Atlantic Business Technologies, Inc.

Author: Atlantic BT

  • How to Protect Yourself from Ransomware like WannaCry

    The WannaCry Ransom Attack

    Earlier this month, hackers exploited a vulnerability in older Microsoft Windows servers to execute a global cyberattack using ransomware — a malicious software that holds your computer’s files hostage for ransom—as well as EternalBlue, a hacking tool stolen from the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). EternalBlue is a network tool that can automatically spread itself across the Internet, scanning for vulnerable systems as it goes. The attackers used this tool to primarily target older Windows systems (including XP, Win 8, Win Server 2003) which were no longer being supported with security patches, but many new Windows machines were also affected.

    This massive attack known as WannaCry completely locked victims out of their PCs. Victims then received ransom messages from the attackers that promised to restore each owner’s access if the owner paid $300 in the digital currency Bitcoin. If an owner refused to pay, the attackers threatened to destroy that owner’s files. The attack was reported to have infected more than 230,000 computers in over 150 countries, including 40 National Health Service trusts in the UK. While the initial attack has been contained, experts worry that the next wave of ransomware attacks could be even worse. Is your organization ready?

    In this post, I will lay out common sense steps that organizations should take to protect themselves, as well as strategic security principles to guide you going forward.

    What You Need to Do Right Now about WannaCry

    If the worst has happened, and you had your data stolen by WannaCry attackers, there are now free tools available to help you decrypt your locked data (such as the EaseUs tool found here). If you have not already taken action to secure your systems from the existing WannaCry cryptoworm, here are the specific steps you should take:

    1. Apply the Microsoft patch for the MS17-010 SMB vulnerability.
    2. Perform a detailed vulnerability scan of all systems on your network and apply missing patches immediately.
    3. Limit traffic from/to ports 139 and 445 to internal network only. Monitor traffic to these ports for unusual behavior.
    4. Enable strong spam filters to prevent phishing e-mails from reaching end users, and authenticate in-bound e-mail using technologies like Sender Policy Framework (SPF), Domain Message Authentication Reporting and Conformance (DMARC), and DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) to prevent email spoofing.
    5. Scan all incoming and outgoing e-mails to detect threats and filter executable files from reaching your end users.
    6. Ensure anti-virus and anti-malware solutions are set to automatically conduct regular scans. I recommend Norton and Sophos.
    7. Manage the use of privileged accounts. Implement the principle of least privilege—no users should be assigned administrative access unless absolutely needed, and those with a need for administrator accounts should only use them when necessary. Configure access controls (including file, directory, and network share permissions) with the principle of least privilege in mind. If a user only needs to read specific files, they should not have write access to those files, directories, or shares.
    8. Disable macro scripts from Microsoft Office files transmitted via e-mail. Consider using Office Viewer software to open Microsoft Office files transmitted via e-mail instead of full Office suite applications.

    The Long-Term Implications of WannaCry and Ransomware

    While the aforementioned steps will help protect your systems from ransomware and other malware attacks, we do not know what the next major attack will look like. Even the latest patches and security products will only block old and known variants of malware like Wanna—and new variants appear all the time. Making matters worse, some variants of ransomware can enter your systems via your RAM or firmware in order to avoid antivirus detection. This in mind, here are strategic best practices to keep your organization safe.

    Back Up Your Data

    Having reliable backups is essential for business continuity, especially if you work with PHI or other sensitive healthcare data. In some ransomware attacks, criminals will delete your files even if you pay their ransom. Reliable backups will also protect you from nonsecurity disruptions like unexpected damage to a data center.  

    As you back up your data, be sure to create frequent backups to several disconnected servers; this will protect you from malware that spreads across networks. It is also important to regularly test the integrity of your backup data to ensure it will meet your needs after you restore it. Finally, I recommend you set up an enterprise endpoint backup tool to protect individual user data on their laptops and workstations.

    Identify Sensitive Systems and Potential Vulnerabilities

    You might not be able to predict the next major attack, but you can prepare your systems by finding and protecting potential weak spots. For example, identify any of your users’ storage locations that are inherently vulnerable, such as file shares. It is also important to monitor the integrity of your module, as this has become a popular attack surface for cyber criminals.

    As you examine how data flows throughout your network, be sure to evaluate the potential business impact of that data being stolen or encrypted by a cyberattack. If certain data or systems are especially critical to your business, adjust your recovery point objectives to back up these systems more frequently.

    Have a Dedicated Security Team

    As your organization grows, the stakes of your information security will continue to elevate. The best way to stay ahead of cyberattacks is to create a dedicated security team ready to manage any crisis you face. Ideally, this team would include an applications expert, a network security engineer, and an analyst who can keep up with the latest data security trends.

