Passport Software response to COVID-19

A lot of companies have issued generic policy statements about the Corona Virus.

Passport Software is taking action.  This is the statement from John Miller, the company president. I'm all in. If you can help out here, call or email me on the contact page.

I have just offered to provide our manufacturing solution at no charge to any company trying to set up operations to contribute to the war against COVID-19.

 This is a link to a brief Youtube video.

COVID-19 Offer

Food Service Payroll

It's been a few years since I started selling a completely new (to me) product. Here's a brief synopsis of what this program does.

Most larger restaurants, banquet operations and hotels have swarms of workers. This is a labor-intensive type of business, and the management must deal with the problems that come with that. One of those problems is that of tips. There are a lot of pretty obscure tax issues that come along with the food service industry simply because tips must be reported as income.

Many of these businesses have farmed out their payroll operations in the back office to payroll service businesses. But this leaves most of the burden of accurately collecting the hours of each employee, splitting out the hours for each job worked, reporting tips, etc. all in the hands of the management. Then they feed the summarized information to the payroll service company who prints the check or makes the ACH deposit to the employee's bank, and also makes the Federal Tax Deposit and files the From 941.

So the management still must do the work, and be responsible for any mistakes, and the payroll service usually charges a hefty fee for handling the money end.

How the KRACK attack on wireless WPA security affects you.

This issue just hit the news today, on every single computer blog and forum in existence. It does affect you, even if you're only using Wi-Fi in the nearest coffee shop or library hotspot.

Here are some reputable links if you want the technical details:

Tech Crunch

Naked Security

PC Magazine

To translate, it is possible for a bad actor to intercept any communication between your Wi-Fi device and nearly any wireless access point or hot-spot. You should act accordingly.  The researchers who found this apparently didn't give any heads-up to the device manufacturers, they just released full details of how the vulnerability works and how to duplicate their attack, and you can bet that there are people world wide who are using this attack as you read this. Believe me, anybody can do this and it takes very little technical skill, but they must be within range of your Wi-Fi router.

Protecting Your Computer Is Not Optional

This is geared more for the home computer user. I've encountered a lot of individuals who have no protection on their home computer, or who use the free version of an anti-virus program. The free versions of most anti-virus programs are usually junk. Better than nothing, but junk nevertheless. Using an ineffective AV program will lull you into being complacent about security. You need something really good to protect yourself.

There is no question, your computer is a valuable commodity to a bad guy who can gain control of it. The "I don't do anything dangerous" excuse doesn't work. Indeed you do many things that expose you and your computer to danger, and you must take responsibility to protect yourself.

Allow me speculate about how you may use you personal computer:

• Your computer is connected to the internet, and is on for several hours a day.
• You play games, one of which is a really nifty on-line version of solitaire.
• You use your computer to record personal financial information, and pay some bills on line.