Joe Capote

April 9, 2019 • 5:33 pm 0

Online Investigation Software Platforms Matter to Your Business

While online investigations have been around for years, online investigation platforms are rising to meet unique business need for online investigations. There are several use cases in which an online investigation may be warranted by business need. However, since a search engine only accesses 4% of the internet, the days of “just Google it” have ceased being effective way to provide organizations with the investigative results they require.

Hence the rise of online investigation software platforms. Now, more than ever, being able to conduct an online investigations using the surface web, the deep web and dark web as well as social media is critical to protecting brand reputation, intellectual property and VIPs while stopping insider threats and more.

What are the business use cases that would warrant an online investigation, and how can software platforms unlock the secrets of the web beyond internet search engines?

Brand Protection: The public’s perception of you brand is a fragile thing. Negative or erroneous posts can gain traction if ignored, while counterfeit items can cause brand and legal harm. With investigation platforms, you can follow negative sentiment and false news, investigate the digital footprint of any presence harming your brand and anonymously monitor the dark web for mentions of your brand.

Intellectual Property: Your company’s IP is extremely valuable. Mentions of your IP on surface, deep and dark web can make you aware of leaks and help investigate other sources of known breaches. With investigation platforms, you can set searches and alerts, investigate known data breaches to identify the source of leaks and search dark web markets for mentions of your IP.

Insider Threats: Your employees can be in a unique position to case immense security threats to your organization. Inadvertent exposure of confidential information, negative or threatening posts or selling stolen merchandise can harm your brand and put you at risk. Online investigation platforms offer a way to easily search blogs, forum and social media while safely searching dark web markets where illegal goods and credentials are sold.

VIP Protection: Physical protection is no longer enough for VIP’s, great harm can come from the digital world. Issues like online impersonations, negative comments or threats or social posts revealing sensitive information are issues you need to be aware of. Online investigation platforms help by building custom searches and alerts to ensure information is not available to the public, protect against digital impersonations and search the dark web to learn of malicious activities.

Online investigations are covering a broad range of business use cases. Brand protection, IP protection and more are driving the need for more advance investigation tools. These tools offer a single pane of glass view into the surface web, deep web, dark web and social media allowing organizations to safely, securely and accurately perform online investigations, making this platforms a key component of your investigative toolkit.

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April 4, 2019 • 7:57 am 0

IT Executive Forum: IT Talent and the Workplace

At a recent executive forum in New York City, a number of IT leaders got together for a wide ranging discussion on what matters to executive IT management today.

One of the key topics that came up for a robust discussion was the “War for Talent”. This has been a topic in IT circles for a while, but with companies like Amazon, Google and MS making big plays in the technology markets, the consensus was that this war is escalating and leaders need to takes steps to address talent gaps.

Revisiting your talent strategy was identified as the first step. There are a few things that IT leaders are doing to make sure they are hiring and retaining top talent.

Enhance HR Practices: Once thing I’ve learned is that different organizations view the HR function differently, and the spectrum is fairly broad. HR should be viewed as an opportunity driver, not a cost center. In today’s job market, job seekers will not tolerate mistakes. There are plenty of technologies to help with this, invest in the tools to make HR successful at hiring/retaining top talent.

Employ New Talent Tools: There are a plethora of tools available to find the right candidates. Services like SmartRecruiter, Onboarder and Linkedin are especially effective at located talented younger employees.

Understand the dollar value of each employee: Why is letting a valued employee quite rather than giving them a raise a better option? This seems like a bad business decision geared to support a rigid policy instead of stimulating a talented workforce. When an employee walks out the door, all the money on training that employee is gone. Add in the on boarding costs of a replacement employee and one begins to wonder why a $5000 raise wasn’t a better option.

Support “Third Bucket” Projects: What are your employees passionate about that could be utilized as a personal project of their own choice while at work. AI? Digital Brand Protection? These projects support growth and efficiency. Let them choose their focus and empower them to make a contribution.

Embrace Remote Teams: Allowing team members to work remotely has been instrumental in hiring and retaining talent. Although this is not a new concept (I was writing about telecommuting in the mid 2000’s), it’s acceptance has ebbed and flowed. Work-life balance is important, and working remotely supports that balance.

Recognize that work doesn’t take as long as it used to: New technology has changed the game, time wise. Recognize that what used to take us 12 hours, now takes 8.

Finding and retaining top talent is critical in today’s digital age. This is a first part in a 3 part series summarizing executive views of the “war on talent”.

Stay tuned for part 2!