    Once you have this team in place, it is also smart to align this information security team with your IT disaster recovery team and network team in order to develop a cross-department plan to respond to security incidents like the WannaCry attack. This cross-department plan should focus on making you resilient to attacks, not just preventing them altogether.

    Get Smart on Ransomware with the Latest Security Information

    Now that Verizon has released their yearly Data Breach Investigations Report, we have a host of new information about security breaches that could lead to your data being compromised. However, this lengthy report is only one part of the information security puzzle. In my upcoming webinar on July 12, I will discuss the long term implications of the WannaCry attack as well as best practices to help your organization protect itself from ransomware and other cyberattacks.

    Learning from WannaCry – The Long-Term Implications

    • Presenter : Ulf Mattsson, CTO Atlantic BT Security
    • Duration : 60 min
    • Date & Time : July 12 2017 12:00 pm EST

    UPDATE: Watch my other recorded webinar on Learning from Verizon 2017 Data Breach Investigations Report

    Get Help From The Experts – Have Your Cybersecurity Evaluated Today

  • Brewing Up a Website: How Making Beer is Like Designing a Website

    You’re thinking one of two things: “How on Earth can you compare brewing beer to building a website?” Or, “oh no, not another analogy!” Either way, stay with me here. Comparing brewing beer to making a website may not be as far-fetched as one might assume.

    It’s no secret, I love beer. When I’m not talking about web design, I’m talking about beer and my homebrewing hobby. So naturally, this is where my “water cooler discussions” usually end up. What I’ve found from these conversations is that I have a lot of co-workers that love beer too. If you weren’t aware, we have 3 homebrewers, 1 ex-commercial-brewer, and about 25 or more avid beer fans in our office.

    Fanboys aside, designing a beer and the process of brewing is similar to the planning and developing of a website. Both industries have a handful of key ingredients and important factors:

    1. The concept or idea
    2. The purpose and end-goals
    3. The foundation
    4. The experience
    5. The consumers and keeping them coming back

    When these factors come together in harmony, we’re left with a product that makes both the brewer (or web designer and client) and the consumer equally happy. And, on the other end, if these factors don’t jive, we’re left with a sad product that doesn’t sell.

    Photo by e_walk on Flickr

    The Concept or Idea

    In order to craft a great beer, you first need a solid idea. What kind of beer are people drinking? How saturated is the market? What kind of beer do I want to make? These are just some of the questions any product design phase. They’re necessary because they help you focus on your concept. Going too broad too soon could result in failure. So, we focus on what will work for now. Once we build up a following, then we can begin to introduce all those other ideas or recipes floating around in our head.

    So, I’ve done my research and I’ve found that most people in Raleigh seem to like pale ales. There’s already a few local breweries that make this style. But, there’s room for competition since the demand is so high. Now that we have a style chosen for our flagship, it’s time to plan and test the recipe. We find some friends, invite them over, and have them taste our latest batch of beer. We might even submit our idea to a panel of experts looking for feedback. In the homebrew world, this panel of experts are judges at a local competition. Regardless, every person along the way helps us formalize our concept–making it stronger.

    Then, we need a catchy name. The name needs to say it all. And, most of the time, it needs to not have been used before. We’ll call our pale ale “Crabtree Pale Ale.” This name not only suggests the hoppy and dry finish we’re going for, but it means something to my local market too. I can already picture the label.

    The Planning and End-Goals

    Fully understanding the purpose of your concept can help you derive your end-goals. And, properly planning this execution is vital to success. This would be like understanding and formulating your recipe to suit a particular beer category. What flavor, aroma, and texture components are necessary to the style? What ingredients are used to achieve this complexity? And, most importantly, what can we do to keep this product on or under budget without sacrificing quality?

    We’re making a pale ale, so we need a final beer that is relatively clean, moderately hoppy or bitter, and maybe a touch citrusy. The final product should also be pale and clear. There’s a few malts that we can choose from to create the flavors we want, as well as, a whole-host of American hops that will fit the profile.

    It’s no coincidence that planning and end-goals are so closely related to the concept. What you’ll find is that there’s a lot of reliance on, or blending of, each of these steps. This is necessary to achieve the best product possible. This is also why it’s important to have all the moving parts under one roof.

    The Foundation

    Arguably, the most important ingredient in beer is water. In fact, beer is comprised mostly of water. Therefore, water quality naturally plays the biggest part. Many brewers treat their water to achieve the profile appropriate for the beer style. Whether we want hard or soft water, it is much like choosing the right code base, e.g., .Net or PHP. Each has it’s own advantages and disadvantages. Water can accentuate hop flavor or malt flavors. It can affect the efficiency of our mash (similar to making tea with grain). And, if you’re like me, this complicated chemistry gives you a headache, much like the programming languages and networking/hosting required for making a website.

