Interesting read this morning.

• “The 1,000 or so companies that employ 10,000 people or more in America cannot save America alone.” 
• The “1,000 businesses employ 10,000 people or more. And most of these companies don’t define economic growth as ‘hiring more people.'”
• “This is not the 1970’s, when 70% of all employment came from big business.”
• “70% of all jobs come from companies with 500 employees or less.”
• “50% of all jobs in America come from companies with 100 employees or less. That’s right — HALF of all jobs in America.”

This means YOU!

Windows XP expires in 7 days on April 8th. Support from Microsoft on 2003 Server will expire 7/2015. Win 7 ends its life January 2015. That’s a lot of upgrades and security / support issues.

[I stand corrected and made changes above]

March 31 is World Backup Day.

HITECH security act for HIPAA compliance went into effect on 9/23/13. There are so many implications for service provider to healthcare covered entities that you should look into it.

HD Voice is coming. Like Fax over IP it will be an issue when it first leaves the LAN, then when it leaves your network. Break points.

Poor Target, Senators — yeah, those guys — say that Target had a chance to stop the breach. Okay. Then go on to add that this “must be a clarion call to businesses, both large and small, that it’s time to invest in some changes.” [source]

Well, VISA and Mastercard should invest in chips for credit cards. And yes we have to beef up security but the Critters at the Senate must know that it is a cat and mouse game that escalates.

DDoS traffic soars and the bots get cleverer. Making it harder and more expensive to combat these attacks. It doesn’t help that most people don’t use anti-virus and anti-malware software nor do they update O/S or virus definitions.

The 2014 DDOS Report is very interesting. Nice graphs.

It isn’t just PCI. There is HIPAA / HITECH, SOX, GLBA and a newer government compliance guideline. All in all, it is getting terribly expensive to store and secure data. It takes written policies and procedures, audits, on-going training and even procedures for breach notification and resolution.

Then there are the fines and possible criminal prosecution.

How much do they spend?

Americans don’t believe they’re getting good value from their in-home telecom services, Internet and TV services in particular, despite the fact they spend an average $1,848 a year on them, according to a new market report from Consumer Reports National Research Center.

Read the rest here.

So much going on that I can’t blog about it all. Here’s what I am missing:

DISH + DirecTV are talking merger again. It would probably be a good thing since the MSO market is shrinking. But it can only happen if Comcast is able to buy TWC.

Fallout From Snowden Hurts Tech Company Bottom Lines – to the tune of about $30 Bill. We knew this already. Is it Snowden’s fault or is it the NSA’s fault? Who cares! How do we fix it to prevent a dot com like bubble from bursting?

The Comcast-Netflix fight that has caused Cogent to squeal to the FCC. Here is Level3’s blog post about “Internet Chicken“. And here is Netflix’s “buyer’s remorse” blog post.

“Open source cellular is getting a commercial grade boost today, as Range Networks has unveiled the latest and greatest version of OpenBTS.” [ramblings]

Conterra got a chunk of private money to create a nationwide broadband network for muni, schools, etc.

Indatel opened a new so Rural carriers can connect to the Indatel network and its customers. The new POP is located on Cermak Street in Chicago. In the Midwest? Take a look at the Indatel fiber map. Indatel is owned by like 500 IOCs.

FCC Releases Revised Connect America Fund Cost Model. Read more here.

Viacom Blackoout looms for NCTC