Power Mac Center Collaborates With Brillante Mendoza, Shaira Luna to Mentor Young Creative

Wazzup Pilipinas!

Power Mac Center has always been all-out in supporting technology-assisted creative expression. Just recently, the premier Apple partner gathered young creatives, mostly photographers and videographers, in an event called Lounge to help them build connections in the industry, get to interact and learn first-hand from professionals like Director Brillante Mendoza and Shaira Luna, and discover powerful devices to boost their craft.

In partnership with LaCie, a French brand of digital storage solutions, Power Mac Center was able to get internationally acclaimed Director Brillante Mendoza to talk about his experience in the film industry and give the young creatives tips in filmmaking.

“I use several cameras on the set. I use three to four cameras on the set. 4K lahat so mabibigat yung mga files so on the set, we make sure na right after the shoot or even during the shoot actually, kailangan tina-transfer and LaCie is really very useful in that aspect,” Mendoza told his audience.

An independent filmmaker through and through, Mendoza enjoys the full creative freedom to tell his story the way he wants to. His biggest challenge though, was sourcing for funds. So in order to secure his hard work, which is the film itself, Mendoza makes sure to invest in equipment that are reliable and provide him with complete peace of mind.

Meanwhile, for her part, professional fashion and advertising photographer Shaira Luna talked about what drives her to follow her passion in photography and how LaCie complements her on-the-go lifestyle and keeps her file transfer speedy and protected.

“I’m very thankful that I have LaCie to back me up. I just have so many pictures if only you know. I’ve started organizing my Instagram into color themes because I just have that many photos,” Luna said.
Luna loves being a photographer because it allows her to travel and meet a lot of people, especially creative minds she gets to work with in the process.

“Power Mac Center shares LaCie’s commitment to support the creative community. More than anything, we provide solutions to the demands of the industry from creatives of today,” said Power Mac Center Marketing Director Joey Alvarez.

An evening of fun, learning, and discovery, the Lounge event was meant to bring creatives together and “lounge” with industry movers to share/brew ideas. LaCie will continue to hold such pocket events for its new products this 2018.

LaCie is Seagate’s premium brand of world-class storage solutions designed for Mac users, photographers, videographers, audio professionals, and other power users. Its products are available in Power Mac Center stores nationwide. For more information as well as updates on future events, follow @powermaccenter on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or YouTube.

GameCon 2018 Underscores New Gen Gaming

Wazzup Pilipinas!

Close to 4,000 gaming enthusiasts attended the recently concluded GameCon, which was supported by PLDT and wireless unit Smart Communications.

The attendance increased by about 30 percent from last year’s event, said GameCon project head Elaine Cedillo, showing the growing industry of gaming in the Philippines.

Now on its second year, GameCon featured exhibitions and competitions on various kinds of gaming—from mobile and PC to video, traditional, tabletop, eSports, virtual reality, robotics, and cosplay, among other activities—with the theme “New Generation Gaming.”

PLDT Home Fibr and Smart Developer Network (Smart DevNet) supported the two-day event by leading the game developers’ workshop and providing strong connectivity. Smart DevNet chief evangelist and partnerships head Paul Pajo, and junior product manager PJ de la Cerna were also present to judge Robo Rumble, a robot fighting competition designed to test the participants’ skills in electronics, programming, design, and other areas.

Events like GameCon prove the local gaming industry has grown bigger over the years, according to game artist Philip Adrian Gungab. A game art teacher at De La Salle–College of Saint Benilde, Gungab is also a cofounder of Re:Cast Games, a new studio composed of fellow instructors, programmers, and artists interested in game development for web and mobile devices.

“Game development is booming in the Philippines. The fact that we have an event like this means the game industry in the Philippines is big. A lot of people are into games now, either as a developer or an artist,” said Gungab, who taught game art at GameCon’s developers’ workshop.

Gungab also said mobile games are widespread because they’re accessible and typically free of charge. With almost everyone using a smartphone now, the popularity of mobile games has become a boon to game developers, he noted.