    The quality and balance of your code and HTML is much like water in brewing. Bad code can really ruin a website, and chlorine can ruin a beer. Gross.

    The Experience

    The overall experience, or taste of the beer, is crafted in part by the water quality, as well as, the ingredients and techniques used during the brewing process. In web design, this crafting is done by our User Experience (UX) Designers. They’re major players throughout the entire life-cycle of the project. Everything that is done passes through their UX filter. Their chief concern is always how the end-user will experience and use the website. For beer, if a flavor component is off, the consumer will reject it because it doesn’t taste right or it is too hard to drink.

    This “experience layer” in brewing has many moving parts. There’s the malt, the hops, the pH balance of the water, and the temperature control (at each step). And, if the style requests, a spice or adjunct may be in the mix.

    Malt brings sweetness and potential alcohol. Hops brings bitterness or balance (it also preserves the beer). Chemicals in the water accentuate each of these flavors as well as improve the efficiency of the process. But, temperature control can easily become the biggest player in the result of the final product. I can add the right amount of hops, but if I mash too cool, then I won’t have enough residual sweetness to balance the beer. I’ll be left with a harsh, thin, liquid. Been there before.

    This is much like adding lots of eye-candy, frills, and information to your site, only to find that you didn’t pay attention to what the users (not you) are looking for from your website. If the frills don’t help the experience, then don’t add them. And, like-wise, if all the moving parts parts (designers, developers, marketing, and UX) don’t come together in perfect harmony, something might break.

    The experience is a double-edged sword. It’s all about balancing the frills and ingredients to achieve the perfect experience.

    The Consumer and Keeping Them Coming Back

    You may have noticed that I left one key ingredient out of my beer analogy so far. That is yeast. Yeast is our consumer. And, so is the actual consumer. But, to be fair, yeast is the first organism consuming our beer.

    During the entire process, you’re attempting to make a sugary water extract, called wort, that will be like a Candy Land for these tiny single-celled creatures. Unfortunately, though, it’s not as simple as that. If you mash the malt too high, you’ll be left with an un-fermentable extract. Essentially, you’ve made a beer with too much sweetness. Or, a website with too many frills and not enough digestible substance. This could be too much content or, conversely, too much JavaScript fanciness hiding the lack of precision. We want those yeast cells to consume and multiply. We want them to have families that consume the beer too.

    Another potential problem is not adding the right amount of yeast. This would be comparable to hitting the market without proper marketing. What happens? The fermentation happens too slow resulting in off-flavors. And, possibly, you end up with a stuck fermentation. In the product world, this is slow growing and painful return on investment. Or worse, no growth at all.

    There’s lots of ways to keep the fermentation going, or entice the consumer. We could control the temperature, making sure it’s appropriate for growth. We could use the appropriate yeast and pitch the perfect amount of it. This is similar to choosing the right target audience and controlling the amount of marketing. During the products life, how much marketing are you investing into your product?

    Or, if the style allows, stick the beer in the corner and allow it to open ferment at what ever temperature it gets in the room during the day. This would be like viral marketing–letting the consumer run with it! But, then again, it all comes back to the initial concept: what style or what am I selling? And, how do you market the product appropriately?

    Final Product

    Once the yeast has done it’s thing, you’ve got a tasty beverage waiting for you in the icebox. So, sit back, relax, and enjoy the product you’ve created. And, if you venture beyond the hobby, maybe it’ll make you lots of money one day. Cheers!

    By the way, what’s your favorite beer?

  • Why We Play Foosball at ABT

    I want this blog post to go out to all the talented folks in Raleigh who are looking for a job at a place that gets them. A place that understands what it takes to be productive in today’s workforce. A place that says, “Yes, it’s not just OK to play foosball at work—it’s encouraged.” After reading this post, I hope you’ll agree with me—that place is Atlantic BT.

    foos2

    The author (right) and his brother compete in a foos-focused outreach event at ABT.

    Give Your Old Breaks a Break

    Let’s start off with what happens at other places. Take my first job at a labor union. We had two break rooms, each consisting of a table or two, some chairs, a microwave, and a TV. Our lunchtime release was the last half of “The Young and the Restless” and then all of “The Bold and the Beautiful” because “The Bold and the Beautiful” was only a half-hour soap. (Shout-out to Steffy and Hope.) That’s not bad. It wasn’t good, either, and you better not get caught watching that TV during non-lunch hours. The labor union was great to us as workers and they were very adamant about breaks, but they only wanted those breaks to happen according to a schedule. It was like they were brokering with themselves for better workers’ rights but didn’t quite know how to be both sides of that deal.

