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Uncle, nephew team up to operate Brewerton Ace Hardware store
CICERO, N.Y. — With spring right around the corner, the Brewerton Ace Hardware is gearing up for its first full year in business. The 9,400-square-foot store opened its doors last June at 9655 Brewerton Road in Brewerton (town of Cicero). Jeff Parzych and his nephew Austin Parzych operate the store in a family effort. The idea […]
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CICERO, N.Y. — With spring right around the corner, the Brewerton Ace Hardware is gearing up for its first full year in business.
The 9,400-square-foot store opened its doors last June at 9655 Brewerton Road in Brewerton (town of Cicero). Jeff Parzych and his nephew Austin Parzych operate the store in a family effort.
The idea first came about when a family member was approached about a similar type of investment, Jeff Parzych says. While that family member passed on the investment, it got the family thinking about options and opportunities, he says. “That sort of sparked it.”
Owning a hardware store wasn’t a completely foreign idea to Parzych. His grandparents operated Alpar Hardware in the Eastwood neighborhood of Syracuse. After doing his due diligence, Parzych settled on Ace Hardware, which is a retailer-owned hardware cooperative.
“Ace is a solid business,” he says, and owners benefit from Ace’s national marketing efforts and distribution network. Ace also worked with Parzych through the entire process from helping to find a suitable location to setting up the store and training employees.
The Brewerton location is a good one with a definite need for a hardware store, he says. To create the store, they leased the space formerly occupied by the antique store One the Farm and an empty 2,000-square-foot storefront next door in the same shopping center.
“We did quite an extensive remodel,” Parzych says, including taking out the wall connecting the two spaces, installing new flooring and lighting, and painting the entire area. He declined to provide specifics on the investment but noted it was substantial.
According to myace.com, the typical investment to open an Ace Hardware store runs between $650,000 and $1 million, depending on the size of the store. As a cooperative, Ace does not charge a franchise fee or royalties, but does require owners to have $250,000 in unencumbered cash and a net worth of at least $400,000.
Sales have been good so far, Parzych says, adding that the store is hitting Ace’s projected numbers for customer counts and number of transactions.
The biggest struggle has been getting the word out about the store. “We’re very active on social media,” he says. He also has radio ads running on The Dinosaur 94.1, 95.3, 103.9 FM, Fox Sports 92.5 FM, and 1490 AM. “We’re going to be having some TV stuff coming up,” he adds, and the store advertises in Clipper magazine.
Parzych also plans to start a newsletter and recently started working with a marketing firm. The store also benefits from fliers that Ace mails out.
Starting in February, the store will work with the Cicero parks and recreation department to offer kid’s building sessions. Looking ahead to spring, Parzych is excited for what is typically a busy season for hardware stores. He’s hoping to partner with local farmers to bring a weekly farmer’s market to the store.
He says it’s efforts like that, along with extra services such as screen repairs offered onsite, which help set his Ace store apart from big-box stores like Lowe’s Home Improvement Warehouse or Home Depot. In addition, the Ace store stocks more uncommon items that the big stores don’t routinely carry, Parzych notes. On top of the roughly 20,000 items carried in the store, he has access to more than 200,000 items through the Ace distribution network to help him get whatever his customers need.
The store currently employs 15 people, most of them part-time. Prior to opening the Brewerton Ace, Parzych ran his own lawn and landscaping business.
Headquartered in Oak Brook, Illinois, the Ace Hardware cooperative has more than 5,300 locally owned and operated stores in about 70 countries.
New York business leaders expect conditions to improve in next 6 months
New York business leaders “generally” expect conditions to improve over the next six months. That’s according to firms responding to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s January 2022 Business Leaders Survey. It’s a survey the New York Fed distributes the day after it distributes the monthly Empire State Manufacturing Survey. The survey’s index for future
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New York business leaders “generally” expect conditions to improve over the next six months.
That’s according to firms responding to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s January 2022 Business Leaders Survey.
It’s a survey the New York Fed distributes the day after it distributes the monthly Empire State Manufacturing Survey.
The survey’s index for future business activity increased nine points to 43.7, while the future business-climate index rose 16 points to 30.6, its “highest level in several months,” the New York Fed said.
Strong gains in employment, wages, and prices are expected in the months ahead, and capital-spending plans remained solid.
Current activity
Business activity increased in the region’s service sector, but at its slowest pace since March of last year, according to the January survey.