“The mobile game industry, for me, is a big thing for game developers. When we release a mobile game, for example, on App Store or Google Play Store, it’s not restricted to users in the Philippines alone; the game may be downloaded in other countries. We now have a platform to share our passion projects with everyone,” he said.

De la Cerna, meanwhile, said fans of mobile games Arena of Valor, Clash of Clans, Clash Royale, Everwing, and Mobile Legends may continue leveling up with Smart GameTime data offers. GameTime 50 provides 7 days of gaming, with 300MB per day for the said games, plus 50 battle tickets for Mobile Legends, for only P50 by texting GAME50 to 9999. GameTime 100, he added, offers 30 days at 300MB per day, plus 100 battle tickets, for P100 by texting GAME100.

Pajo said that to experience faster speeds, mobile gamers should use Smart’s super-charged LTE network. He said Smart users should text SIMCHECK to 5832 to check if their SIM is LTE-enabled, and upgrade to LTE for free while retaining their numbers at any Smart Store.

Smart DevNet is Smart’s developer community program targeted at desktop and mobile developers. It promotes general awareness of mobile apps development and technopreneurship while striving to foster a vibrant developer community in the Philippines by organizing and sponsoring tech events and meetups.

Web Vulnerabilities in 2017 Up By 212 Percent

Wazzup Pilipinas!

Leading local DDoS Mitigation Services provider IPC is urging companies to beef up their web security as the numbers of web application vulnerabilities are rapidly increasing, as reported in a study by its global partner Imperva Incapsula that shows an overview of web application vulnerabilities in 2017.

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According to the study¹, 2017 saw a whopping 212 percent increase in new vulnerabilities with 14,082 recorded, as compared to 2016’s 6,615. Imperva also states that more than half of these vulnerabilities have a public exploit available to hackers, and that more than a third (36 percent) don’t have an available solution such as a software upgrade workaround or software patch.

Niño Valmonte, IPC’s Director for Marketing & Digital Innovation, explains that money is the main motivator in the rapid increase of web vulnerabilities. “Websites are common targets because they can generate a substantial amount of money for cybercriminals. For instance, an e-commerce website would normally store personal information. In the wrong hands, we already know the kind of risk we can get exposed to. Also, criminals can hold websites up for ransom from company owners.”

Ransomware, the method of putting up a website for ransom that Valmonte referred to, is a global phenomenon that is predicted to exceed $11.5 billion annually by 2019². The most common form of payment sought from victims in order to get their websites back is the popular cryptocurrency Bitcoin.

¹https://www.incapsula.com/blog/the-state-of-web-application-vulnerabilities-in-2017.html

²https://cybersecurityventures.com/ransomware-damage-report-2017-part-2/

Content of websites in peril

Another alarming statistic that the study revealed is the increasing number of vulnerabilities in Content Management Systems (CMS), a tool used to create and manage content posted on a website. The study revealed that WordPress, one of the most commonly used CMS today, posted a 400% increase in new vulnerabilities since 2016, with 75% coming from third-party vendor plugins.

IPC urges businesses to be wary of this as when successfully infiltrated, cybercriminals can use the CMS to edit, remove, and even post content on a website. The damage may range from altering text to even changing the visual appearance of the entire website, a tactic commonly known as defacement. Criminals can also extract sensitive information stored inside a website through the CMS.

“These findings should serve as a wake-up call for organizations to put up stronger web security protocols. CMS infiltration should not be taken lightly because this is only the tip of the iceberg. CMS attacks also pose risks to personal and confidential data,” Valmonte said.

To protect one’s website, IPC recommends deploying security measures such as applying a Web Application Firewall (WAF) that can monitor and control incoming web traffic.

As one of the leading DDoS Mitigation service providers, IPC provides subscription-based WAF service through IPC InCAST (In-Country Attack Scrubbing Tactics) services, a cloud-based Web Application Firewall proxy solution that is supported by the country’s first and only DDoS Mitigation Service to feature local data scrubbing.

“By closely monitoring network traffic, WAF can detect and block any malicious data, thereby stopping an attack from happening in the first place,” explained Valmonte.

For more information about Web Application Firewall, visit ipc.ph/en/waf/