Reposted from Tim Richardson

“I rarely take vacation.”

Badge of honor or red alert? Some professionals never take vacation. Or they do, but they take work with them when they should be relaxing. With easy access to technology, the separation of work and leisure is often blurred. Not only during vacation, but also after work hours. I’ve written about this recently because first of all its summer when most take a vacation and secondly because I have found more research on how vacations can help individuals and organizations be more successful.

After a keynote earlier this week, a sales rep approached me to say that for many years his mantra was to be first to respond to any request for a prospective customer. He went on to explain that he was accessible at all hours of the day, on weekends, and even while on vacation. He said that he believed the first person who responded had a higher probability of closing a sale. He was inspired to change this behavior and to live with more downtime. There’s a point we reach where more time doesn’t equate to more productivity. Of course, hard work and productivity are essential in today’s workplace, but that doesn’t mean we give up our personal time by being available around the clock. Routinely providing open access after-hours or during a vacation is a bad idea. Taking work on vacation defeats the purpose of time away. As a self-employed entrepreneur, I understand how difficult it can be to truly leave work at work, particularly when you are gone for an extended time. Yet the research doesn’t lie. A study conducted by Ernst & Young found that for every additional 10 hours of vacation time an employee took, their year-end performance ratings improved by 8%. Higher performance ratings can be directly linked to increased productivity and better business outcomes. Vacations can improve ROI. American Express reported that employees who took more vacation time had 31% higher job satisfaction and were 50% more likely to stay with the company. This ultimately means lower turnover rates. Vacations can save organizations money.

According to SHRM (the Society of Human Resource Management), the cost to replace an employee is approximately six to nine months of their salary. For a company the size of American Express, this can translate to millions of dollars saved annually in recruitment and training costs. Vacations can decrease turnover. According to a study by Project: Time Off, companies that encourage vacation usage see a 34% increase in employee productivity, a 30% increase in employee happiness, and a 25% increase in workplace health. With health care costs increasing dramatically, the savings can be monumental. Vacations can improve employee mental health. Intuit found that employees who took vacations were 50% more creative and productive once they returned to work. Higher creativity and productivity improvements can significantly impact revenue. Vacations can result in new ideas and innovative thinking. These studies are just a few examples supporting how something as simple as taking time off can pay huge dividends. Do you want your organization to be more successful and your team members to be more committed to their jobs?

Take a vacation and make sure your colleagues do the same.

Reposted from Artnet News

MoMA owns four Monets. Three are on view in the permanent collection galleries on the fifth floor, the largest of which is a sprawling, curved display from the French Impressionist’s Water Lilies series. But the famous canvas wasn’t the museum’s first choice. In 1955, MoMA became the first U.S. institution to acquire one of Monet’s Water Lilies, a sprawling 18.5-foot-long example. It had been eight years since Abstract Expressionist Jackson Pollock hit the scene flinging paints, and Monet’s Impressionist work was a clear precursor. Alas, MoMA only had their Water Lillies until 1958, when an historic fire incinerated the artwork. The reason the fire broke out was once again because MoMA was an early adopter—in this case of air conditioning. At noon on April 15, crews renovating the system took a smoke break during their lunch hour. A spark from one of their cigarettes fluttered into a nearby pile of sawdust, which went up in flames. The fire spread to paint cans, which ignited even more violently, filling the building with thick black smoke in minutes, endangering both people and paintings. As the New York Times reported the next day, crowds of workers in Midtown gaped at the hellish scene unfolding: a three-alarm fire blackening and busting out the building’s sleek glass facade. Firefighters swarmed the scene, and the museum’s 500 visitors and staff were evacuated. Most escaped through adjoining buildings, like MoMA’s offices and the Whitney Museum of Art, but 200 had to wait on the roof garden for an hour before they could be rescued. One of the repairmen perished in the fire, and 28 firefighters and three employees sustained injuries. Publications recounted the chaos, despair, and eventual relief at the scene with a flourish.