    Then I worked at a copywriting agency. This is where things got tricky because our boss wanted us to have the ultimate flexibility to work anytime, anywhere … as long as we were working all the time, everywhere. You were supposed to be in charge of your own day, and in his mind, that meant we were in charge of our own breaks … and somehow, since we were in charge of our own breaks, we shouldn’t have to take any. There wasn’t anywhere to take a break anyways. Our break room consisted of a microwave-sized alley off our common area that featured a file cabinet full of writing samples that was nine times bigger than a microwave. It was cramped (especially considering there was actually a microwave in there, too).

    What’s happening here? Well, in my experience, managers know they have to let us take breaks or we’ll pop/burn out/quit. But they’re deathly afraid that breaks will turn into lost productivity, lost cash, and lost respect toward the management team. Just look at what Bob Fox of FOX Architects has to say about it in a 2011 post he wrote about foosball for the online publication he founded, Work Design Magazine. He bought his employees a foosball table because he wanted to reward them for being hard workers, but right afterward, “the concerned, managerial voice in the back of my head was saying, ‘Keep an eye on productivity, Bob.’”

    Can you believe that? He gets his employees something as a reward for working hard and immediately fears this will stop them from working hard. Luckily for Fox’s team, Fox kept an open mind and actually looked at the productivity numbers. “After six months, watching the numbers became a total waste of time,” Fox said, “Why? Because what I found was refreshing, surprising, and very impressive: productivity actually increased—and not by a little bit—by 10-15 percent.”

    foos3

    Two of our top programmers, Chris Duffy and Jeremy Wiggins, boost their productivity with foosball.

    Make a Break For Better Breaks

    How can that be? Here’s a small content stub and an infographic on gamification that prove with science what common sense already tells us: Games like foosball help us take breaks in a way that stimulates our minds, gets our blood flowing (because sitting at our desks all day does the opposite), and pumps up our dopamine and testosterone levels. The result is we leave the break room wanting to extend our foosball table winning streak to our work problems, our conference rooms, and our negotiation tables. Games at work also boost employee teamwork both for people on the same level of the company’s hierarchy and for people on different levels. Here’s Bob Fox again:

    “Our staff started including more competitive individuals whose enthusiasm seemed to translate from the foosball table to the conference room table. …The playing field, so to speak, was even during those competitions … I was the boss, but couldn’t play to save my life … my employees loved that. …Business conversations would occur spontaneously over the foosball table. I realized that work was actually getting done while people were ‘disconnected’ from their desks. …But perhaps most importantly, I saw from a business standpoint that my team was building communication.”

    Break Records at ABT

    One of the things I like most about working at ABT is our management team is very much like Bob Fox. Unlike my old copywriting agency, we have a break room. (Two, actually: One on our third floor and an even bigger one on the first.) Unlike my old labor union, our break room is more than just a TV with daytime soaps on it: We have a foosball table on the third floor and an arcade, beer/liquor/wine bar, and ping-pong table on the first (Though we could stand to get some daytime soaps on the TVs, now that I think about it. Steffy and Hope aren’t going to fight over the same guy without an audience.). And listen to this: Not only are we in charge of our own breaks, we’re allowed to take them. Our management team understands that what looks like goofing off is actually a way for us to get revved up for more work, or to keep working on something that’s just not making itself happen at our desks, or to get closer to the folks we’re teamed up with on a big, tough project.

    foos4

    Our head of HR Jennifer Herndon plays foosball, and she wants you to do the same.

    Let me give you examples from my own time at ABT (which, O talented folks here in Raleigh, is more than three years). Teamwork is the first thing I’ll cover. As an account executive, I’m expected to motivate people to get work done on time under budget with smiles on their faces—but I cannot command anyone to do anything because my role is not above those people. In this pursuit, building friendships and teamwork around the foosball table has been hugely helpful. I didn’t play foosball, however, for the first year I worked here. I didn’t even know how to play, but after watching the people I worked with having a lot of fun, I decided I wanted in.

    I taught myself to play, then played with and against application architects, software architects, .NET programmers, PHP programmers, other account executives, project managers (and our director of project managers, whom I love to beat), IT team members, and front end developers. That’s a huge swathe of the company with whom I now have a deeper understanding, a better work tone, and a better sense of mutual respect. I’m always tickled by this one front end developer because we kind of figured out spontaneously that we make a fantastic foosball team (as long as he’s on offense and I’m on defense). Do I like the guy more now simply for that reason? Do we get along because we’re proud of the wins we shared against “the other guys?” Is it much easier to get him to do work on time under budget with a smile on his face because we’ve teamed up? The answer to those three questions is yes, one hundred percent.

