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Equifax Says Cyberattack May Have Affected 143 Million Customers

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In addition to the other material, hackers were also able to retrieve names, birth dates and addresses. Credit card numbers for 209,000 consumers were stolen, while documents with personal information used in disputes for 182,000 people were also taken.

Other cyberattacks, such as the two breaches that Yahoo announced in 2016, have eclipsed the penetration at Equifax in sheer size, but the Equifax attack is worse in terms of severity. Thieves were able to siphon far more personal information — the keys that unlock consumers’ medical histories, bank accounts and employee accounts.

“On a scale of 1 to 10 in terms of risk to consumers, this is a 10,” said Avivah Litan, a fraud analyst at Gartner.

An F.B.I. spokesperson said the agency was aware of the breach and was tracking the situation.

Last year, identity thieves successfully made off with critical W-2 tax and salary data from an Equifax website. And earlier this year, thieves again stole W-2 tax data from an Equifax subsidiary, TALX, which provides online payroll, tax and human resources services to some of the nation’s largest corporations.

How to Protect Your Information Online

There are more reasons than ever to understand how to protect your personal information. Major website breaches seem ever more frequent.


Cybersecurity professionals criticized Equifax on Thursday for not improving its security practices after those previous thefts, and they noted that thieves were able to get the company’s crown jewels through a simple website vulnerability.

“Equifax should have multiple layers of controls” so if hackers manage to break in, they can at least be stopped before they do too much damage, Ms. Litan said.

Potentially adding to criticism of the company, three senior executives, including the company’s chief financial officer, John Gamble, sold shares worth almost $1.8 million in the days after the breach was discovered. The shares were not part of a sale planned in advance, Bloomberg reported.

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The company handles data on more than 820 million consumers and more than 91 million businesses worldwide and manages a database with employee information from more than 7,100 employers, according to its website.

Equifax also houses much of the data that is supposed to be a backstop against security breaches. The agency offers a service that provides companies with the questions and answers needed for their account recovery, in the event customers lose access to their accounts.

“If that information is breached, you’ve lost that backstop,” said Patrick Harding, the chief technology officer at Ping Identity, a Denver-based identity management company.

Equifax said that, in addition to reporting the breach to law enforcement, it had hired a cybersecurity firm to conduct a review to determine the scale of the invasion. The investigation is expected to wrap up in the next few weeks.

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“This is clearly a disappointing event for our company, and one that strikes at the heart of who we are and what we do,” Richard F. Smith, chairman and chief executive of Equifax, said in a statement. “Confronting cybersecurity risks is a daily fight.”

Using the data stolen from Equifax, identity thieves can impersonate people with lenders, creditors and service providers, who rely on personal identity information from Equifax to make financial decisions regarding potential customers.

Equifax has created a website, www.equifaxsecurity2017.com, to help consumers determine whether their data was at risk.

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How Many Times Has Your Personal Information Been Exposed to Hackers?

Find out which parts of your identity may have been stolen in major hacking attacks over the last four years.


People can go to the Equifax website to see if their information has been compromised. The site encourages customers to offer their last name and the last six digits of their Social Security number. When they do, however, they do not necessarily get confirmation about whether they were affected. Instead, the site provides an enrollment date for its protection service, and it may not start for several days.

The company also suggests getting a free copy of your credit report from the three major credit bureaus: Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. These are available at annualcreditreport.com. It also suggests contacting a law enforcement agency if you believe any stolen information has already been used in some way.

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Equifax’s credit protection service, which is free for one year for consumers who enroll by Nov. 21, is available to everyone and not just the victims of the breach.

Equifax is offering consumers the ability to freeze their Equifax credit reports, said John Ulzheimer, a consumer credit expert who often does expert witness work for banks and credit unions and worked at Equifax in the 1990s. Thieves could have information stolen from Equifax and used it to open accounts with creditors that use Experian or TransUnion.

“It’s like locking one of three doors in your house and leaving the other two unlocked,” Mr. Ulzheimer said. “You’re hoping the thief stumbles on the locked door.” He recommended that all those affected immediately place a fraud alert on all three of their credit files, which anyone can do for free.

Equifax’s offer of one year of free protection falls short of what consumers really need, because their information can be bought and sold by hackers for years to come, Mr. Ulzheimer added.

Beyond compromising the personal data of millions of consumers, the breach also poses a potential national security threat. In recent years, Chinese nation-state hackers have breached insurers like Anthem and federal agencies, siphoning detailed personal and medical information. These hackers go wide in their assaults in an effort to build databases of Americans’ personal information, which can be used for blackmail or future attacks.

Governments regularly buy stolen personal information on the so-called Dark Web, security experts say. The black market sites where this information is sold are far more exclusive than black markets where stolen credit card data is sold. Interested buyers are even asked to submit to background checks before they are admitted.

