Update: Rubber Chicken World Record Set

Last week, the GraVoc News Blog brought you the news of a world record attempt being held in Boston for the most rubber chickens tossed at the same place, at the same time.  As expected, the world record was set pending the approval of the Guinness Book of World Records staff—and caught on video by GraVoc’s DivergingSoul Media Production team.

DivergingSoul’s Brian Gravel captures the tense moments before the record attempt.  Photo courtesy Haywire Group.

Officially, 265 rubber chickens flew during the promotional event for the Haywire Group’s Flickin’ Chicken game, which raised money for the Charles River Watershed Association.  DivergingSoul’s video was picked up by several media outlets, resulting in a great deal of publicity for the game manufacturer and its beneficiary charity. 

GraVoc Associates, Inc. is a full-service technology consulting firm located in Peabody, MA specializing in the practices of information systems, professional services, and information security.  Upon the firm’s joining forces with DivergingSoul Media Production, clients in Greater Boston, New England, and beyond contract GraVoc for services ranging from the implementation of ERP systems to business continuity planning to filming the flight of hundreds of rubber chickens.  For more information about the company and how those three services could possibly be connected, please visit GraVoc.com.

GraVoc to Film World Record Attempt

In what is rumored to be the organization's first project in the rubber chicken throwing industry, GraVoc Associates will be filming a world record attempt in Boston this Sunday, April 25th. GraVoc's media production staff will be on hand as the folks at Haywire Group are orchestrating an attempt to set a world record for the largest number of rubber chickens tossed simultaneously.



The event will take place on Artesani Park on Soldiers Field Road in Brighton, MA Sunday at 3:00 PM, and the public is encouraged to attend, witness, and participate in the event. Rubber chickens will be available for purchase for $1 and all proceeds are to go toward the Charles River Watershed Association. This event is being organized by Haywire Group, a Western Massachusetts firm that designs family board games including the popular "Flickin Chicken" game.



Most world record attempts require the presence of an official adjudicator or a long list of evidence to verify the record. The DivergingSoul team (now a division of GraVoc) is responsible for compiling video evidence of the event. Audio/video production of events like Haywire's world record attempt is one of the services regularly offered by GraVoc's media production team.



GraVoc Associates, Inc, a Peabody, MA-based technology consulting firm, expanded into media production in 2010 with its acquisition of DivergingSoul Media Production. Together they serve Greater Boston, New England, and beyond with media-related services such as A/V production, web design, web 2.0 services, and the popular DS2 digital signage network. GraVoc also specializes in the practices of professional services, information systems, and information security. For more information about DivergingSoul and GraVoc, please visit http://www.gravoc.com/ or http://www.divergingsoul.com/.

GraVoc to Attend Great New England Credit Union Show

Next week, GraVoc Associates, Inc. will be sending some of their information security team to the Great New England Credit Union Show in Boxborough, MA.

This will be GraVoc's first appearance at the show, and they can be found in booth 70, in between Enterprise Car Sales and FMS (Financial Management Solutions). An estimated 700 attendees from credit unions across the New England region are planning to be at the event, which features thirteen seminars of interest to credit union executives. Additionally, eighty vendors are expected to exhibit.

GraVoc's information security team will be on hand to explain more about their wide range of information security services that can be found both on the gravoc.com website and in past posts of the GraVoc News Blog. The GraVoc booth will feature typical tradeshow fare, such as a video display, candy, and handouts. We hope to see many familiar faces there, as well as new faces.

GraVoc Associates, Inc, founded in 1994, provides a dynamic range of information security services to financial institutions throughout Greater Boston and New England. The Peabody, MA-based company specializes in business continuity planning, LAN/WAN testing, and risk assessments. Lately, among its more popular services have been social engineering testing and services to help clients comply with the Massachusetts Data Security Law. Beyond information security, GraVoc also specializes in the fields of professional services, media production, and information systems. For more information about the services GraVoc provides, please visit http://www.gravoc.com/.

GraVoc Participates in Peabody Education Council Events

In the last few weeks, GraVoc has made efforts to give back to the Peabody community through a pair of educational programs.  Historically, GraVoc has an ongoing relationship with the Peabody Ed Council, and President/CEO David Gravel is the council’s current chair.  Recently, GraVoc has participated in the mentoring program and in Friday’s Peabody Veterans Memorial High School Career Day.

Several students interested in various aspects of business visited GraVoc for a taste of job shadowing.  Students with interest in business administration, computer programming, and media production spent a few hours behind the scenes at GraVoc.  Programmers Matt Coraccio and Paul Lincoln offered advice to a student who was interested in programming but had not yet taken any programming classes in high school.  “I only took one programming class in high school, and didn’t take any more until my sophomore year of college,” Coraccio said.  “I told him not to worry, and he had plenty of time to take classes.  It was great to see a student interested in what we do.”

GraVoc also sent three representatives to PVMHS Career Day, also put on by the Peabody Ed Council, this morning.  Aside from the free stress balls and candy selections, students asked questions about GraVoc, the types of services they offer, the level of education achieved by their employees, and the fields of study GraVoc’s employees pursued.  As GraVoc is a dynamic business with employees from many different backgrounds, students were encouraged to study fields they were interested in as undergraduates.