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March 29, 2019 • 10:52 am 0

SD WAN Solves Unique DevOps Challenges

I’ve written lately about IT leaders embracing DevOps to accelerate their digital transformations. Faster, more secure and agile software development means faster releases and better agility for the business. As IT leaders embrace robust DevOps processes in order to support these business initiatives, NetOps functions are starting to make their way into the DevOps process. DevOps teams are seeking agile, flexible network designs to keep pace with digital business demands.

One of the ways DevOps teams are keeping pace with digital business demands is by leaning on NetOps to deliver agile, flexible network designs. As a result, NetOps teams are embracing SD WAN as a replacement to traditional network architectures. SD WAN, or software defined networking, decouples networking hardware and simplifies the management and operation of a WAN.

Why are IT leaders talking about SD-WAN, and how does SD WAN solve unique DevOps challenges?

Speed of releases: A hallmark of a good DevOps practice is the speed and agility at which releases can be pushed through the pipeline. The rise of SD WAN is eliminating inefficiencies in the development cycle. By providing a simple way to design, deploy and support networks, IT teams are finding that adopting SD WAN allows them to play an equal part in DevOps and continuous delivery pipelines. Just as DevSecOps is being integrated into the DevOps process, SD WAN allows NetOps to be included in the DevOps process, thanks to the automation inherent in an SD-WAN solution.

Improved service quality: Software features have always been part of a release, but enhanced service quality and better end user experience is now equally important. End users are more exacting than ever, and service delivery must undergo a process of continual improvement. SD WAN makes solid contributions to the goals of service quality through application and network performance improvements, increased availability and better visibility into QoS metrics.

Increased agility: SD WAN offers the power of automation and orchestration. Policies governing access, security, and performance are managed centrally and automatically pushed out to all devices and sites across the network as IT makes changes. Existing policies can be reused across applications without needing to make changes to the underlying infrastructure and manage additional configuration items. These policies can even follow users in a BYOD scenario, granting them access to applications without compromising security.

With the proliferation of DevSecOps and it’s integration into the DevOps process, NetOps is now being asked to align with DevOps as well. Traditional network architectures prove incapable of allowing for the speed and agility the business requires, SD WAN is being tapped as a solution that allows DevOps the ability to increase agility and speed throughout the release pipeline, while increasing service quality.

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March 29, 2019 • 10:51 am 0

DevSecOps – Creating a ‘Security as Code’​ Culture

It should come as no surprise (or maybe it does!) to learn I’m really excited about DevSecOps and the potential role it plays in development application.

DevOps combines engineering and operations as part of the overall development lifecycle. It’s goal is to shortening the development timeline and increase the dependability of releases.

DevSecOps seeks to insert security in the DevOps pipeline without slowing it down. With faster release cycles, security operations can quickly slow down the release pipeline. In order to maintain release speed and consistency, DevSecOps can be integrated into the DevOps process to reduce slowdowns (manual process, bottlenecks, etc).

DevSecOps requires a shift from from just coding to creating a ‘security as code’ culture. By understanding where the application is vulnerable, better understanding of how it should be protected is achieved. Digital security platforms and production analytics can be used to diagnose an applications vulnerabilities (even third party integrations) while allowing for proper prioritization of vulnerability remediation.

Ultimately, ‘security as code’ culture is a concept where everyone in the development organization responsible for the application’s security. This may require a shift in your organizations current culture. Buy-in from key stakeholders, proper implementation of processes, increased automation and expanding testing scope are just a few things that may be required to transition your organization’s culture.

What are some high-level ways CTO’s and development management can begin a movement to a security as code culture?

  • Steering Committees. This is an old school option. Create a team that is focused on changing the culture and implementing DevSecOps. Leaders can gather requirements, discuss automation strategies and vulnerability assessment tools and develop a roadmap for implementation and adoption.
  • Training. DevSecOps goals and scope will differ between environments. Developers can be giving non-traditional skills like penetration and vulnerability testing. Cross training developers within the security team can help foster collaborating between development and security moving forward.
  • Implement Best Practices. Best practices as a discipline and enforce them. Code analysis, change management, and ongoing security training for developers are a few. Routine cadence between security and development leaders in order to discuss best practices, and share ideas for improvement.
  • Organizational Alignment. Depending on the lay of the land in your organization, this may make sense if security and development functions reside in the office of the CTO. If not, foster executive buy in between CISO and CTO. This can help ensure collaboration, communication and avoid the dreaded “us vs. them” scenario we have seen from application development and support teams in the past.

Creating a security as a code culture will not be easy. However, given the recent visible breaches as a result of vulnerabilities in the application, DevSecOps is necessary and not going anywhere. Moving towards a path of integrated DevSecOps with a culture ‘security as code’ will help avoid the loss of customers and revenue loss as a result of cybercrime.

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November 2, 2012 • 11:59 am 0

Seller’s Market!