“Cyberwar is in large part conducted through data mining and cyberintelligence,” Ms. Litan said. “This is also a Homeland Security risk as enemy nation states build databases of Americans that they then use to get to their targets, for example a network operator at a power grid, or a defense contractor at a missile defense company.”

Sen. Mark R. Warner, a Virginia Democrat who co-founded the Senate Cybersecurity Caucus, said he believed the severity of the Equifax breach raised serious questions about whether Congress needed to rethink data protection policies.

“It is no exaggeration to suggest that a breach such as this — exposing highly sensitive personal and financial information central for identity management and access to credit — represents a real threat to the economic security of Americans,” he said in a statement.

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Court rejects Trump administration on travel ban exemptions

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Protesters outside the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals are pictured here. | Getty Images

People protest President Donald Trump’s travel ban outside as the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in Seattle, Washington. | Jason Redmond/Getty Images

Grandparents, cousins of Americans get reprieve, as do many refugees.

By

09/07/2017 06:40 PM EDT

Updated 09/07/2017 09:21 PM EDT


President Donald Trump’s travel ban policy suffered another defeat Thursday as an appeals court rejected the administration’s attempt to deny grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins of Americans a temporary exemption from the controversial executive order.

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously declined to overturn a district court judge’s ruling that the administration was taking too narrow a view of an exception the Supreme Court carved out from the travel ban in June.

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The appeals court judges reasoned that since that the justices said the mother-in-law of one travel-ban challenger was entitled to a reprieve from the president’s order, other relatives should enjoy the same treatment.

« If mothers-in-law clearly fall within the scope of the injunction, then so too should grandparents, grandchildren, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, and cousins, » Judges Michael Daly Hawkins, Ronald Gould and Richard Paez wrote in a joint opinion. « The Government does not offer a persuasive explanation for why a mother-in-law is clearly a bona fide relationship, in the Supreme Court’s prior reasoning, but a grandparent, grandchild, aunt, uncle, niece, nephew, or cousin is not. »

The appeals court panel also cleared the way for a greater flow of refugees, declining to disturb a lower court order that those already assigned to resettlement agencies can enter the United States despite Trump’s directive.

Justice Department lawyers had argued that those agencies deal directly with the government and rarely have contact with refugees until around the time of their arrival, but the judges found that argument beside the point.

« Even if a resettlement agency does not have ‘direct contact’ with a refugee before arrival, this does not negate the finding that a relationship has formed. The agency still expends resources and arranges for individualized services based on the specific refugees that the agency has agreed to resettle, » the 9th Circuit panel wrote. « Resettlement agencies will face concrete harms and burdens if refugees with formal assurances are not admitted. »

A Justice Department official said Thursday night that the administration will again ask the Supreme Court to set aside the legal rulings that have largely gutted Trump’s policy.

“The Supreme Court has stepped in to correct these lower courts before, and we will now return to the Supreme Court to vindicate the executive branch’s duty to protect the nation, » a Justice spokeswoman said.

The revised travel ban Trump issued in March suspends issuance of U.S. visas to residents of six majority-Muslim countries and halts admission of refugees from across the globe. The Supreme Court has set arguments on the ban’s legality for October 10.

Asked about the appeals court decision, a White House official expressed confidence in the legal underpinnings of Trump’s directive.

« The president’s travel order is well within his legal authority and keeps our nation safe, » said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. « The Department of Justice will vigorously defend it. »

The new appeals court ruling could effectively negate the travel ban’s application to refugees in the coming weeks, since about 24,000 are already assigned to U.S. resettlement organizations.

In July, the Supreme Court temporarily halted the lower-court ruling clearing the way for admission of more refugees, but the high court’s ruling expires by its own terms now that the 9th Circuit has ruled on the issue.

Now, the Trump administration seems intent on again asking the justices to address the definition of close family and to clarify which refugees are exempt under the high court’s June order.

The annual allocation of refugees runs through the end of the fiscal year at the end of this month. Trump could try to block the admission of any refugees after Sept. 30 by setting that number to zero or a low figure.

Obama had set the cap for this year at 110,000, although for budget and capacity reasons a much lower number of refugees were actually expected to be admitted. Trump attempted to lower the cap to 50,000 for this year, but court rulings have effectively blocked that move.

A lawyer handling the case decided Thursday, Neal Katyal, hailed the decision.

“The court of appeals has just sided with Hawaii (and constitutional freedoms everywhere) against Trump,” Katyal wrote on Twitter.

All three 9th Circuit judges who ruled on the travel ban exemption Thursday are appointees of President Bill Clinton. It’s the same panel of jurists that issued one of the two appeals court rulings earlier this year that Trump’s revised travel ban was likely illegal. By 9th Circuit policy, the same set of judges is usually assigned to recurring appeals arising from the same case.