GraVoc Associates, Inc, based in Peabody, MA and serving Greater Boston, New England, and beyond in the practices of information systems, professional services, and information security, is a 17-employee firm whose professionals bring backgrounds from accounting and finance to communications to English to computer science.  Like many small businesses, GraVoc prides itself on its time spent on community service.  For more information about GraVoc, please visit www.gravoc.com, and for more information about the Peabody Education Council, please visit www.peabodyedcouncil.com.

GraVoc Holds Compliance Consortium

GraVoc’s information security team would like to extend its gratitude toward North Easton Savings Bank for hosting the first quarterly information security & risk management consortium.  The event was held Tuesday morning March 30 at NESB’s new corporate offices in South Easton, and was attended by several GraVoc information security clients and friends.

Led by GraVoc’s Nate Gravel and Dan Vassallo, the meeting was the first of hopefully several where financial service executives both within IT and outside IT can share ideas, concerns, and observations regarding the current compliance landscape for regional financial institutions.  Among the many topics discussed this quarter were the changes in Regulation E that require customers and members to opt in for courtesy overdraft payment, challenges brought on by the popularity of social media outlets, and current patterns in regulatory exams.

The GraVoc information security team is grateful that some of its clients braved adverse weather conditions to attend the event, and hopes that all attendees considered the event a conduit for discussion that was worth the drive.  If you are interested in attending the next event, most likely to be held in June, please contact either Nate or Dan by calling the GraVoc offices at 978-538-9055.

GraVoc Associates, Inc., based in Peabody, MA, has served clients in greater Boston, New England, and beyond in the practices of information security, information systems, and professional services.  Some of the more pertinent services offered in the information security practice include business continuity/disaster recovery planning, Massachusetts General Law 93H/201 CMR 17.00 compliance services, and social engineering simulations.  For more information about the services provided by GraVoc, please visit http://www.gravoc.com.

Social Media Restrictions – Your Company’s Responsibility?

Now might be the best time to address the issue of an enterprise’s employees’ use of social media and whether a business should—or even has the right to—regulate their employees’ use of Facebook, blogs, Twitter, and other sites known as “social media” sites.  This has become a concern as of late because now that Facebook is well over five years old, it does not look to be a fad that is going away.  It has become a breeding ground for computer viruses and worms, such as the one circulating this week.  It has also been a platform for social engineering attack tactics.  Similarly, blogs (including this one) have been occasionally prone to spammers and potential attackers.

Even beyond the virus and social engineering risks associated with social media sites, business are faced with several dilemmas surrounding social networking.  These include the following:

• Content filtering:  Businesses must decide whether to completely block sites such as facebook.com or blogspot.com so that employees spend less time wasted on the internet and more time working.  On the other hand, some Facebook pages or blogs (especially the GraVoc News Blog) could provide helpful information.
• The Organization’s Use of Social Media:  GraVoc obviously has a blog and a Facebook account, as do many of our clients.  In fact, one of the services we provide is helping a business leverage social media as a business tool.  But who is responsible for updating and regulating content posted on these sites?  Is the organization going to devote several hours of labor to monitor employees’ status updates and/or regularly write articles like this one?
• Employees’ Behavior on Social Media:  Organizations don’t want their employees to be posting Twitter updates or blog posts about how much they hate their boss, how rudely they were treated by a customer, or how they are not motivated to be working on a Friday afternoon.  They also don’t want their employees to be posting R-rated material on their Facebook page while listing who their employer is on their profile.

Ultimately, it is most likely going to become necessary for most businesses, even the smallest businesses, to develop written policies dictating what is allowed and not allowed on social media outlets.  For liability purposes, it is probably necessary to document what an employee is responsible for and what the employee can or cannot do surrounding social media and how they can affect the organization’s reputation or information systems.

GraVoc Associates, Inc, a Peabody, MA-based technology consulting firm, uses social media including a Facebook page and the GraVoc News Blog to inform customers, potential customers, and friends about relevant topics such as this one.  GraVoc’s practices of information systems, information security, and professional services interact with social networking from several different directions, as GraVoc provides information security services that could help an organization draft policies or detect social engineering tactics, web 2.0 development services that help businesses generate business through these sites, and IT services that could help an organization safeguard itself with technological risks associated with the use of social networking sites.  For more information about the wide variety of services offered by the organization, please visit http://www.gravoc.com. 

GraVoc Website Updates

The last week has brought some changes to the GraVoc website.  The transformation of the GraVoc Software website (http://www.gravocsoftware.com) is now complete and much easier to navigate and get information on the software products offered by the company. 

Some of the products offered include the GFS field service management platform, several utilities to integrate into Microsoft Dynamics GP, and the versatile GCMS cemetery and crematory management application for GraVoc’s many clients in the death care industry.

Also new to the GraVoc website is a case study regarding GraVoc’s Massachusetts General Law 93-H services.  GraVoc’s information security team launched a recent project to help a client comply with the standards presented by the Massachusetts Data Security Law.

To access this case study and to learn more about GraVoc’s Mass. Data Security Law services, please click here.

GraVoc Associates, Inc, founded in 1994 and based in Peabody, MA, serves the Greater Boston area, New England, and beyond in the practices of information systems, information security, and professional services.  We strongly encourage you to explore the revamped GraVoc website, available at http://www.gravoc.com, in its entirety to learn more about the company and what it can do for your business.