    Let’s treat “working away from our desks” second. Bob Fox is right about these spontaneous conversations. We’ll be halfway through a game when the software architect jumps straight into a conversation with his teammate, a front end developer, about the progress he’s made on a structural task that the front end developer needs done before he can do his own work. I’ve had that director of project managers (the one I love to beat) jump right into a conversation with me about what we should do to unstick a problem on one of the accounts we share, and it’s easier for us to be totally truthful about what should be done because neither of us are worrying about the fact that his role is well above mine in the company. We’re just two guys trying to get the same thing done. We’re on a team even though we’re playing foosball against one another. I’ve started conversations, too, like with our IT team. We’ll be playing, and I’ll say, “So what happened with that site outage?” And for some reason, since we’re not at our desks or in the even more formal setting of a conference room, it’s much easier for the guy to say, “Yeah, I forgot to flip this one switch before running the site update. I figured out what I did wrong, fixed it, and ran it again. It worked.” And I say, “Hey, no problem, I’ll let the client know what happened and that we’re putting things in place to make sure it doesn’t happen again.” It could have been a tense talk if I were at his desk, but because I brought it up at the foosball table, we skipped the awkward emotions and went straight to resolving the issue.

    foos

    Edwin and Jorma build trust in our break room.

    This brings me to one thing I don’t see Fox talking about, and this may be because he’s at the top of his company and not a rank-and-file employee like me: Playing games like foosball can take the tension out of a strained workplace relationship. I don’t have space to go into detail here, but let’s just say I used an intensely competitive game of foosball to help me get to a better place with a coworker who was less than thrilled with me from our very first moment. He may still be less than thrilled with me, but at least now I feel more able to handle our exchanges (my winning that tough match might have helped). Over time, the way I approach him has changed how he approaches me. It’s a virtuous cycle put into place by a fun game, and that kind of virtuous cycle really happens thanks to our management team. ABT’s leadership knows that working through our relationship over a game of foosball isn’t a waste of time. In fact, it may be the best use of our time, especially considering we’re hashing things out in a healthy way away from our desks.

    Break Me, I Dare You

    foos5

    The table is ready. I’d love you to come challenge me.

    So, are you one of those talented folks here in Raleigh that wants to work for a management team that gets it like Bob Fox does? You’re welcome to challenge me to a game of foos right here at ABT, any time you want. I’m just as happy to take you on in chess, ping-pong, or any of our arcade games. Shoot, I’ll thumb wrestle you if that’s what you want. Once I’m done breaking your back, I’ll build you back up with tales about the cool work we do and the fun things we do, like Culture Club events, Thirsty Thursdays, Pumpkin Chunkins, and more. I’ll even help you fill out an application to join us, especially if you’re an account executive. Why? Because I welcome the competition.

    Why don’t you take a look at what’s open right now?

    __

    Stewart Arthur Pelto is an account executive. Taking foosball breaks helped him draft this post.

    SOURCES:

    Fox, Bob. (2011, Feb. 2). Back to the Foosball [Blog post]. Retrieved Jan. 13, 2017, from

    The Gamified Brain: A Study of the Effects of Gamification On the Brain [Infographic].

    Holtzclaw, Eric. (2014, Nov. 11). How Playing Games Increases Workplace Productivity [Article].

    Retrieved Jan. 13, 2017

  • Q1 2017: What We’re Reading, Watching, and Listening to

    At ABT, learning is a vital part of our work. But beyond keeping tabs on the latest trends for our technical work, our team strives to open our minds to new ideas that fire our professional imagination. From novels to nonfiction, from thoughtful documentaries to binge-worthy TV, from smart podcasts to pulse-pounding rap, here’s what the awesome people of ABT are reading, watching, and listening to:

    READING:

    Townsley Minton, Senior Account Executive – Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty

    This quick and easy read is essentially Chick Lit meets Who Done It. Readers are taken to a beautiful beach community in Australia where events culminate in a murder during a fancy fundraising night at the local school. Town gossip fuels the plotline, and I found at least one character to whom I could easily relate. Larger issues of bullying, domestic violence, and social perception are explored, giving the novel a bit more heft than the normal beach read. I’d highly recommend this book if you’re looking for a piece of fiction that will distract from normal life.

    Allan Maule, Senior Writer/Content Strategist – Thrill Me: Essays on Fiction by Benjamin Percy

    As someone who spends a lot of his workday writing, I really love books about the craft of putting stories and words together. Thrill Me is this kind of book. Percy breaks down all kinds of techniques for building suspense in a story, defining a setting, and establishing characters. Besides being a fun read, this book is giving me some new ideas for how to plan and write content for ABT and our clients. After all, great content marketing is just large-scale storytelling.

    Stewart Arthur Pelto, Account Executive – Realityland by David Koenig

    This book follows the Walt Disney Company from Walt’s plane flights over undeveloped Florida wetlands to the construction of Disney’s Animal Kingdom (and maybe a little more, I’m nearing the end). Reading this is teaching me to champion smart production schedules and good, healthy language at work.