Upon reaching the street, staff members including board chairman Nelson Rockefeller caught their breath and returned inside to save as many of the museum’s 2,000 artworks on view as they could. Handing the pieces down a bucket brigade–style chain lining a stairwell, they rescued a whopping $4 million in art ($43 million today) while firefighters spent an hour dousing the blaze. The estimated damages amounted to under $300,000 ($3.2 million today).

MoMA’s building recovered easily, but the smoke and hoses damaged half a dozen artworks, including Umberto Boccioni’s The City Rises (1910), Larry Rivers’s Washington Crossing the Delaware (1953), Candido Portinari’s 1939 World’s Fair mural Festival of St. John’s Eve, and Pawel Tchelitchew’s Hide-and-Seek (1940-42)—one of the museum’s most popular offerings, according to Time—along with a seven-foot rendition from Monet’s Water Lilies that came out looking like a “burnt marshmallow.” Monet’s larger Water Lilies also proved unsalvageable, all but crushed by firefighters who had to force their way into the gallery put out the blaze. Jean Volkner, who studied under the nation’s leading conservators, managed to restore the smoke-ridden facade of Jackson Pollock’s Number 1A (1948).

Meanwhile, Georges Seurat’s A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884–86) was at MoMA for its only-ever loan from the Art Institute of Chicago. Eleven people assisted in evacuating the 500-pound display, which was reinstalled in the New York museum in May`1—then returned home to Chicago under armed guard two weeks later.

In the end, MoMA paired their $100,000 insurance payout from the fire with funds from the Mrs. Simon Guggenheim fund to buy another Monet — this time the triptych we know today — that the New York Times swore was even better. MoMA heeded the Fire Commissioner’s admonitions and re-built the gallery walls from cinder blocks rather than wood, and Volkmer went on to find the museum’s first in-house conservation department. The oft-forgotten fire’s mark still remains today.

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Reposted from CISA

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Reposted from MPMA

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Reposted from DHS/CISA

Contact Commercial Facilities Sector Management at CommercialFacilitiesSector@cisa.dhs.gov or learn more at https://www.cisa.gov/topics/critical-infrastructure-security-and-resilience/critical-infrastructure-sectors/commercial-facilities-sector.

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Reposted from DHS/CISA

All organizations should share information on incidents and anomalous activity to CISA 24/7 Operations Center at report@cisa.gov or Report | CISA and/or to the FBI via your local FBI field office or the FBI’s 24/7 CyWatch at (855) 292-3937 or CyWatch@fbi.gov. State, local, tribal, and territorial (SLTT) organizations should report incidents to MS-ISAC (866-787-4722 or SOC@cisecurity.org.

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Reposted from DHS/CISA

CISA provides secure means for constituents and partners to report incidents, phishing attempts, malware, and vulnerabilities.

Report a Cybersecurity Incident: Report anomalous cyber activity and/or cyber incidents 24/7 to report@cisa.gov or (888) 282-0870. Contact Us: Central@CISA.dhs.gov

• Report an Incident

• Report Phishing

• Report a Vulnerability

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Reposted from DHC/CISA

The CISA Services Catalog is all CISA in one place – a single resource that provides users with access to information on services across CISA’s mission areas that are available to Federal Government, State, Local, Tribal, and Territorial Government Private Industry Academia, and NGO and Non-Profit stakeholders.

The Catalog is interactive, allowing users to filter and quickly access applicable services with just a few clicks: CISA Services Catalog | CISA

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Reposted from DHS/CISA

Weather CISA Cyber Essentials guides leaders of small businesses, as well as leaders of small and local government agencies, as they work to develop an actionable understanding of where to start implementing organizational cybersecurity practices.

Consistent with the NIST Cybersecurity Framework and other standards, the Cyber Essentials are the starting point to cyber readiness.

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Reposted from DHA/CISA

The Commercial Facilities Sector Risk Management Agency (SRMA) Community of Interest (COI) site enables users to easily access relevant and current information specific to the Commercial Facilities Sector.

If you need a HSIN account, please contact HSIN@HQ.DHS.GOV and request access to the HSIN-CI and the Commercial Facilities Community of Interest.

• Provide your name, business email address, company, and reason for the request (access information pertinent to your job as your organization’s security director, cybersecurity officer, etc.)

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