With the weather turning against most of the country this time of the year and the holidays rapidly approaching, vacations are often more frequent around the office. It’s incredibly important for your team to communicate how long they’ll be away and whom to contact in their stead using an out-of-office auto-response, but how boring is the same ol’ “I’m not here leave a message”??? 

Options: Here are some fun – and still professional – ways to spice up the same ol’ out-of-office message your team’s OOO replies (plus templates to create your own!): 

1. The bad news is that I’m out of the office. The good news is that I’m out of the office. 
2. I am currently out of the office and probably chilling on the beach. Enjoy your workweek.
3. Alexa, play Vacation by Dirty Heads.
4. I know I’m supposed to say that I’ll have limited access to email, but... 

Check out more options from Hubspot! 

Tech budgeting affects every industry, vertical, and office. But for many in this ever-connected world, planning tech budgets can be challenging for numerous reasons. Here are some important headlines we’ve pulled for you on the topic: 

The Trillion Dollar Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act was signed on November 6th, 2021, and will provide nearly $2 billion dollars towards cybersecurity and other related provisions. This CyberScoop article goes through some of the main talking points of the deal.

Key Takeaways:

1. This new act will boost government cybersecurity spending by $1.9 billion.
2. $1 billion will be reserved as grants for state, local, tribal, and territorial governments to modernize systems in order to protect sensitive data, info, and public critical infrastructure.
3. The new law devotes $100 million over four years for moments when DHS declares a “significant incident” in tech security that would allow CISA to allocate aid to the public and private sectors.

Dive Deeper- Fact Sheet: The Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal

Web hosting giant GoDaddy has reported another breach. GoDaddy says the data breach has exposed over a million accounts in an article written by TechCrunch. 

Key Takeaways:

1. GoDaddy’s Chief Information Security Officer said the company detected unauthorized access to its systems where it hosts and manages its customers’ WordPress servers. Credentials for about 1.2 million accounts were exposed.
2. The attacker used a compromised password to gain access to its systems around September 6th, but the breach was only discovered last week.
3. This example is not unique: 81% of data breaches are due to weak password security. 

Password security is vitally important for everyone. Here is a blog we wrote on the importance of password management. If you have any questions at all, please reach out to us directly and we would be happy to help in any way we can. 

We won’t weigh in on the semi-angry toilet paper debate in your office, but we will tell you there are five things you should absolutely be prioritizing for your 2022 technology budget: 

1. Upgrade Your Security to Multifactor Authentication – It’s no longer enough to require just a password to access all that data, just ask GoDaddy. 
2. Transforming The Way You Work In The Cloud – There's a trillion dollars up for grabs, and early adopters to cloud computing will likely take the lion’s share. 
3. Investing In Internal Business Outcomes – Why take risks externally when you can control the entirety of the process and reap all of the benefits? 
4. Adding Remote Work Tools For Your Team – Almost 40 million workers will be at least partially remote over the next decade, and they’ll need to be armed with the right tools no matter where they log in from. 
5. Developing Hybrid Meeting Spaces –Successful hybrid offices around the globe have added dedicated hybrid workspaces specifically designed to connect teams everywhere. 

For a more detailed breakdown of where your 2022 tech budget priorities should be, check out the full blog here!

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