The Vaporstream Blog

With all the advertisements, flashing lights and screens grabbing at us, attention spans are shorter than ever. This is just one of the reasons that everyone is shying away from phone calls, and that messaging has blossomed.

Being on the hook for free services to friends and family members is a well-known risk for many professionals. Doctors get called in the middle of the night to see sick nieces and nephews, attorneys advise their siblings on traffic violations and airline employees are hunted down by everyone for those free standby certificates. But as a technology professional, I can say that we have it arguably worse than anyone else; “Can you set up my Wi-Fi?”,  “Do I have enough encryption?” And if you think that the barrage of requests is not bad enough, you haven’t heard the complaints! “That phone broke within three months!”, “I dropped my router while dusting and now my WiFi is out!”.  

These days, it feels like everybody’s talking about encryption and privacy. Whether you work in healthcare, energy and utilities, financial services or some other enterprise—you've probably come across debates around privacy, encryption and how to securely communicate to maintain privacy. But with all the news reports and use of buzzwords being thrown around it’s easy to forget the basics. So what do terms like encryption, privacy and man-in-the middle attacks really mean?

If you’re in healthcare, you are familiar with MACRA, the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization act of 2015—bipartisan legislation that requires the US Centers for Medicaid and Medicare (CMS) to implement an incentive program. Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) evaluates clinicians in four areas—Quality, Improvement Activities, Promoting Interoperability, and Cost.

Have you ever used a digital assistant such as Alexa? They are always connected to the internet and they are always listening. What happens if these devices go rogue? Is having one equivalent to voluntarily bugging your home? Read on.