Mike Elgan

We're staying for a month in a town in Provence called l'Isle Sur La Sorgue, which means "The Island on the Sorgue." The Sorgue river starts as a natural spring coming out of the ground. At some point, the river splits in two, then re-joins later down the river. The land between the split is this amazingly charming town, an "Island" on the Sorgue river. Over the centuries, local residents have built canals throughout the town to support various industries, and so there's water everywhere (it's basically the opposite of California). 

I couldn't stop myself from taking like 30 pictures of the Winged Victory of Samothrace sculpture in the Louvre today. It's got to be the most amazing sculpture ever made. 

We are loving our apartment (for the next few days) in Central Paris -- it's in a very cool neighborhood, and the apartment itself is fantastic -- fiber optic internet, too. This is why we're nomads.

We’ve all heard dire predictions about the future of cybersecurity trends, especially cloud security. IoT environments will expand the attack surface beyond control and encourage breaches. Hybrid offices will always pose a greater risk as cyber criminals exploit flex and remote work. Insecure APIs will open the door to attacks. Attackers will hijack employee accounts. Cloud resources will lack visibility. 

But what if these threats and risks are overblown? Here’s why all these dire predictions about cloud security might never come to pass.

Among the many important aspects of IoT security, live cameras are one of the most open to misuse. People have been video snooping, watching private cameras and doing other sketchy things around connected cameras for many years. But in recent months, the intensity and risk around video have risen.

Video has breached privacy, or even security, in recent months in three main ways: 

1. Cyber criminals place hidden cameras in hotel rooms or home bedrooms. From there, they sell video clips or even live streams from those cameras online at scale.
2. Attackers digitally break into a company that provides security video services. From there they gain admin access to the companies’ servers. They can snoop on the live feeds of schools, hospitals and even cybersecurity companies using their products and services.
3. Threat actors exploit connected video cameras using insecure default configurations and other flaws.

It’s time to explore the potential for abuse (social engineering, blackmail, intelligence for sale and more). 

Here's how you can protect yourself against this new wave of video attacks!

Cloud security and web application security demand technology and practices that protect applications and data hosted remotely. Good old-fashioned data encryption is chief among these. The reasons for encrypting cloud data, of course, are privacy, security and regulatory compliance — all standard for any successful enterprise. At the bottom of all this is the idea of being intentional about encryption, knowing the standards you need to meet and the specifics of your group’s needs. Make sure you’re seeing the whole picture with our guide.

My wonderful friend Julia Weber is the implementation director at the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. Here she is on Democracy Now to explain the link between mass shootings and domestic violence, and offers some very sensible solutions to address the crisis. 

That Remote Life podcaster Mitko Karshovski was kind enough to host me on his podcast, where we talked about how the world has changed in favor of new business opportunities for digital nomads who specialize in hybrid and remote work. Listen now!

(She hasn't been able to play with other children much since the pandemic began, so she's really looking forward to the end of the pandemic!)