THWACK Monthly Mission - April 2018

With a baseball cap and polo shirt
and eyes always on alert,
you will find him in the basement
always checkin' all the things.
People stop and pay attention
when he tells them to beware,
'cause everybody knows that
he's the data breach prevention mayor.

Data breach prevention mayor, data breach prevention mayor.
Searchin' and a hunting' and a checkin' everywhere.
He can find a breach before it brings unwanted fame.
That's why they call him “The Preventer,”
that was how he got his name.

You can take a tip from The Preventer
that there's nothin' like privacy.
'Cause keeping data safe
and locked away is key.
You just have to look around you
and you'll find it's not a joke,
to see what you'd be missin'
if a hacker made your company go broke.

If you've ever seen the news
when a data breach is running wild,
and you worry about your personal data
like a mother worries about her child,
then you know why The Preventer tells you
when he sees you passing through,
“Remember...please be careful....
it’s the least that you can do.”

Remember THWACKsters, only YOU can prevent data breaches!

Our goal with this month’s mission is to increase your awareness of the consequences of data breaches as well as introduce two SolarWinds tools that can help improve compliance: Log & Event Manager, log management software for security, compliance, and troubleshooting, and Patch Manager, intuitive patch management software for quickly addressing software vulnerabilities.

Good luck!

APRIL MONTHLY MISSION

Use the mission’s resources to complete the tasks and answer the questions for a chance to win!

Correctly answer each question during the week and you'll be entered for a chance to win the weekly prize.

Correctly answer all 20 questions over the course of the month and you'll be entered for a chance to win the grand prize:

Want to join the mission, but not a member? Sign up FREE now!

PRIZES

Weekly Prizes & Drawing Dates:

April 9: Apricorn Aegis Flash Key 8 GB

April 16: Security Camera System

April 23: Tech Backpack

April 30: Curved Computer Monitor

Grand Prize

April 30: Nintendo Switch

150 points are being awarded for each correctly answered question. There are 20 questions, which means you can earn a maximum of 3,000 points for this mission.

MISSION SHORTCUT

Complete the mission shortcut to earn an additional 1,000 THWACK

points & enter to win a Ring Video Doorbell!

The shortcut is simple:

1. Download Log & Event Manager
2. Take a screenshot of the "nDepth Dashboard"
  - Click on the EXPLORE tab and select the nDepth drop down
  - Search for TCPTrafficAudit entered into that Search box
3. Submit your screenshot below.
4. BONUS: Earn an additional 500 THWACK points for submitting a screenshot of Patch Manager!

MISSION RULES

A new question will open every day (Monday - Friday) starting on April 2, 2018. Once a question has opened, it will remain open until April 29, 2018 at 11:59 p.m. CST. Check the schedule below for exact open/close times.

Weekly Prizes	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Winners
Week 1: Complete questions 1-5 by April 8 to be entered to win: Apricorn Aegis Flash Key 8 GB
Week 2: Complete questions 6-10 by April 15 to be entered to win: Security Camera System
Week 3: Complete questions 11-15 by April 22 to be entered to win: Tech Backpack
Week 4: Complete questions 16-20 by April 29 to be entered to win: Curved Computer Monitor
Correctly answer all 20 questions by April 29 and get entered to win the Grand Prize! Nintendo Switch

Monthly Mission Terms and Conditions: US, UK, and Canada | Germany | Australia

Mission Shortcut Terms and Conditions: US, UK, and Canada | Germany | Australia

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Comments

tinmann0715

It is baffling to me that it is already April 2018.

HerrDoktor

You need to prepare for Christmas already. Don’t you have all presents ready yet?

mprobus

I apologize to any organizations that were breached. I didn't realize that only I could prevent breaches. I'll work harder to keep future ones from happening.

stevenastem

Better start than last month, lol:

Guess I was more awake for Q1 this time.

nwansing

Love the prizes this month!

bsciencefiction.tv

Thwack stepping up their game on prizes...Please, Lord, let me win the switch.

pony10

I certainly hope you do.

bdufresne

I would be happy to win anything! I've not won anything during a monthly mission yet!

jspeer

Keep playing! never give up and someday you may just win!

cooperjs

I might cry if I get even one question wrong.....I'm super-excited about the prizes for April

nickzourdos

Oh jeez. It's April? I totally missed out on last month's mission. Bleh!

jspeer

Agreed! There is a lot to look forward to this month!

tinmann0715

Funny story... I do!!! During the last learned that I don't lose Thwack points from the leaderboard if I spend them in the Thwack store. So off i went with my 310k points... :-)

oracle_sean

Someone let Panera know about this month's mission.

ebradford

You let Panera know; I'll let Nick know. He missed it last month. I'll let Nick know.

nickzourdos, there's a new mission this month. Don't miss it!

ebradford

Just this weekend -- on Saturday -- I finally finished putting away the rest of the Christmas Decorations.