Trump billed his initial travel-ban order, issued in January, and the revised edition, released in March, as anti-terrorism measures designed to protect Americans from threats posed by radical foreigners and to allow authorities time to improve vetting procedures. However, critics denounced the measures as thinly veiled versions of the Muslim ban Trump promoted and promised during his presidential campaign.

The Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals accepted that argument in a May ruling against the revised travel ban, with the court’s majority concluding that the order amounts to intentional religious discrimination.

The California-based 9th Circuit’s decision, issued in June, dodged that issue, concluding that Trump failed to meet legal requirements and exceeded his statutory authority in issuing the directive.

The two key prongs of the revised travel ban are set to expire in the coming weeks, further complicating the legal picture. The 90-day ban on issuance of visas to citizens of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen expires Sept. 24. So that part of Trump’s policy could be expired by the time the case is argued at the Supreme Court on Oct. 10. The refugee halt is schedule to end about two weeks later.

‘This storm has the potential to catastrophically devastate our state’

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MIAMI — Florida officials urged residents in flood-prone coastal communities to get out while they can, ordering evacuations in the face of oncoming Hurricane Irma, which could make landfall Sunday and inflict massive destruction not seen in the state since Hurricane Andrew in 1992.

Hurricanes have lashed South Florida many times, but officials here at the National Hurricane Center said this is shaping up as a once-in-a-generation storm. Forecasters adjusted their advisory late Thursday, projecting Irma to hit the tip of the peninsula, slamming the population centers of South Florida before grinding northward.

“This storm has the potential to catastrophically devastate our state,” Gov. Rick Scott (R) said in a late-day news briefing. Earlier, he implored people to evacuate. “If you live in any evacuation zones and you’re still at home, leave.”

[Category 5 Irma stays on perilous path toward Florida]

The state’s highways were jammed, gas was scarce, airports were deluged and mandatory evacuations began to roll out as the first official hurricane watches were issued for the region. Irma, which has been ravaging the Caribbean islands as it sweeps across the Atlantic, is expected to hit the Florida peninsula with massive storm surges and crippling winds that could affect nearly every metropolitan area in South Florida.

The hurricane center said Thursday afternoon that should Irma’s eye move through the center of the state, extreme winds and heavy rains could strafe an area that has millions of residents, from Miami in the east to Naples on the Gulf Coast. Because the eastern side of the storm is the most powerful, numerous cities along the east coast could face extreme conditions.

What’s in the path of Hurricane Irma View Graphic What’s in the path of Hurricane Irma

Miami-Dade County ordered some mandatory evacuations, including for Key Biscayne and Miami Beach, as well as for areas in the southern half of the county that are not protected by barrier islands.

“EVACUATE Miami Beach!” Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine tweeted, later noting in a news release that once winds top 40 mph, first responders will no longer be dispatched on rescue missions here.

Broward County Mayor Barbara Sharief said evacuations in coastal areas were slated for Thursday. Lee County, on the Gulf Coast, announced Thursday afternoon that all the barrier islands — Sanibel, Captiva, Pine Island, Bonita Beach and Fort Myers Beach — will be under mandatory evacuation orders Friday.

Scott on Thursday night ordered that all state offices, public schools, state colleges and state universities shut down from Friday through Monday “to ensure we have every space available for sheltering and staging.”

Scott has declared a statewide emergency and warned that in addition to potentially forcing large-scale evacuations, Irma could batter areas that last year were flooded by Hurricane Matthew. States of emergency also were declared in Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina. On Thursday, Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal (R) expanded his declaration from six coastal counties to 30 total counties, issuing a mandatory evacuation for some areas.

[Live updates: Hurricane Irma]

Residents in Savannah, Ga., and Charleston, S.C., began to barricade their homes and flee the coast Thursday. Gov. Henry McMaster (R) warned South Carolinians that a mandatory evacuation of the state’s coastline will probably come Saturday morning at 10 a.m. Such an evacuation would come with a reversal of all eastbound lanes of four major roadways, including Interstate 26, which would be converted for a westbound escape from Charleston to Columbia.

Irma on Thursday remained a Category 5 storm, with 175 mile-per-hour sustained maximum winds, and it is a big storm, with hurricane-force winds extending 60 miles from its center. If the eye does not make landfall, many of the people who haven’t evacuated from South Florida could find themselves in hurricane conditions anyway, forecasters say.

A line of vehicles waits to dump trimmed trees and other refuse in a West Miami-Dade County disposal area near Miami on Thursday. Weak tree limbs, patio furniture and other large objects likely to be driven by the wind are being removed as Hurricane Irma is predicted to arrive Sunday. (Andrew Innerarity/For The Washington Post)

Residents are closely watching the “the spaghetti” — the dozens of computer models showing possible storm tracks, which vary widely. Computer models say that by Sunday, Irma will make a hard right turn, heading due north into Florida.

The timing of that turn will make all the difference.