The headline business-activity index moved down 5 points to 9.2. The survey found 35 percent of respondents reported that conditions improved over the month, while 26 percent said that conditions worsened.
The business-climate index fell 12 points to -27.9, indicating that on net, firms continued to view the business climate as “worse than normal for this time of year,” the New York Fed said.
Other survey details
Both input prices and selling prices continued to increase at a near record pace in January, though the indexes were marginally lower than last month.
The prices-paid index ticked down 3 points to 77.3, and the prices-received index fell 3 points to 39.4.
The employment index dipped 11 points to 7.6, suggesting that employment growth slowed, and the wages index was unchanged at 52.3, signaling another month of “strong” wage growth.
The capital-spending index held steady at 9.8.
About the survey
The Business Leaders Survey is a monthly survey conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York that asks companies across its district about recent and expected trends in key business indicators.
The district includes New York State, Northern New Jersey, and Fairfield County, Connecticut.
This survey is designed to parallel the Empire State Manufacturing Survey, though it covers a wider geography and the questions are slightly different.
The New York Fed sends the survey on the first business day of each month to the same pool of about 150 business executives, usually the president or CEO, in the region’s service sector. In a typical month, about 100 responses are received by around the 10th of the month when the survey closes.
Oneida County’s hotel occupancy soars nearly 53 percent
UTICA, N.Y. — Oneida County’s hotels attracted a large increase in guests in December compared to a year prior as they continued to rebound to pre-pandemic levels. The county’s hotel-occupancy rate (rooms sold as a percentage of rooms available) jumped 52.6 percent to 43.7 percent in December from the year-ago month. That’s according to a
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UTICA, N.Y. — Oneida County’s hotels attracted a large increase in guests in December compared to a year prior as they continued to rebound to pre-pandemic levels.
The county’s hotel-occupancy rate (rooms sold as a percentage of rooms available) jumped 52.6 percent to 43.7 percent in December from the year-ago month. That’s according to a new report from STR, a Tennessee–based hotel market data and analytics company. For the full 2021 year, occupancy rose 33.8 percent to 54.9 percent.
Revenue per available room (RevPar), a key industry gauge that measures how much money hotels are bringing in per available room, rocketed up 82.2 percent to $49.63 in last year’s final month, compared to December 2020. RevPar was up 52.2 percent for the entire 2021 year to $64.26.
Average daily rate (or ADR), which represents the average rental rate for a sold room, increased 19.4 percent to $113.52 in Oneida County in December. For the whole year, ADR went up 13.7 percent to $117.16.
The robust December 2021 hotel-occupancy report marks the 10th consecutive month of significant increases in occupancy in the Mohawk Valley’s most-populated county, compared to the year-earlier month. These are the first 10 months in which the year-over-year comparisons were to a month affected substantially by the COVID crisis. The prior year of monthly reports before that showed large declines in occupancy as the comparisons were to a pre-pandemic month.
Upstate, statewide consumer sentiment rise slightly in Q4
Consumer sentiment in upstate New York was measured at 64.0 in the fourth quarter of 2021, up 0.6 points from the last reading of 63.4 in the year’s third quarter. That’s according to the latest quarterly survey of Upstate and statewide consumer sentiment that the Siena College Research Institute (SRI) released Jan. 12. The 63.4 reading in
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Consumer sentiment in upstate New York was measured at 64.0 in the fourth quarter of 2021, up 0.6 points from the last reading of 63.4 in the year’s third quarter.
That’s according to the latest quarterly survey of Upstate and statewide consumer sentiment that the Siena College Research Institute (SRI) released Jan. 12.
The 63.4 reading in the third quarter represented Upstate’s lowest overall index since 2011.
Upstate’s overall sentiment of 64.0 in the fourth quarter was 9.1 points below the statewide consumer-sentiment level of 73.1, which rose 1.2 points from the third quarter.
The statewide figure was 5.7 points higher than the fourth-quarter figure of 67.4 for the entire nation, which was down 5.4 points from the third-quarter figure, as measured by the University of Michigan’s consumer-sentiment index.
The overall and future indexes for New York each increased in the latest quarter and the future index is above the breakeven point at which optimism and pessimism balance. The current index decreased and is below breakeven. The national indexes all fell. New Yorkers are more optimistic about overall and future economic conditions than the nation as a whole.
After a precipitous fall in the 3rd quarter, consumer sentiment rose by a point as New Yorkers balance an ongoing decline in their current economic situation with an uptick in their long-range outlook, Don Levy, SRI director, said.
