Last week, our team attended the Associated Subcontractors of Massachusetts Biennial Dinner Gala in Quincy, MA. We were proud to sponsor the night as a Platinum sponsor!

Thank you to all who attended!

MIT announced last month that a $24 million gift to MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research from philanthropist Lisa Yang will help establish the "K. Lisa Yang and Hock E. Tan Center for Molecular Therapeutics in Neuroscience," a bionics center that aims to expand the efficiency and deliverability of bionic prosthetics to those who suffer from a broad range of physical disabilities.

The pharmacy Walgreens was criticized last month for leaving confidential COVID-19 test patient information exposed online without any protection. According to Vox.com, patients who received a test from Walgreens in the past year had their name, date of birth, gender identity, phone number, address, and e-mail "left on the open web for potentially anyone to see.

Iowa-based agriculture group New Cooperative, which produces about 40% of the United States' grain supply, is the latest victim of ransomware group BlackMatter. The incident "could lead to a food shortage in the coming weeks and months," according to ChannelFutures.

The International Association of Ports and Harbors, a global organization representing ports worldwide that works with the United Nations, has released an 84-page document outlining "IAPH Cybersecurity Guidelines for Ports and Port Facilities."

According to the Executive Summary of the document, "The risk of a cyber-attack has become the top risk for port authorities and the wider port community.

At the end of August, the Boston Public Library experienced a cyber attack which took caused a system-wide outage throughout the city's branches as well as the central branch in Copley Square.

"Affected systems were taken offline immediately, and proactive steps were taken to isolate the problem and shutdown network communication," the library said in a statement on their website.

Howard University, located in Washington D.C., was forced to cancel classes the day after Labor Day as the school became the latest institute of higher learning to face a ransomware attack. During the first week of the month, Howard's information technology department intentionally shut down the school's network after detecting what they called "unusual activity.

At the end of last month, on July 27, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing regarding the rise of ransomware attacks in the US which included top cyber officials.

Over the past year, there has been a 300% increase in attacks, costing businesses $300 million, according to the Department of Justice.