Caron Beesley

Tax season is upon us and it’s a little different this year. The period for filing federal tax returns was delayed to February 12, 2021 to allow the IRS to test its systems following pandemic-related changes to tax law. Argh, pressure! But wait. In March, the IRS announced it was extending Tax Day for individuals (including those who pay self-employment tax) to May 17, 2021. Phew!
Nevertheless, questions still abound about stimulus checks, PPP loan forgiveness, when refunds will be issued, an...

Cyber security assessments are key to understanding the cyber risk that your vendors may pose whether you’re onboarding them or re-evaluating during an audit period.
Knowing that resources are often stretched and the pressure from management to quickly complete cyber security assessments is intense, we compiled five best practices that can help streamline the process and yield better risk reduction.
1. Look to industry-standard cyber security assessment methodologies
When it comes to your thi...

The security of any enterprise’s network and systems is only as strong as its weakest link. And for most organizations the weakest link is its people. A staggering 88% of breaches are caused by human error, such as clicking on phishing emails or weak credentials.
But there’s another weak link in the information security chain – the families of corporate executives.
Today, there are no rules or honor among cybercriminals. They have the tools, capabilities, and opportunity to go beyond the four...

IT modernization continues to be an elusive goal for federal agencies. Addressing outdated and legacy systems is a complex and costly process, and agencies have long called for more money to support their efforts. Despite these challenges, there are signs of optimism.
Last summer, federal agencies responded to a request from Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) for insights into their IT modernization strategies and how Congress can help in the form of funding. Their pleas were heard.
Fast-forward to ...

Starting a business is hard work and sometimes having a helping hand can make all the difference. If you’re considering going into business as a partnership, then you’ll need to be prepared to split the profits. But what’s the best basis for doing so—especially if one partner contributes more work hours, invests more money into the business, or even sets up your business line of credit?
Here’s what you need to know to plan your profit-shari...

Entain is a leading global sports betting and gaming operator. For us, speed is everything: latency literally costs us money. When LeBron scores, the data needs to be processed by our pricing management systems within milliseconds.
To tackle this immense challenge, Entain Australia built our platform on modern, cloud-native technologies like Kubernetes, gRPC, containers, and ...

The COVID-19 pandemic has expedited digital transformation across many industries. According to a survey conducted by Deloitte and Fortune magazine, 77% of CEOs reported that the crisis sped up their companies’ digital transformation plans.
But what did we learn from our experiences over the last year? This was the topic of a fascinating discussion at the recent Maryland Technology Council’s 2021 Digital Transformation Virtual Summit.
We heard from a panel of experts, including our own Doroth...

Multi-cloud architectures have long been hyped for their performance, reliability, and cost-savings—and adoption is soaring. According to a 2020 survey from IDG, 55% of organizations use two or more public clouds. Yet, 79% of these adopters struggle to achieve synergy across multiple platforms.
These concerns are echoed in the public sector. MeriTalk reports that while 81% of federal agencies say they’re using multiple cloud platforms, 75% say managing them will be one of their top challenges...

Although modern marketing tactics like social media excel in terms of reach and influence, good old fashioned email marketing is still king.
Studies show that email is a top distribution channel for both B2B and B2C marketers. In the last 12 months, 87% of B2B and 79% of B2C marketers have turned to email to share content, nurture leads, and convert leads to sales. Email has also evolved into an important multi-generational channel. Perhaps surprisingly, millennials spend 6.4 hours a day chec...

Elkjøp, the largest electronics retailer in the Nordics, built an internal Kubernetes platform that is now successfully hosting over 200 production-grade microservices to increase development speed—without compromising security or visibility. The Linkerd-based platform enabled the organization to reduce hosting costs by around 80%.
Backdrop: accelerating retail modernization with microservices
With over 400 retail locations and 12,000 employees across Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and fra...

Public trust in government is approaching record lows: In 2020, according to Pew Research, only 20% of Americans said they trusted government institutions. As state governments take on the unprecedented task of vaccinating millions of constituents, rebuilding trust in government is mission critical – and data might be the key to doing so. The Commonwealth of Virginia has both recognized this and invested in this important goal.
In the latest webinar in our Virginia Data Revolution Seminar Ser...

Unemployment fraud is big business and it’s on the rise. Spurred by pandemic relief payments, some states are reporting a 150% increase in fraudulent claims by hundreds of thousands, costing states and the U.S. Department of Labor more than $25 billion in losses to cyber criminals scooping money out of the system that would have gone to out-of-work Americans.
A worrying fact for companies is that these fraudsters are increasingly setting their sights on bigger targets – corporate executives.
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