24 offers on a South San Francisco home – price point was $450,000. Lots of buyers, not enough sellers. This market needs balance – appraisers can’t appraise, many buyers left out.

This market should be recovering slowly – but are we seeing the emergence of another mini-bubble in the Bay Area?

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August 31, 2010 • 12:19 pm 0

Announcing my Partnership with Alain Pinel Realtors!

This week I decided to switch office affiliations. I’ve joined Alain Pinel Realtors in Burlingame. Alain Pinel is an established company with a track record of success throughout the bay area. I’m stoked to have joined them! Check out my new website!

My mother Marilyn, who started her real estate career in 1974, once wrote an article on changing office affiliations. Though many things have changed since she wrote that piece, many things have remained the same. As per her advice, I did plenty of research before I made the jump. I really though about what was important to me and what I wanted out of my career as a Realtor. I really wanted to work for an established company with a stong online presence and name recognition. I also knew I wanted to work for a company that could provide superior marketing tools and cutting edge technologies. Finally, I really wanted to work for a company that was professional and team oriented.

After interviewing with many companies, I really felt like Alain Pinel Realtors in Burlingame fit all that criteria. I am proud to announce my new partnership with Alain Pinel and look forward to meeting the needs of my clients for years to come!

Filed under: Buyer's Blog, Market Data, Realtor Trends, Seller's Blog, Technology, Uncategorized

November 10, 2009 • 4:37 pm 0

Home Sellers: Top 5 Home Improvement Projects Based on Cost and Return on Investment | RISMedia

gardening

RISMEDIA, November 10, 2009—HomeGain.com, one of the first websites to offer Web-based free instant home values, announced that it has released the results of its nationwide home improvement and home staging Home Sale Maximizer survey. 

HomeGain’s recent survey shows the top do-it-yourself home improvements that Realtors recommend to home sellers. HomeGain received responses from nearly 1,000 Realtors nationwide and configured a list of the top 12 do-it-yourself (DIY) home improvements that cost under $5,000 and benefit sellers most when they sell their homes. 

According to the HomeGain survey, the top five home improvements that Realtors recommend to home sellers based on cost and return on investment (from highest to lowest ROI) are: 

1. Cleaning and de-cluttering ($200 cost / $1,700 price increase / 872% ROI)
2. Home staging ($300 cost / $1,780 price increase / 586% ROI)
3. Lightening and brightening ($230 cost / $1,300 price increase / 572% ROI)
4. Landscaping ($320 cost / $1,500 price increase / 473% ROI)
5. Repairing plumbing ($385 cost / $1,250 price increase / 327% ROI) 

Cleaning and de-cluttering continues to rank as the top suggested home improvement (since the survey was originally conducted in 2000), recommended by 98% of Realtors, costing less than $200 and returning a value of nearly $1,700 to the home’s sale price, or an 872% return on investment. 

“Many Realtors agree, especially in a buyer’s market, that sellers who make these recommended home improvements often get their homes sold faster and at higher prices,” stated Louis Cammarosano, General Manager at HomeGain. “We have customized our Home Sale Maximizer online home improvement tool to help identify and prioritize the projects that can increase the salability and selling price of a home.” 

Rounding out the top 12, the list of low cost, do-it-yourself home improvements includes: updating electrical, replacing or shampooing carpets, painting interior walls, repairing damaged floors, updating kitchen, painting outside of home, and updating bathroom/s.

The home improvement projects with the highest price increases to a home’s resale value are updating the kitchen ($1,200 cost / $2,850 price increase), followed by painting the outside of the home ($900 cost / $1,815 price increase) and home staging ($300 cost / $1,780 price increase). 

“Inexpensive cosmetic home improvements and basic improvements greatly enhance the value of the home,” stated Carol Wilson of Carpenter Real Estate in Indianapolis, IN, HomeGain AgentEvaluator member since 1999. 

For more information, visit www.homegain.com. 

RISMedia welcomes your questions and comments. Send your e-mail to: realestatemagazinefeedback@rismedia.com. 

Don’t miss these top headlines on RISMedia.com:
Home Buyers Want to Save Energy – but Only at Right Price
Taking Advantage of Negotiation – U.S. Homebuyers Paid $7,039 Less Than Listing Price in July

via rismedia.com

Clutter. It takes away from any homes value. For good resources on decluttering, check out this guy who was on Oprah, http://www.oprah.com/article/oprahshow/home_20070207_declutter. Also, you check out <a href="http://unclutterer.com/2009/02/17/instructions-for-decluttering-your-home-in-less-than-500-words/.

http://unclutterer.com/2009/02/17/instructions-for-decluttering-your-home-in-less-than-500-words/.</p>

Posted via web from josephcapote’s posterous

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July 31, 2009 • 9:47 pm 0

The “Do Stuff” Review

A few years back, I labored in corporate America. Like many of us, I was a number in a multi-national coporation employing over 35000 people worldwide. This particular corporation had teams in India, a technology center in China, a silicon valley presence, and continues to be  a major player in technology today. Although there are more than a few unpalateable items about working in a big company,  one of  items I always liked is the idea of managing by objectives and it’s accompanying function, the performance review.

