McLane Intel Blog
Regarding case in Western District Court, Waco Division regarding United States v. David Holt Palmer:
On Thursday, September 1, David H Palmer, a former employee of McLane Advanced Technologies Commercial Division (MAT Comm), pled guilty to computer intrusion. Palmer is set for sentencing on November 2.
Mr. Palmer used existing user names and passwords to access servers at Lonestar Plastics and Capstone Mechanical on Thursday, January 21, 2010 beginning around 5:30PM. By the early hours of the morning on Friday, January 22, 2010, MAT Comm had discovered that the problems experienced on these servers was intentional and malicious. MAT Comm engaged in forensic evaluation and was able to lockout all further activity from Palmer on these servers. It was not until the weekend that MAT Comm knew with some certainty that Palmer was involved. All of the damage caused by Palmer was intended to cause harm to MAT Comm and no data was stolen or copied off the systems. Although the time to recover all the files deleted or damaged was lengthy, MAT Comm’s advanced backup and disaster recovery services ensured that eventually all the data could be restored. Business operations at Capstone Mechanical and at Lonestar Plastics, both in the Garland, TX operation and the Prattville, AL operation were temporarily impacted.
On Monday, January 25, 2010, MAT Comm contacted local authorities who referred them to the Department of Homeland Security’s Secret Service in Waco because the incident involved operations that crossed state lines.
At no time were any other systems involved that were managed by MAT Comm. Furthermore, no access to MAT Comm’s or McLane Group’s systems other than Lonestar was ever attempted or gained. MAT Comm’s standard protocols dealing with departing employees ensured that the risk of such a situation was mitigated.
This particular incident may have been avoided by reminding users of computers systems that user names and passwords should not be handed out carelessly. If a password needs to be provided, then the password ought to be changed as soon as the need is satisfied. Using a best-practices approach to password management including sufficient complexity and a requirement to change with some frequency is the best measure for prevention.
There are great reasons to move services and data to the Cloud. GMAIL has been a mainstay of cloud services and has a great record for reliability (not perfect mind you, what technology delivers that?) Over the weekend, a very small percentage (0.08%) of their users lost everything in their accounts - mail, chat records, contacts and all the attachments. That 0.08 percent represents 150,000 users and if I was one of the 150,000, I really wouldn't care how few others were affected - I was COMPLETELY affected.
What's the lesson here? Your backup process matters even in a cloud economy - and you need to take responsibility for your own information. Read this lifehacker article for tips on backup strategies or contact one of our account managers to ensure you have the proper protection.
We are excited to announce that as of today, MIS is relocating back to the McLane Group Campus!
Our new physical address will be:
4001 Central Pointe Pkwy
Bldg B
Temple, TX 76504
Our phone numbers will remain the same.
We are very excited to be joining our colleagues at the main campus again. Please keep our new location in mind if you are dropping off or picking up equipment!
Whether you are an employer or employee, a manager or a worker bee, a client or a vendor; people need to know what you expect from them and what they can expect from you. When one or both sides of the previously mentioned relationships does not let the other know what they expect; assumptions, miscommunications, and misunderstanding occur. If this continues, it will destroy any working relationship that might have existed and cause people to either become extremely difficult to work with or it will cause them to leave the situation all together.
To successfully convey expectations, a person in the relationship needs to be willing to listen to the other person’s expectations as well; and possibly come to a compromise in order for the working relationship to continue.
The next time you find yourself frustrated at a situation or even a specific person, step back and ask yourself if you have expressed your expectations. If not, now would be a great time to do that.
When physicians at Scott & White Healthcare in Temple needed to update their image repository system, they turned to McLane Intel to design and define a solution that would serve patients, physicians and photographers with a quick, easy to use, scalable platform.
McLane Intel, through user interviews and analysis, wrote user stories to clearly define requirements and is using Microsoft’s Sketchflow™ for rapid application prototyping to create an interactive, web based prototype. During the production phase, the prototype is used as a guide by developers to specify how the application must function.
To learn more about how intelligent application design and rapid prototyping from McLane Intel can shorten your project’s development cycle and save your business money, contact us today!
