TechHub: Manufacturing is Hot, Catching Fog Can Be Cool, and Hackers Could Be Lurking on Your Contact Us Page

Manufacturers Are Happy – Very Happy

When U.S. manufacturers are happy, they invest big in making capital improvements, hiring and increasing employee wages.

And they’re happier than ever, according to a new survey by the National Association of Manufacturers highlighted by Industry Week.

More than 95 percent of the manufacturers surveyed said they’re optimistic about the future, crediting the federal tax reform package that became law in January 2018.

That’s an all-time high in the 20-year history of the association’s survey, which clocked all-time high projections among manufacturers survey for full-time employment in the next 12 months (3.1 percent) and capital investment (4.1 percent).

MIT Researchers Harvest Water From Cooling Tower Fog

MIT engineers have devised a way to capture fog from power plant cooling towers and use the water it contains to supply clean drinking water.

That’s right – they made a fog harvester.

“It’s distilled water, which is of higher quality, that’s now just wasted,” said MIT associate professor of mechanical engineering Kripa Varanasi, who explained the technology in the June edition of Science Advances. “That’s what we’re trying to capture.”

The technology, which uses a beam of ions to electrically charge water droplets so they can be collected, won MIT’s $100,000 Entrepreneurship Competition and is being developed by startup Infinite Cooling, according to Power Magazine.

FBI Cautions Companies About ‘Spear-Phishing’ Cyber Attacks

Did you know the FBI’s cyber security experts share regular Private Industry Updates to help companies protect themselves against online threats?

At a cyber security seminar last week organized by GrayMatter in Pittsburgh, Keith Mularski, unit chief assigned to the FBI’s cyber division, told the audience that the updates can be a valuable resource for companies contending with evolving cyber security threats.

In the latest advisory, the FBI warns that hackers have used contact info posted on company websites to target or conduct so-called spear-phishing campaigns against high-ranking company officials. The goal is to infect the corporate network with malicious software that can collect intelligence, the FBI said.

“Common techniques … include sending well-crafted spear phishing messages tailored to the professional interests of the target, the use of watering holes to redirect visitors to malicious Web sites, and the use of stolen or weak user credentials to exploit a network vulnerability,” the report said.

Some of the preventative measures the FBI recommends are:

• Apply extra scrutiny to e-mail messages with links or attachments directed toward executives
• Brief executives at your company to be extra vigilant and report any suspicious email messages
• Monitor employee logins outside normal business hours and other anomalous activity