    Jennifer Herndon, Chief People Officer – The Best Place to Work by Ron Friedman

    In The Best Place to Work, Ron Friedman uses psychological research and data to determine what motivates us at work. Here are a few things I’ve learned: allowing failure can promote innovation, being respected by your peers feels better than a raise, and having autonomy at work is a basic psychological need that naturally motivates us. I highly recommend this book for managers, leaders, or emerging leaders. Friedman follows up each chapter with action items that will help create a work environment that allows people to do their best work.

    WATCHING:

    Jorma Pelto, Internal Support Engineer – Jiro Dreams of Sushi

    I recently re-watched Jiro Dreams of Sushi, my all-time favorite documentary dealing with Jiro, a now 91-year-old 3-star michelin-rated chef and his son, Yoshikazu. If you enjoyed Chef’s Table on Netflix, the executive producer is the director of Jiro, which is a must-watch. The film follows Jiro’s career, as well as the preparation required each day to produce sushi on that level. I was struck by a quote from Jiro at the very beginning of the film about work ethic. He put into words how I feel about work and life in general, my need for constant improvement and dedication to see something through to the very end as thoroughly and as best as I can. It’s an ideal I hope will become more prevalent in today’s workforce:

    “Once you decide on your occupation, you must immerse yourself in your work. You have to fall in love with your work. Never complain about your job. You must dedicate your life to mastering your skill. That’s the secret of success and is the key to being regarded honorably.”

    Rachel McKay, Office Administrator – Grand Tour

    As a dedicated Top Gear fan for the last 10 or so years, I was deeply depressed when it was announced that my favorite British trio would no longer be appearing on my regularly scheduled programming. Luckily, it seemed that Amazon Video felt the same way and decided to do something about that, cue, Grand Tour.

    Grand Tour is the twin brother to Top Gear: full of country-wide car rides accompanied with odd tasks, facts about the hottest luxury cars, the test Ebola track (now done by “The American” instead of “The Stig”), and of course the constant insults and pranks from Jeremy Clarkson, James May, and Richard Hammond. The fun, new part about this version of Top Gear is that it changes locations each week, and thus you get to learn about that particular place’s “car culture”, which is a neat little feature. In this show you will get great comedy, lots of car eye-candy, and even a couple of explosions. I would highly recommend it to just about anyone.

    LISTENING TO:

    Matt Deal, Senior Digital Strategist – Lore

    One of the reasons I like the podcast Lore is the purposeful storytelling about the supernatural. Aaron Mahnke (the creator) has a cadence that draws you in and creates an experience and makes you feel things. That’s what I always hope to achieve with marketing. Not just hawking things, but creating experiences that make people think.

    Eileen Allen, VP of Experience and Strategy – A Tribe Called Quest

    Music can affect mood, creativity, and focus. To me, A Tribe Called Quest’s latest album We got it from Here…Thank you 4 Your service does all that and more. It’s nostalgic, socially relevant, and dynamic in the variety of samples and instruments. From beginning to end, the album carries you as a great novel would. In the same way, at ABT we want the work we produce to carry users through an engaging and dynamic user experience from end to end. The album is timeless. As I approach 40, it’s encouraging to see “older” musicians proving once again they are masters of their craft, making fresh and vital art. I can listen to it on loop and continue to find nuance as I hope users find in our products.

    Kendall King, Senior Digital Strategist – Metallica

    You’re damn right I’m listening to Metallica!  The biggest metal band to roam this earth, and one of the most influential bands in my life, is finally relevant again!  Their newest album, Hardwired….To Self Destruct, is a throwback to the style of hard-hitting, speed-riff metal they showed off in the albums Kill’em All and Ride The Lightning. This album sounds like the Metallica many of us fans have craved for over 25 years (since 1991’s black album—some might argue since ‘86’s Master of Puppets).   

    With today’s technology and social media pushing hoards of new songs, artists, and music genres in our faces, it feels great to be reminded of where my musical influences started. And even though I recently saw Beyoncé in concert (And it was incredible!), my musical soul is still deeply rooted in rock ‘n roll.

     

  • Don’t Cripple Your Campaign with Bad Hosting

    During one of the most exciting games in the history of the Super Bowl, 84 Lumber presented arguably the most memorable commercial of the evening. Entitled The Journey Begins, this 90-second ad told the dramatic story of a young mother and her daughter making a long trip from Mexico to the United States. As you watch the ad below, imagine all the time, effort, and money it took to write, cast, shoot, and edit this short film—on top of the $15 million the company spent on 90 seconds of ad time.

