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PRESS RELEASE
July 7, 2017

CONTACT:
Tonya Harrell
(757) 962-2487
t.harrell@intellectechs.com

Virginia Beach, VA- IntellecTechs, Inc. (pronounced In-te-LEC-Teks), is offering FREE Resume training to Veterans transitioning out of the military on Wednesday July 12, 2017. This training will provide every student access to a computer to create, update and post their resume all with FREE resources.

The training class will take place at IntellecTechs office located at 195 S. Rosemont Rd., Suite #103, Virginia Beach, VA, beginning at 5:00 PM and ending at 6:00 PM. There is NO COST for this training class and it will be taught by Certified Trainers.

IntellecTechs CEO, Jeri Prophet is dedicated to giving back to the community, providing pro bono services and career opportunities in support of her fellow Veterans, especially those disabled, both inside and outside the technology industry.

For more information about upcoming Veteran trainings, please visit www.www.intellectechs.com/classes.

ABOUT IntellecTechs, Inc., IntellecTechs, is an 8(a) Certified by the Small Business Administration, Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business, Veteran-Owned Small Business, Economically Disadvantaged Women Owned Small Business, a Small Disadvantaged Business, and premier provider of professional services to federal and commercial customers. IntellecTechs’ core competencies include Information Technology (IT) governance encompassing portfolio management, financial management, enterprise architecture, policy writing and enforcement, resource planning, and IT process management.

To learn more information, contact Tonya Harrell 757-962-2487 or t.harrell@intellectechs.com.

Virginia Beach, VA-  IntellecTechs, Inc. (pronounced In-te-LEC-Teks), CEO Jeri Prophet, panelist on the 2017 Virginia Women Veterans Summit held at the Delta Marriott in Chesapeake, VA, on June 23, 2017.

Speakers at the 2017 Virginia Women Veterans Summit included: Ms. Deshauna Barber, Miss USA 2016 and a Captain in the U.S. Army Reserves; Dr. Nancy Glowacki, Women Veteran Program Manager, U.S. Department of Labor; Ms. Kayla M. Williams, Director of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affair’s Center for Women Veterans; and Mr. John L. Newby II, Commissioner, Virginia Department of Veterans Services.

Prophet shared her experiences as a female Veteran in the information technology field and how to overcome challenges that women face every day in non-traditional careers.

“I was happy to spend the day with so many lovely Veteran’s sharing ideas that will be helpful to some of them in the future,” said Jeri Prophet, Chief Executive Officer of IntellecTechs.

 More than 400 women Veterans registered to attend the 2017 Virginia Women Veterans Summit.  The summit was organized by the Virginia Department of Veteran’s Services (VDVS) and community partners, including the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Disabled American Veterans, the Virginia Employment Commission, and Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve.

For more information about the 2017 Virginia Women Veterans Summit, please visit www.dvs.virginia.gov.

ABOUT IntellecTechs, Inc., IntellecTechs, is an 8(a) Certified by the Small Business Administration, Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business, Veteran-Owned Small Business, Economically Disadvantaged Women Owned Small Business, a Small Disadvantaged Business, and premier provider of professional services to federal and commercial customers. IntellecTechs’ core competencies include Information Technology (IT) governance encompassing portfolio management, financial management, enterprise architecture, policy writing and enforcement, resource planning, and IT process management. To learn more information, visit www.IntellecTechs.com.

“A new ransomware attack is infecting airlines, banks, and utilities across Europe. The virus Petrwrap, a strain of Petya ransomware, is only detected by 16 out of 61 popular Antivirus on the market. SOPHOS Antivirus was able to successfully detect and quarantine the Petya ransomware.

https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/27/15879480/petrwrap-virus-ukraine-ransomware-attack-europe-wannacry

Contact IntellecTechs about securing your business today!” Email us or call 757-962-2487

NEWS RELEASE
June 7, 2017
Virginia Beach, VA

IntellecTechs, Inc. (pronounced In-te-LEC-Teks), was awarded a Virtual Reality contract with The Department of Veterans Affairs. IntellecTechs will provide equipment to support the VA’s Virtual Reality requirements for our nation’s Veterans at Malcolm Randall VA Medical Center, Gainesville, Florida. IntellecTechs was awarded this contract in April 2017.