If sooner, the storm’s center could stay offshore, between Miami and the Bahamas. If later, it could blow through the Florida Keys and come up the southwest side of Florida. Or it could find a middle path straight up through the Everglades and the central spine of the peninsula.

“The wild card here is the turn. Anytime a hurricane makes a turn it introduces uncertainty,” Mark DeMaria, acting deputy director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami, told The Washington Post in the center’s headquarters in west Miami-Dade County. He noted that the computer models have fluctuated modestly, with adjustments in the consensus track of only 50 miles or so every day. “But 50 miles onshore versus right of the coast makes a huge difference in impact,” he said.

The combination of Florida’s geography, the pattern of urban settlement in narrow bands along the coasts and the projected northerly path of the hurricane presents a particularly ominous picture.

“This is a large storm coming from the south,” said Dennis Feltgen, spokesman for the hurricane center. “That’s the worst-case scenario because it takes in the entire Gold Coast population and you have the greatest impact from storm surge from that direction.”

Irma’s sustained winds were the strongest recorded for an Atlantic hurricane making landfall, tied with the 1935 Florida Keys hurricane.

“Look at the size of this storm,” Gov. Scott said. “It’s powerful and deadly.”

Many Floridians were heeding warnings to escape but found themselves sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic in an effort to reach points north.

A little after 10 a.m. at the National Hotel on Miami Beach, a manager announced in four languages — English, Spanish, Portugeuse and French — that guests needed to evacuate because of a city order. At the front desk, guests were given a sheet listing the locations of emergency shelters, none of which were likely to be as nice as the beachfront Art Deco hotel, which was restored a few years ago.

“This morning as I walked to work I could see the things that could become projectiles,” said Natalya Garus, 35, lead concierge at the National. “Street signs. Coconuts. All the trash cans. Smoking stations. All the decorations.”

As she spoke, workers used a ladder to dismantle a decorative light fixture hanging over the hotel entrance.

Ruben Vandebosch, 28, and Wim Marten, 26, both of Belgium, and Jim Van Es, 24, of the Netherlands, said their plan is to drive to Atlanta.

“Atlanta has a nice ring to it,” Vandebosch said. “It sounds cool.”

Among those evacuating: Forty dogs from the Miami-Dade County animal shelter. They’re being flown to New York on a private plane owned by a dog lover named Georgina Bloomberg, according to Lauree Simmons, president and founder of the Big Dog Rescue shelter in Loxahatchee, Fla.

Big Dog staff went to Houston after Hurricane Harvey, rescuing 60 dogs from the floodwaters. Those dogs are awaiting adoption at the no-kill shelter. Simmons’s 33-acre rescue center has 457 dogs and puppies living in air-conditioned bunkhouses. Staff members were working frenetically Thursday packing up the contents of offices trailers. The dog bunkhouses, meanwhile, are fitted with hurricane impact glass built to withstand 200-mile-an-hour winds, Simmons said.

“The dogs will be very comfortable,” she said. “We’ll stay here with them through the storm, and just keep hoping for the best.”


Lauren Jackowiec, adoptions manager for the Jacksonville, Fla., Humane Society, loads crates of cats into the Humane Society’s van for an evacuation trip to Sarasota, Fla., on Thursday. (Bob Self/Florida Times Union via AP)

Popular shopping and dining areas of Fort Lauderdale, north of Miami, were nearly completely empty, the businesses buttoned up with metal curtains and new plywood protecting their front windows.

At the Coral Ridge Yacht Club on the Intracoastal Waterway, General Manager Jay Wallace and Greg Bennett, the club’s president, were walking up and down its docks making sure all the vessels, including some 90- and 100-footers valued at $2 million or more, were securely tied down. The club decided Tuesday to cease regular operations — meetings, lunch, dinner and a popular Wednesday happy hour — so that many employees would have time to evacuate.

“Just making sure everything is okay,” Wallace said. “We’re hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst. You have to.”

Less than a mile away, Fort Lauderdale’s mostly spotless sandy beaches were virtually deserted, despite the green flags attached to all its lifeguard stands indicating “low hazard” for anyone wanting to take a dip in the ocean. The water was dead calm, not a wave in sight, and the shimmering sand was desolate on a postcard 90-degree day.

In Orlando, four Stetson University students prepared to fly out of town on cheap tickets bought Monday, before prices skyrocketed and seats vanished. One of the students, Draven Shean, is a freshman who has been at school for three weeks and is heading home to Houston, where his family had evacuated in advance of Hurricane Harvey.

“I keep making this joke that God keeps sending hurricanes after me,” said Shean, who was wearing a long-sleeved gray shirt with black block letters that said “EVAC.” He picked it up two days ago at a thrift store. “I thought it was appropriate.”

Others were preparing to ride out the storm. Some were fully prepared, others seemed to have only a vague plan, or none at all.