Funny how they take longer to put away than they do to deploy.

ebradford

Agreed. Lots of good prizes. However, I think this is a great topic. Network Security is highly important to me. I hope I learn a few new tricks that Solarwinds products can help with.

tk1271

Great info in today's question! I'm in IT security and didn't realize that SMBs have become the primary targets. It makes sense but I never really thought about it.

HerrDoktor

Isn’t it the same with Server systems? Spinning them up is easy decommissioning takes forever...still see the occasional Server 2000 or 2003 with clients...

rschroeder

What is this "away" you speak of for Christmas decorations? Don't the lights stay up all year round on the outside of the house? It's hard work getting them up, and worse taking them down.

Jeff Foxworthy: You might be a redneck if you leave the Christmas lights up year round.

Jeff Foxworthy Redneck 12 Days Of Christmas - YouTube

bobmarley

MyFitnessPal informed me someone had stolen a bunch of their data. I'm wondering where my heartrate is roaming around on the internet now?

ecklerwr1

The Aegis flash key is pretty cool. I recently got a 256G Kangaroo USB3 stick and it's great.

rschroeder

I apologize for being a stickler for grammar: None of today's answers actually is a viable answer to the question, since none of the answers provides anything to deal with lowering possibility of attacks.

Lowering the possibility of SUCCESSFUL attacks, yes. But not decreasing attacks themselves.

OK. Am I being too literal? Yes. But some of the literal-minded folks out there will be derailed or misguided by this.

smoked_angus

Here is a good article for SMBs: The Best Practices In Cyber Security For Small-To-Medium-Sized Businesses

"Things are so bad that the FBI now recommends paying the extortion fees!"

subraiden

What if they put in an answer "Find the attacker and smack him on the nose with a rolled up newspaper"?

That could lower the possibility of attacks

rschroeder

I suspect using the rolled up newspaper routine would result in a dramatic increase in attacks.

Attacks may only decrease when an unlikely set of conditions is implemented:

Anonymity of attackers is eliminated--everyone knows who you are and where you are when you attack them. Everyone knows the authors of viruses and malware.
Incentives to attack are eliminated (including profit, revenge, ignorance, immaturity, politics, religion, etc.)
Actions by governments, businesses, groups, and individuals that negatively impact others are eliminated.
Accurate and swift consequences (punishment, retribution, penalties, etc.) occur for every attack.
Each person, culture, country, religion, political group, respects each other--preferably by trading places and gaining a personal and intimate perspective of each others' points of view.
Leaders and individuals cease teaching traditions of anger, retribution, and hatefulness.
Science and facts are no longer ignored or manipulated or manufactured.
Altruism is rewarded so highly that it becomes the new goal to work towards to create profit.
Equal opportunities (jobs, clean drinking water, safety, freedom of speech and freedom to gather, education, etc.) are made affordable and available to everyone.

Until this impractical list of dreams might be accomplished, we will remain in reactive mode, trying to plug holes before the dam bursts.

On the other hand, a sufficiently large Carrington Event would also reduce or eliminate electronic attacks. ;^)

rschroeder

With increases in costs (losses to companies, profits to criminals) like these:

One would not be surprised to learn countries, corporations, groups, and individuals would turn to creating and distributing ransomware to "get rich quick".

Our leaders, adults, companies, religions, groups, and parents do a disservice to the future when they expect children to be honest and behave with good morals without being taught honesty and morality, without being able to see it first-hand and learn it by example.

smoked_angus

How many Dollars? Mind boggling. Double the graphic below and think of all the hungry that could be fed and homeless sheltered.

See the source image

karlap

tk1271 We seem to hear a lot about the bigger breaches, but these smaller ones are the ones happening a lot more often!!. Glad this was informative.

rschroeder

Sadly, that's the result of not teaching people the Golden Rule, not training people to behave with altruism, and not emphasizing empathy as important.