Ferryman, a cultural anthropologist and bioethicist at New York University, points out that AI regulation is in its infancy, which can be a good thing. “There’s a lot of opportunities for policy to be created with these ideas around fairness and justice, as opposed to having policies that have been developed, and then working to try to undo some of the policy regulations,” says Ferryman.

    Even before policy comes into play, there are certain best practices for developers to keep in mind. Najat Khan, chief data science officer at Janssen R&D, encourages researchers to be “extremely systematic” when choosing datasets. Even large, common datasets contain inherent bias.

    Even more fundamental is opening the door to a diverse group of future researchers.

    “We have to ensure that we are developing folks, investing in them, and having them work on really important problems that they care about,” says Khan. “You’ll see a fundamental shift in the talent that we have.”

    The AI for Health Care Equity Conference was co-organized by MIT’s Jameel Clinic; Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science; Institute for Data, Systems, and Society; Institute for Medical Engineering and Science; and the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing. More

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    in Information Technology

    This Android trojan malware is using fake apps to infect smartphones, steal bank details

    Cyber criminals are now using fake versions of popular Android applications in order to infect victims with trojan malware – which are only installed after the user downloads a fake ad blocker. TeaBot – also known as Anatsa – is able to take full remote control of Android devices, allowing cyber criminals to steal bank details and other sensitive information with the aid of keylogging and stealing authentication codes. The malware first emerged in December last year and the campaign remains active. The authors of TeaBot attempt to trick victims into downloading the malware by disguising it as fake versions of popular apps, the real versions of which often have often been downloaded millions of times. As detailed by cybersecurity researchers at Bitdefender here, these include phoney versions of Android apps including antivirus apps, the VLC open source media player, audiobook players and more. The malicious version of the apps use slightly different names and logos to the real ones. The malicious apps aren’t being distributed by the official Google Play Store, but are hosted on third-party websites – although many of the ways people are directed to them still remains a mystery to researchers. SEE: Cybersecurity: Let’s get tactical (ZDNet/TechRepublic special feature) | Download the free PDF version (TechRepublic) One of the ways the victims are driven towards the malicious apps is via a fake ad blocker app which acts as a dropper – although it’s unknown how victims are directed towards the ad blocker in the first place.

    The fake ad blocker doesn’t have any real functionality, but asks for permissions to display over other applications, show notifications and install apps from outside Google Play – the fake apps which are hidden after they’re installed. However, these hidden apps will repeatedly show phoney adverts – ironically, often claiming that the smartphone has been damaged by a malicious app – encouraging the user to click a link for the solution. It’s this which downloads TeaBot onto the device. The method of infection might appear convoluted, but dividing it over a number of steps makes it less likely that the malware will be detected. TeaBot appears to concentrate much of its targeting on Western Europe, with Spain and Italy the current hotspots for infections – although users in the UK, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Austria are also frequent targets. The campaign remains active and while many of the methods of distribution outside the fake Ad Blocker remain unknown, there are precautions which users can take to avoid becoming a victim. “Never to install apps outside the official store. Also, never tap on links in messages and always be mindful of your Android apps’ permissions,” Bitdefender researchers advised in the blog post.