Shelves that once held bottled water are empty as the city prepares for approaching Hurricane Irma. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

At a Costco in Naples, in southwest Florida, almost every morning shopper left the store with a flat or two of bottled water. At Costco’s gas station, vehicles jammed the six lanes for fuel. Several customers said the 24 cars waiting at 11 a.m. were nothing compared with the lines during the past two days. Some customers were on their third or fourth gas station seeking to fill up.

“As soon as they said you should consider evacuating, things got way worse,” said Michelle Anderson, who was waiting for gas in her Volvo. “I’m from Southern California, where earthquakes get you at random, so the fact that you have the ability to prepare for this is pretty awesome.”

Vicki Sargent, a Florida resident since 2003, lives in an RV park in Venice and had driven miles in search of gas Thursday. She said she has to ride out the storm because she takes care of about 70 units owned by people gone for the summer. She won’t stay in her own trailer, though.

“Only a fool would do that,” she said, saying she’ll stay with a friend. “I’m more worried about flooding than the hurricane. We have had rain and were about at saturation point.”

Tatiana Wood, 33, a waitress at a restaurant in Miami Beach’s Lincoln Road Mall, said she has a friend of a friend who lives in Oklahoma, but she was unclear of the distance or whether she’d try to get there.

“If you try to escape, you may lose money,” Wood said. “If you stay, you might lose your life.”


The National Hurricane Center’s acting director, Ed Rappaport, is seen during a televised interview at the National Weather Service’s facility in Miami, where they track and predict Hurricane Irma’s advance. (Andrew Innerarity/For The Washington Post)

Read more: The latest forecast from Capital Weather Gang

It’s not a Category 6: Debunking viral myths about Irma

Dispatch from Key West: Preparing for Irma’s wrath

Sullivan reported from Naples, Fla., and Berman reported from Washington. Kimberly Kindy in Orlando, Lori Rozsa in Palm Beach County, Dustin Waters in Charleston, S.C., and Leonard Shapiro and Perry Stein in Fort Lauderdale, contributed to this report.

Movers & Shakers: Dunkin’ Donuts, Sizmek, SpotX, Strivr, MEC

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The mobile marketing industry is ever-changing, and that applies to the people as much as the technology. Movers Shakers is a regular feature following the hottest hires in the industry, so you can keep track of who’s joined which company, and what they’re doing there.

Weisman goes from Digitas to Dunkin’
Tony Weisman has been appointed US chief marketing officer of coffee and food brand Dunkin’ Donuts.

Weisman was previously the North American CEO of digital agency DigitasLBi, and before that worked at Draft Worldwide and Leo Burnett. At Dunkin’ Donuts, he will report directly to US president David Hoffmann, and serve on the Dunkin’ brands leadership team.

“Tony is a highly experienced, much-admired business leader with a proven track record of building global brands,” said Hoffman. “Very importantly, he also has a deep understanding of working with franchised organizations, including Dunkin’ Donuts, having led the work on our account at Digitas for the past six years.”

As CMO, Weisman will lead marketing, product innovation, field marketing, consumer insights and advertising for Dunkin’, as well as the brand’s digital and CPG initiatives.

Sizmek names CEO as Rocket Fuel acquisition closes
Sizmek has named Mark Grether as its new CEO, as the creative optimisation and data activation platform completes its acquisition of predictive marketing firm Rocket Fuel.

Grether first joined Sizmek as executive chairman back in January, when former CEO Neil Nguyen stepped down. As CEO, his role will remain largely the same, leading the company’s execution of strategy and growth.

“Sizmek’s unique ability to centralize data components in one place, across the entirety of the media plan, combined with Rocket Fuel’s AI-enabled decisioning provides our clients with robust data on the campaign, the consumer, the context, the creative, and the cost,” Grether said.

He will be joined by former Rocket Fuel CEO Randy Wootton as special advisor, as the Rocket Fuel brand is phased out over the coming months. Wootton will work with both teams to help make the transition period seamless.

SpotX makes moves into Italy with first MD
Video ad serving platform SpotX has appointed its first country managing director for Italy, with the hiring of Fabio Zoboli.

Zoboli joins from an equivalent position at media tech firm Strossle, and before that worked at Teads and Ebuzzing.

Based in Milan, and reporting to MD for UK and Southern Europe Leon Siotis, Zoboli will work with local media owners and demand-side partners responsible for building SpotX’s business in Italy.

“No one knows the video landscape in Italy as well as Fabio Zoboli, on both the supply and demand side,” says Siotis. “He brings unparalleled experience of building a business in this market, combined with an understanding of working for an international company.”
 
Strivr expands with Apple’s Jewell

Strivr, a company specialising in VR training, has expanded its executive team with the appointment of Nathaniel Jewell as chief financial officer.