“Most noteworthy are concerns over the bite that gas and food are taking out of the budget as inflation has generated concerns over gasoline prices that we haven’t seen since March 2013 and food price worries not matched since July 2011,” Levy said. “These sticker shocks, felt especially hard by Upstaters, women and older residents, have driven New Yorkers’ current outlook back to just about the low we saw at the pandemic’s start. Only faith in a better tomorrow, which rose to equal where we stood a year ago, resulted in the one-point overall index increase,” Levy explained.
In the fourth quarter of 2021, buying plans rose 0.3 percentage points from the third quarter measure to 10.4 percent for homes and inched up 0.8 points to 25 percent for major home improvements. Buying plans fell 2.2 points to 16.9 percent for cars and trucks; slipped 2 points to 43.5 percent for consumer electronics; and dropped 2.1 points to 28.0 percent for furniture.
Gas and food prices
In SRI’s quarterly analysis of gas and food prices, 70 percent of Upstate respondents said the price of gas was having a serious impact on their monthly budgets, up from 58 percent in the third quarter of 2021 and 57 percent in the second quarter.
In addition, 61 percent of statewide respondents said the price of gas was having a serious impact on their monthly spending plans, up from 54 percent in both the third and second quarters of last year.
When asked about food prices, 75 percent of Upstate respondents indicated the price of groceries was having a serious effect on their finances, up from 65 percent in the third quarter and from 64 percent in the second quarter.
At the same time, 72 percent of statewide respondents indicated the price of food was having a serious impact on their monthly finances, up from 66 percent in the third quarter and 63 percent in the second quarter.
SRI conducted its survey of consumer sentiment between Nov. 8 and Nov. 16 by random telephone calls to 395 New York adults via landline and cell phone. It has an overall margin of error of plus or minus 3.8 percentage points, according to SRI.
VIEWPOINT: New York State’s Eviction Moratorium Has Expired
New York State — the state with the highest share of renters in the United States — allowed its eviction moratorium to expire on Jan. 15. State officials enacted the Tenant Safe Harbor Act (TSHA) at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and repeatedly extended it to the point where it became the second-longest statewide moratorium in
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New York State — the state with the highest share of renters in the United States — allowed its eviction moratorium to expire on Jan. 15. State officials enacted the Tenant Safe Harbor Act (TSHA) at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and repeatedly extended it to the point where it became the second-longest statewide moratorium in the nation. The National Equity Atlas estimates that about 591,000 households in New York state are behind on rent. Now that the moratorium has officially expired, many landlords who have been unable to evict holdover tenants or tenants for nonpayment of rent — and, as a result, have lost substantial amounts of rental income during the pandemic — are looking to once again exercise their rights that have been placed on hold for nearly two years.
The Tenant Safe Harbor Act
Under the TSHA, any eviction proceeding against a tenant for the non-payment of rent or for holding over was stayed until Jan. 15, 2022, if the tenant submitted a COVID-19 hardship-declaration form. Initially, the submission of this hardship-declaration form served as conclusive, irrebuttable proof that the tenant suffered from an economic hardship imposed by the pandemic. However, the U.S. Supreme Court held that such conclusiveness raised unconstitutional implications for the due-process rights of landlords, which forced New York State to amend the TSHA to permit landlords to contest a tenant’s assertion of hardship during a hearing.
Under the amended TSHA, a landlord could evict a tenant despite the tenant’s submission of a completed hardship declaration form if the landlord established: (1) that the tenant was intentionally causing significant damage to the property or engaging in persistent and unreasonable behavior that infringed on the use and enjoyment of other tenants; or (2) that the tenant’s purported hardship did not exist. These limited grounds for eviction often failed in practice to provide property owners with the relief that they often sought. However, now that the TSHA’s eviction moratorium has expired, landlords no longer need to resort to the narrow confines of the TSHA’s limited grounds.
What should property owners do now?
If you are a landlord or represent one who attempted to evict a tenant during the moratorium, and that tenant submitted a completed hardship declaration form, you likely received an adjourned, tentative hearing date for Jan. 18, 2022 — the first business day following the moratorium’s then-anticipated expiration date of Jan. 15. Now that Jan. 15 has passed and the moratorium has officially expired, you likely will be contacted by the court in which your eviction petition is pending for the scheduling of your actual hearing date. We expect that such scheduling will occur chronologically, beginning with the landlords who filed their petitions earliest during the moratorium period. We recommend that if you do not hear from the court in the upcoming days, you call the clerk’s office to determine the status of your hearing.