“This award recognizes our breadth and depth of competitiveness across the entire spectrum of managed IT services and products,” said Mike Harris President of IntellecTechs.

ABOUT IntellecTechs, Inc., IntellecTechs, is an 8(a) Certified by the Small Business Administration, Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business, Veteran-Owned Small Business, Economically Disadvantaged Women Owned Small Business, a Small Disadvantaged Business, and premier provider of professional services to federal and commercial customers. IntellecTechs’ core competencies include Information Technology (IT) governance encompassing portfolio management, financial management, enterprise architecture, policy writing and enforcement, resource planning, and IT process management. To learn more information, visit www.www.intellectechs.com.

VIRGINIA BEACH, VA, June 1, 2017 – IntellecTechs, Inc. has been named as a recipient of the Small Business of the Year 2017 by AFCEA International.

IntellecTechs, Inc., founded in 2008 by Chief Executive Officer Jeri Prophet, is a full-service Information Technology (IT) small business providing services to both the commercial and government sectors. Currently employing over 100 employees across 22 states and 5 countries. IntellecTechs provides 24/7 computer support, networking, website design, software development and application hosting services, certification training and testing for businesses in Virginia Beach and the surrounding cities.

AFCEA International is a professional association that connects innovative people, great ideas and vital solutions to advance global security. AFCEA assists in developing networking, educational opportunities and providing opportunities in an ethical forum. These opportunities enable military, government, industry and academia to align technology and strategies to meet the needs of those who serve.

Annually, AFCEA International presents the Small Business of the Year Award to a company that demonstrates excellence in client service, business practices, staff training and motivation and community/professional outreach. Criteria for the award includes: employs 250 people or less, AFCEA corporate member, demonstrates commitment to AFCEA’s mission, values and activities, independently owned and operated (not a subsidiary, division, or branch of a larger firm or part of an Alaska Native Organization, Native Hawaiian Organization or other Tribal corporation), be in business for at least three years, and has a tangible differentiator – a specific product, service, and/or accomplishment that stands out from the crowd.

“IntellecTechs is extremely excited to be receiving such an honorable award. It takes a great TEAM to achieve this kind of greatness. Congratulations to all IntellecTechs’ employees.” said Jeri Prophet, Chief Executive Officer of IntellecTechs.

The award will be presented at the AFCEA International Awards Dinner, set for June 12th in Baltimore, Maryland at the Baltimore Convention Center, held in advance of the Defensive Cyber Operations Symposium.

For a full list of award winners in AFCEA International 2017 visit:
http://www.afcea.org/site/?q=About-Awards-AFCEAInternational

About IntellecTechs, Inc.
IntellecTechs, is an 8(a) Certified by the Small Business Administration, Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business, Veteran-Owned Small Business, Economically Disadvantaged Women Owned Small Business, a Small Disadvantaged Business, and premier provider of professional services to federal and commercial customers. IntellecTechs’ core competencies include Information Technology (IT) governance encompassing portfolio management, financial management, enterprise architecture, policy writing and enforcement, resource planning, and IT process management. To learn more about IntellecTechs, Inc. visit www.IntellecTechs.com.

About AFCEA International
AFCEA provides a forum for military, government and industry communities to collaborate so that technology and strategy align with the needs of those who serve. AFCEA is a member-based, non-profit international organization that has helped members advance information technology, communications and electronics capabilities since 1946. The association has 31,487 individual members, 151 chapters and 1,586 corporate members. To learn more information about AFCEA visit www.afcea.org.