Jewell joins Strivr from Apple, where he spent three years leading strategy and finance for the company’s worldwide channel sales organisation. Before that, he served in a variety of MA-focused roles at Deloitte Consulting.

This is the second executive position the company has added this year, after hiring Brian Meek as CTO back in January. Strivr is growing its headcount to 60 by the end of the year, across its three offices in the US. Its platform provides an immersive performance training environment, used by clients including Walmart, United Rentals, and the NFL.

Franco makes waves at MEC
Andy Francos has joined MEC’s Wavemaker division as head of organic performance, from his previous position as search director at Publicis-owned Starcom.

At Wavemaker, Francos will be tasked with boosting the agency’s organic offering and performance measurement, reporting to UK MD Ben McKay.

“Wavemaker’s continuing growth and ambitions require investment in class-leading talent to support our clients,” said McKay. “I’m delighted that Andy, with his exceptional understanding of the search landscape, will be joining Wavemaker’s leadership team.”

MediaSmack, Inc. and Attorneys Online™ Inc. Announce Strategic Business Agreement

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SACRAMENTO, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Attorneys Online™ Inc. and MediaSmack, Inc. are pleased to announce the
completion of a Strategic Business Agreement, bringing together the
expertise of the two organizations’ online marketing businesses for
lawyers. The result of this partnership will result in wide-ranging
reporting and data tracking, additional SEO services, enhanced
Pay-Per-Click information and strategies, as well as an extended staff
to service web design, maintenance and social media. Video production
services will continue to be exclusively offered through Attorneys
Online™ Inc.

The co-founders of MediaSmack, Inc., Zach Thompson and Brian Meikle,
commented about the partnership: « We are pleased to be working with
Attorneys Online™ Inc. and excited for the future. The brilliant part
about our co-branded products is that it marries two successful law firm
marketing companies into one productive and effective force, and our
customers are the ones that reap the benefits.” CEO of Attorneys Online™
Inc., Cheney Winslow, added: “After almost 20 years of successfully
serving law firms, this alliance will elevate all of our comprehensive
marketing strategies. Our goal is and has always been to provide
uncompromising personal service and results to our clients.”

MediaSmack, Inc. and Attorneys Online™ Inc. are digital marketing firms
that cater to attorneys and law firms of all sizes. The internet
marketing specialists design and maintain cutting-edge websites, produce
compelling video media, manage Pay-Per-Click and social media
advertising campaigns, and have a strong history of achieving first
positions in Google search engine results.

Attorneys Online™ Inc., headquartered in Austin, Texas, was named Best
Full Service Legal Marketing Consultants in 2016 by TMT Media. Founded
in 1998 by Cheney Winslow, former movie and television producer, her
extensive video and acting background is apparent when viewing client
videos and television commercials, including a current spot starring
Evander Holyfield. Ms. Winslow is also the owner of AskTheLawyers.com™,
an online video and social media-driven legal directory, set for
relaunch in October 2017.

MediaSmack Inc. is headquartered in Sacramento, California, with an
objective to deliver new business and superb ROI for law firms.
MediaSmack Inc. persistently monitors each law firm campaign to make
efficient and required improvements to ensure continued success.
MediaSmack Inc. was named one of the top five fastest growing companies
by the Sacramento Business Journal in August 2017.

Canadian Marketing Association and Ipsos Launch the 2017 Digital Marketing Pulse Survey

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LinkedIn Says Your CMO Needs to Know About These 5 Marketing Trends

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Let’s face it, CMOs have an enormous amount on their plates. With marketing becoming more complex. It seems that a CMO’s responsibilities are growing nearly every day.

Keeping pace with technology and rapidly changing trends can be overwhelming at times. Even more so if you’re a CMO and your company wants you to sell more with a smaller budget.

Staying ahead of the trends can often be the key differentiator for brands on how far they can stretch their budget. Fortunately, LinkedIn has made it a bit easier by releasing a guidebook, 5 Trends Every CMO Should Know.

Here’s what LinkedIn said CMOs need to know right now.

1) Measurement is becoming more sophisticated

There are more expectations than ever for CMOs to be able to prove their strategies are effective via data and analytics. New technology exists enabling CMOs to make more data driven decisions when deciding where to spend their budgets.

2) Account based marketing enables precision targeting at scale

With newer technology available and more powerful CRM’s account based marketing has become easier than ever. Tools like LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator make prospecting and funnel building for sales teams highly efficient. Being able to easily find key individuals within organizations and send them a customized message is a powerful way to communicate with targeted accounts.

3) Influencer marketing extends reach

More executives including CEOs and CMOs are finding out that their personal brand can drive tremendous exposure for their company and extend the reach of campaigns. In the past, most high-level executives remained largely anonymous on social media and preferred to do all of their branding and marketing using the company logo.

It’s also important that your company reaches out to influencers in your industry and bring them into your community. It’s not enough to just have a lot of followers these days.