Watch for future developments
As Gov. Kathy Hochul finds herself caught between the competing pressures of landlord groups and a progressive caucus of the state legislature, it is unclear how the future legal landscape in New York will develop regarding the rights of tenants and landlords. In 2019 and 2021, the state legislature tried but failed to enact “good cause eviction” requirements. A good-cause eviction law would limit the range of reasons for which landlords could evict tenants. Efforts to pass this form of legislation will likely be undertaken again this year. While Gov. Hochul has not disclosed her position on these types of requirements, the COVID-19 pandemic has placed a new spotlight on the state’s landlord-tenant laws, and the expiration of the eviction moratorium places new pressure for action on elected officials in Albany. This is an area of law that will be closely watched throughout the new year.
Collin M. Carr is an associate attorney in the Syracuse office of Bond, Schoeneck & King PLLC. He works in the firm’s litigation practice area and uses his legal research and writing skills to serve a wide array of clients in both state and federal court. Contact Carr at ccarr@bsk.com. This Viewpoint article is drawn and edited from the law firm’s website.
New York home sales slide nearly 15 percent in December
ALBANY — New York realtors sold 13,649 previously owned homes in December, down 14.6 percent from the 15,974 homes sold a year ago, as inventory continued to fall. However, pending sales rose 4 percent in December, which points to a rise in closed home sales in forthcoming months. The data comes from the New York
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ALBANY — New York realtors sold 13,649 previously owned homes in December, down 14.6 percent from the 15,974 homes sold a year ago, as inventory continued to fall.
However, pending sales rose 4 percent in December, which points to a rise in closed home sales in forthcoming months.
The data comes from the New York State Association of Realtors (NYSAR)’s December housing-market report issued Jan. 20.
New York sales data
Housing inventory in the Empire State plummeted 30.4 percent to close out 2021. Homes for sale fell to 30,654 units in December 2021 from 44,071 homes available in December 2020.
The months’ supply of inventory fell to just 2.3 months in the final month of 2021, a 30.4 percent drop from 3.7 months of supply available in December 2020. A 6 month to 6.5 month supply is considered to be a balanced market, according to NYSAR.
Pending sales in New York totaled 10,494 homes in December, an increase of 4 percent from pending sales of 10,087 in the same month in 2020, according to the NYSAR data.
Amid the tight supply, house prices continued to chug higher. The December 2021 statewide median sales price rose 8.3 percent to $377,000 from the December 2020 median sales price of $348,000.
Central New York data
Realtors in Onondaga County sold 495 previously owned homes in December, down 16.8 percent from the 595 homes they sold in the same month in 2020. The median sales price jumped 12.1 percent to $185,000 from $165,000 a year prior, according to the NYSAR report.
Realtors sold 210 homes in Oneida County in December, up 4 percent compared to the 202 homes sold in December 2020. The median sales price increased more than 17 percent to nearly $182,000 from $155,000 in the year-earlier month.
Realtors in Broome County sold 186 existing homes in December, up 1.1 percent from 184 in December 2020, according to the NYSAR report. The median sales price fell 3.8 percent to $139,500 from $145,000 a year ago.
In Jefferson County, realtors closed on the sale of 155 homes in December, down 0.6 percent from 156 a year prior, and the median sales price of nearly $194,000 was up almost 7 percent from $181,500 in December 2020, according to the NYSAR data.
All home-sales data is compiled from multiple-listing services in New York state and it includes townhomes and condominiums in addition to existing single-family homes, according to NYSAR.
SUNY Poly’s online cybersecurity master’s program ranked
MARCY, N.Y. — SUNY Polytechnic Institute (SUNY Poly) says its online master’s degree program in network and computer security: cybersecurity ranked among the top 50 in U.S. News & World Report’s “2022 Best Online Program” national rankings. The SUNY Poly program came in at number 48 in the listing of the top online colleges and
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MARCY, N.Y. — SUNY Polytechnic Institute (SUNY Poly) says its online master’s degree program in network and computer security: cybersecurity ranked among the top 50 in U.S. News & World Report’s “2022 Best Online Program” national rankings.
The SUNY Poly program came in at number 48 in the listing of the top online colleges and university programs in the nation, the university announced.
“This ranking places SUNY Poly among the top schools for network and computer security in the nation and shines a light on our program that prepares students for success,” Michael Carpenter, interim dean of the College of Engineering, said in a release.