    How to Let a Good Controversy Go to Waste

    In the hyper-political atmosphere since the 2016 presidential election, this ad was perfectly calibrated to be controversial and attention-grabbing. By depicting the endurance of an (presumably undocumented) immigrant family making the journey to the US while the daughter gradually stitches together an American flag, the ad celebrated the “will to succeed” as a universal American trait—in spite of our new President’s determination to build a wall on the Mexican border and curb how many immigrants enter the US. Knowing the country is divided on the immigration issue, 84 Lumber aired this ad during the television event of the year. The final call to action of the ad invited the viewer to visit the 84 Lumber website to see the conclusion of the “To Be Continued” video.

    The CTA worked brilliantly, drawing millions of people to the company website—which promptly crashed from a sudden spike in visitor traffic. 84 Lumber created the perfect controversy to maximize attention to their brand, only to waste these efforts (and more than $15 million) by failing to prepare the hosting foundation of their website.

    Plan for Success with Elastic Hosting

    It’s not helpful to heap criticism on 84 Lumber for their technical mistake. After all, they quickly resolved the website issue and still made a big splash for their brand. That said, how many chances do you get to make a first impression? If you’re going to spend the time, resources, and money to make a high quality commercial for a major TV event, you can’t be so focused on the creative that you fail to execute on the call to action.

    And in the digital age, your call to action WILL depend on your website being ready for potentially millions of visitors. This requires a web hosting solution that can stretch its capacity to accommodate a sudden spike in traffic. With elastic hosting on a cloud-based platform, you only spend for the resources you need—and if you’re expecting a huge influx of visitors during a period of time (say, for two hours after your ad airs during the Super Bowl), you can expand your capacity in advance. If 84 Lumber had spent another $1000 for extra server resources during the Super Bowl, their $15 million investment wouldn’t have been compromised by a crashed website.

    Amazon Web Services works well for this kind of elastic web hosting. AWS allows you to prepare for higher traffic by upscaling beforehand with a few clicks and then scaling down as soon as you begin to see visitors drop off. Even if your site suddenly faces a rush of traffic you weren’t expecting, AWS can automatically scale up your server capacity to keep your webpages online with minimal disruption (Though it is always safer and less expensive to prepare.).

    For example, this is how a major Baltimore news organization designed its web infrastructure to work. By basing their content-heavy site on an Amazon Web Services foundation, the news organization ensured they would both never run out of capacity for visitors and never overspend for hosting resources they didn’t need. Their site also scaled up to handle massive spikes in user traffic during the protests that rocked Baltimore after the Ferguson, MO court decision in 2014. The result? Baltimore citizens could access timely news during a city-wide crisis on a fault-tolerant website.

    Is Your Site Ready for Massive Success?

    If you’re not sure if your homepage could handle a sudden rush of new visitors, do not wait and find out the hard way. Reach out to your hosting provider and make sure your site has a flexible hosting foundation that will—without interruption—deliver the brilliant content you’ve worked so hard to perfect. And if you aren’t sure how to begin, contact Atlantic BT to design a hosting foundation that will support your future popularity.

  • How ABT Empowered Campbell.edu to Lead with Purpose

    How Can a Hidden Gem Become a Preeminent Private University?

    130 years after opening, Campbell University was an established presence in NC’s higher education landscape. The Baptist-affiliated private college had graduated generations of state leaders in business, medicine, and law. However, only 19% of American adults had even heard of Campbell University—and several of these incorrectly assumed the college was connected with the soup brand. If the university was going to attract elite students on a national scale, something needed to change. Campbell began this process by hiring a new president, J. Bradley Creed.

    [pull_quote]I have heard others describe Campbell as a hidden gem and the best kept-secret in North Carolina. They meant that as a compliment, but I want people all across North Carolina, the region, and the nation to know the Campbell name and to recognize Campbell as one of the preeminent private universities that prepares students to make a difference in the lives of others through work, service, and leadership. –J. Bradley Creed, President-Campbell University[/pull_quote]

    Because 97% of prospective students begin their college search by visiting that university’s website, Campbell needed its website to excite and engage students with a meaningful experience that captured the “feel” of Campbell’s campus and student life. It was also vital for the site to be easy to navigate across Campbell’s different programs as well as optimized for mobile users (mobile traffic to Campbell.edu had increased 1277% since 2011). This inspired the president’s new initiative: a major rebranding and new design for Campbell.edu to expand the university’s reputation across the country. The university chose Atlantic BT as their digital partner to handle the rebrand and site design. 