Influencers provide your company with social proof and exponentially expand the reach of your marketing message.

4) Native advertising drives engagement

Targeted on platform adds on social media sites like Facebook are enabling companies to zero in on their audience with greater effectiveness. Native advertising is one of the most efficient ways to drive traffic to your website.

When your content reaches the feeds of people that have indicated an interest in your subject matter the click rate goes up substantially. This enables you to generate massive amounts of traffic to a landing page where a customer can buy your product or signup for your service.

5) Video is the new content king

LinkedIn was a little slow to get on board with this trend as other social media platforms like Facebook, Snapchat, beBee, and Instagram rolled out their video feature long before they did. But now almost everyone should have the new video feature on LinkedIn. Early adopters are seeing fantastic reach on their videos.

The ability to reach a B2B audience with on platform videos makes LinkedIn’s new feature a game changer for marketers.

CMOs should encourage the thought leaders within their companies to make videos on social media. It wouldn’t be a bad idea if they did some videos themselves as well.

To get the full report from LinkedIn, including 50 top CMOs to follow, and more great ways to leverage these marketing trends go here.

Introducing the Video Marketing Society for Brands

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Video Marketing for Brands

Video Marketing for Brands

« The community aspect is what I’m most excited about, so people can learn not just from what we’ve done for our brands, but from the collected wisdom of other brands as well. »

Dallas, Texas (PRWEB)
September 07, 2017

Jeremy Vest has been at the forefront of online video since YouTube was still in diapers. The author, entrepreneur and self-professed “data nerd” quickly rose to the top as an expert in YouTube by putting in hundreds of hours testing, auditing and deconstructing some of the most successful brands and viral videos on YouTube.

This expertise has earned him numerous speaking engagements at conferences every year, and his podcast, TubeTalk, where he interviews fellow online video experts, is one of the most influential podcasts in this space. In 2014, he opened Vidpow and began working with major brands like Car Driver Magazine, Funimation, and HP, gaining over a billion organic views along the way.

Today, YouTube is all grown up – online video has surpassed traditional broadcast media in terms of reach – and online video is the fastest-growing segment of marketing in the world today. Which means the pressure on brands to perform in the space is higher than ever. To better serve a wider range of companies, Vidpow has pivoted from a video marketing agency to an online video marketing society.

Says Vest, “There’s only so much you can do as an agency. We realized that our true strength lies in empowering brands to embrace best practices and develop smart strategies that will perform over the long term.”

Members of the society will receive weekly training sessions with Vest and his team of YouTube-certified experts (among his team are successful content creators like Joe Scott of Answers With Joe), monthly coaching and strategy sessions, access to a library of video courses and online training, and a once-a-year in-person workshop in Las Vegas with other members.

“The community aspect is what I’m the most excited about,” says Vest. “So people can learn not just from what we’ve done for our brands, but from the collected wisdom of other brands as well. The opportunity for knowledge-sharing and collaboration is exponential.”

The new society has launched for a small group of charter members and will open up to 100 exclusive slots in January 2018. You can find more info at http://www.vidpow.com/charter. Right now new members save 60% off for a very limited time.

Key Digital Marketing Trends To Prepare For In 2017-2018

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Species that adapt survive, according to Charles Darwin — and not even necessarily those that rely on strength. Strategies and platforms are evolving in the digital age, and consumers are engaging brands on channels that didn’t exist a few years ago.

The modern marketer must be extremely agile. But while change spawns creativity, the goals of marketing remain constant. An employer hires a marketer to communicate the right message at various stages of the funnel, raise brand awareness and loyalty, drive traffic and customer engagement, and implement methods that lead to conversions and sales.

Here are key trends in marketing to prepare for in the coming year:

The Talent Gap

The talent gap in digital marketing is the root cause of unsuccessful campaigns. It results in inappropriate budgets, misinterpretation of data and ad spending on techniques that no longer work. Classically-trained marketers can help their brands rise above the noise by acquiring new digital skills. And younger, less-experienced practitioners can improve their contributions by learning the basics of marketing so they can apply core principles in creative ways.

Expect more companies to find the right balance between employing generalists and specialists — and more importantly, expect companies to increase training in digital marketing for both. To maximize the impact of budgets, practitioners can hone their skills in growing areas such as content marketing, analytics, mobile, social marketing, programmatic, SEO, in-store marketing, location targeting, personalization/customization and omnichannel integration.

There are online providers that offer authoritative certifications in digital marketing. To attract and retain talent, HR managers may have to customize compensation for personnel who consistently deliver high ROI in a digital world.

Social Marketing

Social marketing is typically considered a low cost, high ROI approach. One emerging tactic is to promote stories on Facebook’s News Feed as a way to gain favorable coverage. This approach often involves circumventing publishers and going directly to social sites to gain exposure.