SUNY Polytechnic Institute’s online master’s degree program in network and computer security: cybersecurity offers students a curriculum in the field of cybersecurity. The institute developed the program in conjunction with local experts in both industry and government, and provides students with a “rigorous foundation of coursework” that SUNY Poly contends prepares them for management and technical positions in the fields of cybersecurity research and information-technology security management.
U.S. News & World Report maintains several general ranking categories, each with different weights assigned to them to determine the final institution placings. These categories include engagement, student excellence, expert opinion, faculty credentials and training, and services and technologies.
Area expert offers tips to minimize cyberthreats
ENDICOTT, N.Y. — The legions of employees working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic brought cybersecurity front and center as a business concern, and it’s an issue business owners need to address no matter where their employees are working from these days. In the early days of the pandemic as employers shifted to a heavily
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ENDICOTT, N.Y. — The legions of employees working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic brought cybersecurity front and center as a business concern, and it’s an issue business owners need to address no matter where their employees are working from these days.
In the early days of the pandemic as employers shifted to a heavily home-based workforce, the focus was really on getting everyone up and running and keeping the business going smoothy, says David D’Agostino, director of 1nteger Security in Endicott. That shift, unfortunately, opened companies up to new avenues for cybersecurity attacks, he notes.
Two major cybersecurity threats include cloud computing and employees using personal devices to access corporate systems, D’Agostino points out. Both have been crucial to keeping employees productive and connected while they work from home. Other top cybersecurity threats include credential theft, ransomware attacks, and phishing/vishing/smishing.
“They’ll fool you into thinking you’re logging into your payroll account,” D’Agostino says as an example of how a phishing scam works. Phishing is one of the top threats, accounting for more than 80 percent of reported security incidents.
Once they gain access to your system, cyber criminals can exploit that information in a variety of ways, but most often will encrypt everything and charge businesses a ransom to gain back access to their own information. The average ransomware payment increased 82 percent over the past year to $570,000, D’Agostino notes.
“A lot of organizations carry what’s called cyber-liability insurance now,” he says. That has led to larger and larger ransom asks, especially when cyber criminals access Cloud platforms used during the pandemic — such as Zoom or Microsoft Teams — which are great for connecting people, D’Agostino says, but those services created new points of attack as well. Cloud platforms are not secure out of the gate, he says, and businesses may have neglected to add layers of protection.
While it might seem that businesses are being attacked on all fronts from phishing emails to website hacks, there are an array of actions firms can take to keep their systems and their information safe.
D’Agostino says the first step is to identify and fortify the weakest link. This could be employees accessing the system from home offices, he notes, and an easy way to add an extra layer of protection is to require users to use a two-factor authentication system. This typically involves sending a code or a push notification to another device, such as a cell phone, which needs to be with the user, before access is granted. It’s a simple way to prevent outsiders from accessing the system, he notes.
Other steps include using advanced antivirus protection, deploying backup policies, use the cloud to ensure remote file access, and test recovery strategies often. Cyber criminals are generally looking for an easy mark, D’Agostino says. Much like a burglar might move on when they see a sign denoting an alarm system, see security lights, or hear a barking dog, cyber criminals will move on if there are hurdles to easy access, he says.
There are many other tools businesses can utilize, but they can take a crawl, walk, run approach to things, D’Agostino says. They can start with a few small things such as providing end-user training and upgrading virus protection. Then companies should perform an in-depth risk analysis. “It’s important for business owners to understand their risk,” he says. The analysis allows businesses to develop a risk tolerance, knowing what assets must be protected the most.
Whether through an in-house network security expert or by outsourcing it to another company, this process should be a continual one, D’Agostino adds, because the threat landscape is constantly changing.
Headquartered in Endicott, 1nteger is a division of Integrated Computer Solutions (ICS), which employs more than 130 people at offices in Endicott, Syracuse, Ithaca, and Auburn, Mass. ICS is a provider of outsourced IT services, cybersecurity, communications, and remote-workforce solutions. 1nteger employs a team of about 30 people.
NYPA using Virginia firm’s product to defend key supply-chain partners
The New York Power Authority (NYPA) is using a Virginia cybersecurity firm’s product as it works to “secure the state of New York’s public-energy ecosystem.” IronNet, Inc. (NYSE:IRNT) on Jan. 13 announced its expanded partnership with NYPA, the nation’s largest state public-power organization. IronNet is a McLean, Virginia–based firm that says it works at “transforming cybersecurity through
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The New York Power Authority (NYPA) is using a Virginia cybersecurity firm’s product as it works to “secure the state of New York’s public-energy ecosystem.”
