Ransomware is the de facto threat organizations have faced over the past few years. Threat actors were making easy money by exploiting the high valuation of cryptocurrencies and their victims' lack of adequate preparation.
The Rise of Data Exfiltration and Why It Is a Greater Risk Than Ransomware
TikTok app monitors ‘every tap’ on your phone, researcher claims
Journalist shot dead in Mexico, 15th media person to die so far this year
Pluralistic: one & only Cory Doctorow
- Kickstarting the "Chokepoint Capitalism" audiobook: We wrote a book that Amazon won't sell.
- The FTC takes aim at commercial surveillance: Oh, the sheer poetry of "Commercial Surveillance and Data Security Rulemaking."
That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column. After detailing the very backward, often-1970s level of IT at the IRS (yes it will horrify you), the column continues;
It’s easy to say that the IRS has not had the staff or the money to do the necessary upgrades. But hold on: These software upgrades are supposed to save money by enhancing productivity, letting organizations do more work with fewer people. A reasonable person can be forgiven for asking whether an agency with a $13.7 billion budget really doesn’t have enough to front some cash.
You might argue that IRS was too liquidity-constrained to shell out the cash up front, but is that argument believable? The improvements from better software usually pay off rather quickly, precisely because the software is labor-saving. The US has plenty of small to mid-sized businesses and non-profits with shrinking staffs and budgets. Yet most of those institutions have been able to upgrade to better software, often repeatedly. Unlike the IRS, many state tax agencies at least use scanners, and those are hardly the wealthiest or most nimble institutions in American society.
When I see that the IRS reduced staff by 22%, I imagine an alternate reality in which the IRS had replaced a good deal of its office staff with better information technology, as many American businesses started to do in the 1990s. In this parallel universe, the staff of the IRS is down and the productivity of the IRS is up, as has happened to so much white-collar office work. But that is not the world we live in.
The advocates for additional funding should better understand why not everyone in America is thrilled with the agency’s new budget boost. It’s not just a bunch of kooks who fear “an army” of weapon-toting IRS agents, or rich people who feel they shouldn’t have to pay their fair share. It’s normal people who think it’s a bad idea to reward an agency that seems so dysfunctional.
I say make the funding conditional on progress in advance. Overall I remain astonished how little critical scrutiny the Biden bills are being subject to. By the way, here is a standing history of attempts to reform the IRS/give it more funding. Most have failed.
Not so simple as just giving the IRS more money
Google Can & Does Drop URLs From Its Index Over Time -Search Engine Roundtable via Twitter: “Most SEOs that have been doing the search engine optimization thing for any amount of time know that Google can and likely will drop out URLs from the Google index. John Mueller from Google confirmed that this happens with Google Search on Twitter the other day. John wrote “It doesn’t really matter what happened, but yes, any URL can drop out of the index over time.” Even URLs that you deem important or one of the most prominent sections of your site can happen to see that URL drop out of Google Search. The trick is to make sure to have the URL prominently linked to throughout the site’s navigation and from other popular pages on your site. Google still may decide not to index the page later on, but you need to keep that URL relevant, unique and helpful for Google to still want to index and also rank the page…”
- See also Fast Company – Google’s search tweaks will help prioritize quality websites in results – “The update will prove especially helpful for results relating to online educational materials, shopping, arts and entertainment, and tech-related content.”
- See also Search Engine Land – “Google’s new helpful content update targets sites creating content for search engines first. Google will soon rollout a change to its search ranking algorithm that may prove be one of the most significant changes in over a decade.”