In this particular organization, it was a well known fact that the review process was mostly symbolic. All of our review numbers were predetermined. Whats worse, our numbers were squeezed to meet a standard issue bell curve, meaning our review numbers were alotted to each group.  That is to say, it didn’t really matter how well one performed during the review cycle, you grade was your grade and it was known long before any review was written.

Knowing this, and never being one to conform to corporate culture too readily, I wrote the following assessment. It became famous within the halls of our organization. and, to some degree, still lives in infamy even today. 

 Part 1: FY04 Performance Review

Summarize your performance against each FY04 objective.

 

Objectives Results
 Do stuff.   Work hard and stuff.  
 

Work with other groups and stuff.

Core compentencies and values and stuff.
 

 Stuff was done. Some stuff broke. We fixed that stuff. Some stuff worked. We were happy about that stuff. Some of the stuff we did resulted in customer satisfaction. Good stuff. Some stuff we did resulted in customer unhappiness. Bad stuff.We worked hard to achieve our goals and stuff. Though our goals were never clearly defined for a lot of stuff, we did a good job working through that and stuff.

Did not make anyone cry over this last year and stuff. That’s, like, positive and stuff.

Posted core compentencies on my door and stuff. Did some well and stuff. Did some not so well and stuff. At least I tried. Most people just laughed at me and stuff. BTW, spelling is NOT a core compentencie and stuff.
 

 
Part 2: FY05 Commitment Setting  

 Reviewer and employee, edit this section to create a prioritized list of commitments.

 

 

Commitments  Identify 5-7 areas of focus which align to your organization and your manager’s commitments. Execution Plan Identify how you will achieve your commitments (key milestones and dependencies). Accountabilities Define success measures and metrics to evaluate the realization of your commitments.
Do stuff.  

Work hard and stuff.  

Learn stuff.  

Think of more stuff.

 Actually DO stuff. 

Actually WORK hard and stuff.  

Actually LEARN stuff. 
 

Hmmm. More stuff.

 I am responsible for doing stuff. Realization: If stuff aint getting done, I aint doing stuff. Evaluation: I am responsible for doing stuff.Realization: If I aint working hard and stuff, I ain’t working hard and stuff. Evaluation: I am responsible for learning stuff.

Realization: It should be clear by now.I am responsible for thinking about stuff. Evaluation: Think about stuff, or no stuff will be thought of.

 Part 3: FY05 Development Plan

Reviewer and employee, edit this section to create a development plan.

Development Activities   Timeline
Develop myself and stuff.

This review is the basis of the “do stuff” philosophy and indirectly outlined my personal philosophies. Doing, working, learning and thinking. And stuff.

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July 29, 2009 • 5:05 pm 0

National 30 Year Fixed Rates Drop Slightly

According to Rismedia, the average weekly rate that borrowers were quoted for thirty year fixed rate mortgages  dropped slightly last week to 5.29%.

                         Average Rate                   Average Rate
Mortgage Type    Week ending 7/26/09     Week ending 7/19/09    % Change

30-year fixed       5.29%                              5.31%                            -0.4%
15-year fixed       4.66%                              4.69%                            -0.6%
5-1 ARM              4.23%                              4.31%                             -1.9%

Interestingly, California rates were among the most requested across all states.

On the national front, the news that new home sales have risen has been touted as a good sign for the real estate and construction sectors. There is more talk by differing economists that the real estate market has bottomed out, and that buyers should no longer wait for housing prices to drop before making a home purchase. However, economists have sent a mixed message. While the housing numbers continue to improve slightly, unemployment and consumer confidence continue to bog down any recovery. Companies at worst are continuing to downsize and cut costs, while at best they are in a holding pattern, waiting to see when the signs of recovery become evident. The ecomonic stimuli, such as shovel ready projects, have not yet directly resulted in any measurable economic growth.

Despite this, the news that the home prices have bottomed coupled with the ticking clock of the first time homebuyers federal tax credits should motivate on the fence buyers to make a move in the upcoming weeks.

Buyers, it’s time to do stuff.

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July 18, 2009 • 4:41 pm 0

The Green Building Products Poll

Would you use green building products in your new or existing home?

Thanks for your participation!

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Manage Cloud Costs with Resource Tagging

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