March
Madness can equal biz badness
Before
you wager $50 on the office pool Web site to back
your favorite March Madness basketball picks, make
sure those few minutes don’t wind up costing your
company even more.
As
with any other major event in the news, the weeks
surrounding the NCAA tournament are ripe with opportunity
for online scammers as millions of fans fill out
Internet brackets and comb the Web for news on their
teams.
Possible
attacks include fake betting Web sites and viruses
that can infect legitimate office pool sites and
threaten a company’s entire network, according to
Dmitri Alperovitch, principal research scientist
at Secure Computing, a web gateway security provider.
“Consumers
and businesses need to be prepared in order to beat
the bad guys at their game,” he said.
To
keep scammers from cashing in on your bets, follow
these tips:
Never
open e‑mails from unknown sources. If you
do, don’t click on any links in the message, and
open a new window and enter the link manually instead.
Guard
your personal information and submit it only to
reputable sites.
Be
wary of online message boards and discussion forums.
Anyone can post content to such sites, including
online thieves who load viruses into messages and
video links.
Drug‑free
workplaces more the norm
Chances
are better that your cubicle‑mate is showing
up to work sober. Fewer people are using drugs in
the workplace, thanks to employer crackdowns and
increased awareness of drug‑testing programs.
Workplace
drug use hit a new low in 2006, according to the
annual Drug Testing Index recently released by Quest
Diagnostics Inc., a workplace drug testing service.
Amphetamine
use among federal workers, including pilots, truck
drivers and others mandated by the U.S. Department
of Transportation for drug testing, fell 20 percent
last year, the index reported. Use of marijuana,
the most commonly detected drug, fell 6.3 percent
among the general work force, according to Barry
Sample, Quest’s director of science and technology
for the employer solutions division.
More
businesses are submitting their employees to drug
tests, including the majority of the Fortune
1000 companies, he said. Drugs users seem to have
caught on, learning to look for work elsewhere
if they aren’t ready to kick the habit, he said.
Who
makes the financial call? Guys or dolls?
Who
wears the pants in well‑to‑do families
when it comes to handling all that cash? It depends
on who you ask.
More
than half of men, 56 percent, say husbands make
financial decisions in the home, but women beg to
differ, according to a report released by Spectrem
Group, a consulting firm that specializes in the
affluent and retirement markets.
Nearly
two‑thirds of women believe financial decision‑making
is a joint effort, the report found. Despite their
differing beliefs, men and women pool their money
in most affluent households, with just 5 percent
of families separating finances.
The
report, “Affluent Household Financial Decision‑Making,”
is based on telephone interviews
conducted in late 2006 among more than 500 affluent
households, which include those with more than $500,000
of investable assets.