IronNet, Inc. (NYSE:IRNT) on Jan. 13 announced its expanded partnership with NYPA, the nation’s largest state public-power organization. IronNet is a McLean, Virginia–based firm that says it works at “transforming cybersecurity through collective defense.”
Supported by Amazon Web Services (AWS), NYPA’s adoption of IronNet’s Collective Defense product will enable New York municipal utilities, partners, and other relevant critical infrastructure state agencies to create a “dynamic, radar-like view of the attack landscape that provides visibility into a wider and deeper range of threats” across the state’s entire power grid, the company contended in a release.
Based on IronNet’s proprietary machine learning and artificial intelligence, the cloud-based cybersecurity product will provide collective-defense capabilities to NYPA and its key supply-chain partners to “strengthen the state’s ability to protect the grid through a unified cyber-defense strategy.”
“In the same way that utilities band together to provide mutual aid after damaging weather events, NYPA is making collaborative responses to cyberattacks possible,” Bill Welch, co-CEO of IronNet, said. “We are proud to work with NYPA to enable all public utility stakeholders to adopt a proactive defense against any cyber adversary with an eye on the grid — from criminal groups to nation-states.”
Powered by a network detection and response (or NDR) system that tracks network anomalies with behavioral analytics, NYPA’s key supply-chain partners can use IronNet’s collective-defense platform to “collaborate in real time to better detect and defend against attacks,” per the IronNet release. This approach “further enhances the resilience” of New York’s grid amidst the “escalating prevalence of attacks on U.S. critical infrastructure.”
“Given the rise of sophisticated cyberattacks, we need to help our municipal utilities implement a strong security program that can detect and mitigate attacks in real-time,” Victor Costanza, deputy chief information security officer at the New York Power Authority, said. “With the technologies provided by IronNet and AWS, the [information technology (IT)] and power infrastructures in NYPA’s supply-chain ecosystem can collect and share anonymized cyber-threat information so we can defend our enterprise networks collectively, raising the security posture of all of us throughout the state.”
Following the success of an initial pilot with five NYPA municipalities, the announcement of the expanded partnership will enable the remaining utility companies included in the NYPA supply chain to leverage IronNet’s advanced-threat detection capabilities as part of the NYPA collective-defense community.
Defenders of the state’s IT and power infrastructure will receive alerts on anomalous network behaviors correlated with other collective-defense participants from the U.S. energy sector at large.
In the event of a coordinated attack, the community also benefits from expert guidance from the top cybersecurity professionals of IronNet’s security-operations center, the company said.
Knepper to lead Cornell’s Center for Advanced Computing
ITHACA, N.Y. — The Cornell University Center for Advanced Computing (CAC) has a new director. Richard Knepper, who has been deputy director of CAC since 2017, started his new duties Jan. 24. He succeeds David Lifka, who led the CAC since 2007. Lifka will continue to serve as Cornell’s VP for information technologies and chief
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ITHACA, N.Y. — The Cornell University Center for Advanced Computing (CAC) has a new director.
Richard Knepper, who has been deputy director of CAC since 2017, started his new duties Jan. 24. He succeeds David Lifka, who led the CAC since 2007.
Lifka will continue to serve as Cornell’s VP for information technologies and chief information officer, said Emmanuel Giannelis, VP for research and innovation.
Knepper has received numerous grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and leads a national cyberinfrastructure-resources integration team. He is also the author or co-author of more than 50 papers.
CAC provides research-computing services to Cornell faculty in the sciences, engineering, business, arts, and humanities. Knepper will lead the center’s computing and consulting staff that includes systems professionals and Ph.D.-level computational consultants with expertise in astronomy, biology, computer science, informatics, socials sciences, physics, and more.
“I am excited to see Rich serve as the next director of CAC,” Giannelis said. “Rich’s experience as CAC deputy director and national leadership roles in high performance computing make him the perfect choice to lead the center.”
In addition to high-performance computing, Knepper has worked on campus clouds and federations, reproducible and portable scientific workflows, social-network analysis, and the ethnography of virtual organizations.
He has been involved in the U.S. cyberinfrastructure community for over 20 years supporting both local university initiatives as well as NSF and NASA-funded projects including FutureGrid, Polar Grid, Operation Ice Bridge, the Aristotle Cloud Federation, and XSEDE, Cornell said.
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