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    in Robotics

    Robot maker acquires conversational AI startup

    Makers of a robot named Moxie, whose 2020 launch was largely drowned out in the early days of the pandemic, are betting conversation will be the key to unlocking market viability. The recent acquisition of a conversational AI company will give Embodied a leg up in pursuit of that goal.The recent acquisition by Embodied of Kami Computing crystalizes the former companies ambition to be a dominant player in human-machine interface technology.”The next big wave in technology will be driven by human-machine interfaces,” said Paolo Pirjanian, founder and CEO of Embodied. “Kami’s technology helps us continue developing category-defining technology to create social emotional robots that have the power to fight the loneliness epidemic and change people’s lives.”An educational robot designed for children may seem an odd entry point for a company dedicated to advancing conversational AI. But Embodied is betting children are the perfect early adopters for conversational AI technology, which isn’t quite ready for prime time but which is coming close—close enough to pass muster with a five-year-old.As an Embodied spokesperson recently pointed out, Amazon Alexa’s challenge is to create 20 minutes of general conversation. Embodied claims it can now maintain on average 25 minutes of engagement with its users repeatedly. It does this via Moxie, a bulbous blue robot that sits on a tabletop and has an emotionally expressive face and movements. The robot is designed to behave like a believable, life-like character the company calls Animates. The robot is meant to provide emotional support, social support, companionship, and coaching.The acquisition of Kami will allow embodied to continue accelerating its work pioneering human-robot interaction. The early stage startup has developed innovative technologies around conversational AI, machine learning, and natural language generation (NLG). It was founded by Tel Aviv based Guy de Beer and London based Dr. David Levy, who together with a team of 12 scientists developed a generative voice-based conversational agent. It’s product is an artificial persona capable of human level open domain conversations, with a natural tone of voice, long-term memory, advanced cognition, and emotions. Embodied plans to integrate the technology into its SocialX platform, which is meant to enable children to engage with Moxie through natural interaction (i.e., facial expressions, conversation, body language, etc.), evoking trust, empathy and motivation as well as deeper engagement to promote developmental skills.

    “We’re thrilled to join Paolo and the Embodied team as they embark on the exciting journey to change the future of robotics through lifelike, believable human-machine interaction. Our conversational technology will have an outstanding impact on interaction with Moxie as well as the development of future projects,” said Guy de Beer, Founder and CEO of Kami Computing.But if children are the target audience for now, it’s a safe bet Embodied has its eyes on a broader market as human-machine interaction becomes a reality in the market. More

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    in Information Technology

    Asian cybercrime takedown leads to intercept of $83 million in financial theft

    A crackdown on financial cybercrime across Asia has resulted in $83 million sent by victims to criminals being intercepted. 

    Interpol said last week that Operation Haechi-i, running between September 2020 and March 2021, focused on combating investment fraud, romance scams, money laundering linked to illegal online gambling, online sextortion, and voice phishing. In total, $83 million was intercepted over the course of six months before the victims of these scams sent all of the requested funds to cybercriminals.  In one case cited by Interpol, a Korean company became the victim of a business email compromise (BEC) scam after being approached by what the firm thought was a trading partner.  Invoices had been requested and the bank details were covertly changed to bank accounts belonging to the cybercriminals. Approximately $7 million was transferred and then routed to accounts in Indonesia and Hong Kong. Interpol was able to intercept and freeze roughly half of the stolen funds, but the investigation is ongoing.  In a separate incident, a criminal gang in Hong Kong pushed a ‘pump and dump’ stock scheme, purchasing a vast number of shares and taking to social media to push the price up further. The group then coordinated its own sales, collapsing the price for outside investors. Trading accounts were frozen. 

    Interpol says that Operation Haechi-i has led to 585 arrests, over 1,600 bank accounts being frozen, and more than 1,400 individual criminal investigations being opened. Out of these cases, 892 have now been solved.  Financial cybercrime, conducted through online platforms and services, is a global issue that requires cross-border collaboration. Operation Haechi-i is an example of this, as it included specialist law enforcement officers in Cambodia, China, Indonesia, South Korea, Laos, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.  Operation Haechi-i is the first operation planned over the next three years by law enforcement in Southeast Asia to tackle financial cybercrime.  “The key factors in intercepting illicit money transfers are speed and international cooperation,” commented Amur Chandra, Brigadier General of the Indonesian National Police and Secretary of Indonesia’s Interpol National Central Bureau. “The faster victims notify law enforcement, the faster we can liaise with Interpol and law enforcement in the relevant countries to recover their funds and put these criminals behind bars.” Previous and related coverage Have a tip? Get in touch securely via WhatsApp | Signal at +447713 025 499, or over at Keybase: charlie0 More