Another method is to give social users offers (such as discounts and/or cash) to promote the brand’s products and services. For example, a restaurant could give a 10% discount if customers share photos of their dining experience on social media. The key is to find new mediums that deliver more awareness and traffic, and not to rely on conventional outlets such as news sites.

Video Marketing

In 2014, a YouTube vlogger installed a Go-Pro camera on his dog’s back to better understand how his pet behaves when the owner leaves the house. Audiences, too, got extremely curious and the video went viral. Pet food companies should consider that it’s not necessarily big budgets that win the day, but rather great ideas that can require low production costs. Think again of Charles Darwin: Survival goes to those who adapt, not necessarily to those who rely on strength.

Expect more businesses to hire marketers who can leverage social networks in savvy ways — people who understand the psychology behind what motivates audiences to watch video content on their devices. Brands would be prudent to close the talent gap in this key area. According to OMI, skills are most often missing in social media (27%), analytics (37%), mobile (29%) and content marketing (27%).

South Korea deploys anti-missile system as US seeks tough North Korea sanctions

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SEOUL/UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – South Korean protesters clashed with thousands of police over the deployment of a defence system aimed at countering North Korean missile attacks, while China and the United States discussed options to rein in Pyongyang.

The United States wants the U.N. Security Council to impose an oil embargo on North Korea, ban its exports of textiles and the hiring of North Korean labourers abroad, and subject leader Kim Jong Un to an asset freeze and travel ban, according to a draft resolution seen by Reuters on Wednesday.

Pressure from Washington has ratcheted up since North Korea conducted its sixth and largest nuclear test on Sunday. That test, along with a series of missile launches, showed Pyongyang was close to achieving its goal of developing a powerful nuclear weapon that could reach the United States.

Amid the rising tensions, Seoul installed the four remaining launchers of the U.S. anti-missile Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system on a former golf course in the south early on Thursday. Two launchers had already been deployed.

More than 30 people were wounded when around 8,000 South Korean police broke up a blockade of about 300 villagers and civic groups opposed to the THAAD system deployment, fire officials said.

The decision to deploy the THAAD system has drawn strong objections from China, which believes its radar could be used to look deeply into its territory and will upset the regional security balance.

“SEE WHAT HAPPENS”

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  • China says it agrees U.N. Security Council should respond further on North Korea
  • EU to discuss further sanctions on North Korea after nuclear test

U.S. President Donald Trump has urged China, North Korea’s biggest ally and trading partner, to do more to rein in its neighbour which has pursued its missile and nuclear weapons programmes in defiance of U.N. sanctions and international condemnation.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said he had an executive order ready for Trump to sign that would impose sanctions on any country that trades with Pyongyang if the United Nations does not put additional sanctions on North Korea.

Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping committed on a phone call on Wednesday to “take further action with the goal of achieving the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula”, the White House said.

“President Xi would like to do something. We’ll see whether or not he can do it. But we will not be putting up with what’s happening in North Korea,” Trump told reporters, although he offered no specifics.

“I believe that President Xi agrees with me 100 percent,” he said.

Asked whether he was considering a military response to North Korea, Trump said: “Certainly, that’s not our first choice, but we will see what happens.”

Xi told the U.S. president during their 45-minute call that the North Korean issue must be resolved through “dialogue and consultation”.

The United States had set aside for now plans to end a U.S. trade agreement with South Korea, a senior administration official said on Wednesday. The trade issue is unrelated to North Korea but has been a source of tension between the two allies.

MOON, ABE MEET

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and South Korean President Moon Jae-in spoke at a regional meeting in the eastern Russian city of Vladivostok and agreed to try to persuade China and Russia to cut off oil to North Korea as much as possible, according to South Korean officials.

The European Union’s foreign and defence ministers will discuss further sanctions for North Korea on Thursday, the bloc’s top diplomat said ahead of a EU ministers’ meeting in the Estonian capital.

However, sanctions have so far done little to stop North Korea boosting its nuclear and missile capacity as it faces off with Trump.

China and Russia have advocated a “freeze for freeze” plan, where the United States and South Korea would stop major military exercises in exchange for North Korea halting its weapons programmes, but neither side appears willing to budge.

South Korean Marines wrapped up a three-day firing drill on Thursday aimed at protecting its islands just south of the border with North Korea, while the air force will finish up a week-long drill on Friday.

North Korea says it needs to develop its weapons to defend itself against what it sees as U.S. aggression.

South Korea and the United States are technically still at war with North Korea after the 1950-53 Korean conflict ended with a truce, not a peace treaty.

Additional reporting by Soyoung Kim in SEOUL, Michael Martina in BEIJING, Steve Holland, Eric Walsh, Jeff Mason and Jim Oliphant in WASHINGTON and Gabriela Baczynska, Robin Emmott and David Mardiste in TALLINN; Writing by Lincoln Feast; Editing by Paul Tait and Nick Macfie