    [pull_quote]When we started our conversation with Campbell, what really helped ABT stand out was our proven process for tackling this kind of large scale initiative with multiple stakeholders. Our experience around user research was especially compelling. They had multiple stakeholders across their vast program offerings and alumni, and we wanted all of them to feel represented by the new site and brand. To make that happen, we designed digital surveys, brand workshops, interviews, and test groups to get a 360 view of Campbell’s identity. This in-depth research guided all of our design and brand work. –Eric Lloyd, Senior Business Development Manager -Atlantic BT[/pull_quote]

    Designing and Developing Campbell’s New Digital Ecosystem

    The scope of ABT’s redesign required a new navigation, search capabilities, and reimagined user experience (for both desktop and mobile). Our aim was to give Campbell.edu a new digital ecosystem that would help Campbell compete with leading universities. Key to this objective was the development of a strong content strategy—analyzing which pages, images, and videos would do the most to engage Campbell’s audience and organizing these assets accordingly. 

    [pull_quote]It all started with discovery. To create a content strategy for the new site, we worked with Campbell to identify and audit over 8,000+ unique web pages and construct a site architecture that satisfied the needs of the individual schools and their users. We put a lot of effort into streamlining the content, simplifying the navigation, and creating an experience that is logical and intuitive. –Tyler Slocum, Digital Marketing Strategist -Atlantic BT[/pull_quote]

    Throughout this process, it was essential for ABT to have a deep understanding of Campbell’s needs and regular communication with their stakeholders. Campbell’s internal marketing team visited the ABT office at least once a week throughout the project; we also used our Mavenlink project management tool to regularly share research results, user test findings, site mock ups, and other work-in-progress elements of the new Campbell.edu. 

    [pull_quote]Good communication and collaboration is the bread-and-butter of any large project, especially one as massive as the Campbell brand and site redesign. Our in-house work sessions with the Campbell marketing and communications team combined with the digital immediacy of Mavenlink did a lot to keep us on the same page. Thanks to our collaborative process, we completed the redesign and launch of the new Campbell.edu in less than eight months. –Townsley Minton, Director of Client Success -Atlantic BT[/pull_quote]

    Modernizing the Brand for an Established University

    Beyond the redesign of Campbell.edu, the university wanted to give its community a unified brand vision with a statement and symbol that would represent the essence of Campbell. ABT met this challenge with a variety of research methods mixed with a testing-driven creative approach. 

    [pull_quote]For branding research, it is really important to be both quantitative and qualitative. For example, we designed several surveys measuring how many people across the state, region, and country had heard of Campbell University; among those who knew of the university, I measured what words they commonly associated with the school. This helped us understand existing perceptions of Campbell so we knew which qualities to emphasize and which needed adjusting at a brand level. –Natalie Iannello, Lead Digital Marketer -AtlanticBT [/pull_quote]

    The ABT marketing team worked with these research insights along with a series of interviews and collaborative sessions with the Campbell team to craft new messaging and a new icon for the university. Because the Campbell team wanted to balance their Christian identity with the desire to recruit elite students of all faith backgrounds, they needed a brand that would resonate with both kinds of audience. 

    [pull_quote]From our research into higher ed, we saw ‘leadership’ and ‘future leaders’ as familiar terms to describe the kinds of driven, elite students Campbell wanted to recruit. That said, integrating Campbell’s Christian element with respect and the right amount of distance was harder—we wanted to imply the service and selflessness of faith without alienating people who weren’t religious. Ultimately, we tried out different terms with Campbell stakeholders and landed on the word “purpose.” Purpose described the reason why people of faith lived as they did, but purpose wasn’t confined to religious people. Because this word resonated with both audiences without alienating them, it led to the tagline ‘Leading with Purpose.’ –Lorelei Canne, Content Editor -AtlanticBT[/pull_quote]

    On the visual side, the Campbell team requested a new icon with a more recognizable connection to the university. Their team wanted the new unified mark to better capture people’s attention with a symbol that was unique to Campbell and representative of their school’s history and tradition of academic excellence. 

    [pull_quote]We went through a lot of iterations with the Campbell team to help them develop the right icon. They needed a visual idea that would work for the goals of the Campbell marketing team and Campbell’s graduates, students, and community. After a lot of interviews and surveys, we landed on Campbell’s Kivett Hall as a landmark that really captured the university’s identity and history. After all, it’s the oldest building on their campus, and everyone at Campbell recognized it. Next, we helped their team produce and test out several different designs to find the icon that they ultimately landed on, which was modern and fresh-looking while being recognizable to the community. –Mark Riggan, Senior Full Stack Designer -AtlanticBT[/pull_quote]

    The New Icon – Kivett Hall

    KivettIcon1

    Partnering for the Future of Campbell

    Now that the new Campbell.edu and brand have launched, ABT and Campbell University will continue their partnership on Campbell’s digital properties. ABT’s team is currently at work auditing and providing insight for the university’s updates to its sites for the law school, divinity school, and adult & online education programs.

    In the meantime, check out the new Campbell.edu and read their introduction to the new brand and site design—let us know your thoughts in the comments below.