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Greetings,
I want to begin by wishing you a wonderful and prosperous New Year! I hope your holidays were filled with joy and celebration. There has been much celebrating around our office as employees are moving up in the company and taking on more and more responsibility. I would like to stress the fact that our current team of employees has never been stronger and I appreciate the talented and motivated group of people we have working at Lasco.
I would like to introduce Ryan Valiquette as Lasco's new security officer. He will continue to work as a support technician but will be adding this new role to his current duties. Ryan has shown both interest in this area of technology security as well as the educational background to help him serve in this capacity efficiently.
I would also like to announce that Melissa Murphy, Lasco's Vice President, is beginning her term (January 2012) as President of the Lake States Bankers Association, Inc. Melissa has served on the board for "BAI" faithfully for the past four years and 2012 will mark her fifth year as a board member. I am thankful to have employees such as Melissa who represent Lasco in such a professional manner.
We continue to seek talented, hardworking and agressive professionals to add to our staff. We will continue to put both our clients as well as our staff first when considering new hires. I feel that our team structure and focus on open and honest communication is a non-negotiable when seeking new employees and I am thankful for the hardworking team that we have and look to continuously improving and moving forward. I believe that beyond our clients, our staff is our #1 company asset and we will continue to build into our staff so that we can support our clients' needs both now and into the future. Thank you to all who have put your trust in us, we appreciate your partnership and look forward to many more years of moving forward together.
Warmest Regards,
Dennis VanLandschoot
President & CEO
Lasco Development Corporation
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Product Spotlight for FIS Product
Consumer Alerts (A.K.A. Debit Alerts)
Article Written by: Sandy Etelamaki, Bank Services Customer Support for Lasco
Consumer or Debit Alerts are becoming more popular with customers as they use Cell Phones or other electronic devices to track their bank accounts. Being notified immediately when something is charged to your account is a good way to keep a watchful eye for debit fraud. These alerts can inform your customer of many potential fraudulent uses of their cards, some alerts are: Declined Transactions, Card Not Present Transaction, Out-of-State Transaction, International Transaction, and Pay at the Pump Transactions.
In this fast-paced, ever-changing world, customers want to be in touch with all that they are doing, especially their finances. Consumer Alerts are a good way to do that!
For more information on this FIS product, please contact Robert Baer (robert@lascoinc.com or 906-228-1055) or Kellie Johnson (kelliej@lascoinc.com or 906-228-1068), Vice Presidents of Bank Services for Lasco.
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| Drive-By Downloads
Article Written by: Ryan Valiquette, Security Officer / Support Technician for Lasco
"How did it happen?" that is one of the most common questions I get while cleaning virus infections. Sometimes the person will state the different ways they took precautions, such as, "I don't open any email attachments from people I don't know" or "I have an antivirus, why didn't it catch it?" These are good questions to ask as they play a part in a defense in-depth approach. However, there is another attack venue that seems to be a little less familiar.
Drive-by downloads are described as a malicious program that gets installed when visiting a website either by tricking the user to click on something or through vulnerabilities that exist in your web browser or plugins/addons.* A common misconception and joking point that I hear goes something like this, "what websites have you been going to lately?" indicating a trip to the dark side of the net. However, according to Symantec, 90% of malicious websites are actually legitimate sites that have been compromised and now serve malicious software.**
One of the common pieces of malware that is installed is described as Fake AV (antivirus). It plays on the website visitor's fear that their computer is infected to get them to react and click instead of pausing to think if this is a legitimate message. According to a research paper by Google this represents 15% of all malware (malicious software) that they have identified and 50% of malware that is distributed through advertisements. Even major websites such as Facebook, The New York Times, and Twitter have fallen victim to distributing malware usually through advertisements.***
Unfortunately there is no single solution for this issue. However, there are several tools we can use to mitigate the risk/damage of drive-by downloads. These include: Anti-Virus, web-filter, using an alternative browser, and having a limited user instead of administrator rights. The SANS Institute, which is renowned for information security research, has a technical breakdown of countermeasures including cost and difficulty to implement.****
Hopefully you have found this article helpful and together we can make this a year with fewer viruses!
* http://www.ehow.com/info_10011683_driveby-computers.html
** http://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/use-legitimate-sites-malicious-web-attacks
*** http://www.usenix.org/event/leet10/tech/full_papers/Rajab.pdf
**** http://isc.sans.edu/diary.html?storyid=9880
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In-House News...
- Longyear signs with Lasco for network support services. Thank you for your trust in us!
- Lasco Donates to St. Vincent De Paul Store in Marquette. Shown Below on left is Melissa Murphy, Lasco Vice President, on right is Laurie Schmit, executive director of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul Diocesan Council of Marquette:
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Lasco's sponsorship of the NMU Mens & Womens Nordic Ski Team is made official by the new logo placed on the Ski Team vans. Pictured are members of the Ski Team along with Head Coach Sten Fjeldheim (far left), and Lasco Vice Presidents Tim Shandonay (next to far right) and Melissa Murphy (far right).  - A note from our Charter Media Representative: "I wanted to pass along that every month throughout our entire KMA, the best 3 commercials produced by Charter Media production are selected for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place awards. In September Lasco's newly revised spot won 3rd place! Shana Baril, the producer of the spot was awarded a plaque of recognition for her work." - John Bennett
- Melissa Murphy, Vice President of Lasco will be starting her first term as President of Lake States Bankers Association, Inc. beginning January 2012. Congratulations Melissa!
- Ryan Valiquette is Lasco's new Information Security Officer. Congratulations Ryan!
- Congratulations to Tim Shandonay and Wynter for taking 1st place in the 10k Runner/Dog Division of the Thanksgiving Day "Turkey Trot"! Full article can be found in the Mining Journal by following this link: http://www.miningjournal.net/page/content.detail/id/569650/Over-600-runners-take-part-in-annual-Marquette-Thanksgiving-Turkey-Trot-10K-run.html?nav=5042
- Lasco was recognized by the Lake Superior Community Partnership in their Holiday Letter to the community. The title of the article is "Holiday Wishes from LSCP" and the article can be found by using the following link: http://partnershipnewsandviews.blogspot.com/
****** Reminder, when you have a support issue, please call our Main Tech Line at 906-228-1045. If you call a technician's line directly instead, we cannot guarantee timely service. Thank you! ****** |
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