Michael Harris Joins IntellecTechs, Inc. as President

“I am honored that IntellecTechs’ CEO selected me to be the President. I am excited to work with the great employees at IntellecTechs and to continue our growth and focus on providing world-class IT services for our Commercial, Federal, State and local government clients and customers. ”
Michael Harris, President of IntellecTechs

“Today is a new day at IntellecTechs as we welcome an experienced, well-respected, truly amazing addition to our team. Mr. Harris, (Mike) and I go back many years and I sincerely look forward to working together, strategizing, and welcoming his new ideas and insights through the future growth of IntellecTechs. ”
Jeri Prophet, Chief Executive Officer of IntellecTechs

Originally by BY ROBERT MCCABE, MCCLATCHY NEWS SERVICE / JUNE 16, 2014:

On April 8 when the company officially stopped distributing routine updates and security patches for XP, at least one in four of the world’s desktop computers were still relying on the operating system.

For years, Microsoft warned users of its popular XP operating system to start looking for another way to run their computers.

XP’s days were numbered, the software giant said.

But on April 8 when the company officially stopped distributing routine updates and security patches for XP, at least one in four of the world’s desktop computers were still relying on the operating system.

And not just any computers. Some of America’s biggest companies hadn’t yet completed the switch. Neither had the U.S. military, including the Navy.

“It’s a big Navy problem and we’re trying to get our hands around it still,” Steve Dunn, executive director of the Atlantic operations of the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command, said in an interview.

Dunn said at a lunch briefing with contractors last month in Norfolk that the Navy is using XP widely throughout the fleet, including in critical weapons systems.

That necessitated a deal with Microsoft to continue getting support for a while.

“Given the scale and scope of Windows XP’s use, the Department has a Custom Support Agreement with Microsoft that provides support for all critical security hotfixes and helps maintain our security posture for both ashore and afloat networks,” the Navy said in an emailed response to a query from The Pilot.

The agreement is good for the next three years and is expected to cost about $3.6 million for the first year, according to the Navy.

The sea service is far from alone.

XP’s market share of more than 25 percent makes it the world’s second-most-used desktop operating system, according to Netmarketshare.com. Windows 7, the system to which most users are converting, has about half of the market.

Other large XP customers that weren’t able to transition to another system by April 8 are being offered continuing support, a Microsoft spokesman said in an emailed statement. But that service, which customers pay for, is only as a “temporary, last resort to help bridge the gap during a migration process to a modern OS, as the newest technologies provide the optimal chance to be and stay secure.”

With Microsoft’s support for XP waning, users are increasingly vulnerable to holes that Internet criminals can exploit, IT experts have warned.

A quick survey of some big Hampton Roads companies found that they had generally beaten the clock, having successfully transitioned the vast majority of their computers to Windows 7.

Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc., parent of Newport News Shipbuilding, said it finished migrating roughly 17,000 computers to Windows 7 in April.

After an effort that took about 2 1/2 years, Norfolk Southern Corp. for the most part is done.

It had about 12,000 computers to convert from XP. As of early this month, less than 2 percent remained in line for conversion to the newer operating system.

“We’re still waiting on some vendors to make the necessary changes to their software so we can convert the application to Windows 7,” the Norfolk-based railroad said.

The process involved the remediation and testing of about 800 applications and required “an entirely new deployment and desktop management toolset,” it added.

Cox Communications Inc. in Virginia said it finished upgrading more than 2,000 computers to Windows 7 in March.

Most of Sentara Healthcare’s users are no longer using Windows XP, and, for the few that are, “we have a remediation plan and the necessary safety protocols in place,” Beth Hickman, a spokeswoman for the Norfolk-based health system, wrote in an email.

The switch has been a boon to Tidewater Community College’s Computers for Student Success program, a Microsoft-certified refurbisher that takes old computers, upgrades them with copies of Windows 7 it gets for $6 and then donates them to students in need and nonprofits.

It’s recycled about 5,170 computers since the fall of 2009, including 1,800 last year.

“We’re still getting a lot of computers from companies,” said Gary Noah, the coordinator. “It’s been a gradual build since last fall.”

Bigger companies with information technology departments, help desks and deeper pockets have had an edge in dealing with the XP situation, said Warren Marcelino, desktop support manager at Old Dominion University, which has moved all but a trace of its computers – less than 1 percent – to Windows 7.

“I think the biggest hurt would be on smaller businesses who don’t have IT,” he said. “They may not have the budget for all these things. Some of them may not realize this is a problem for them.”

“It’s a bit of a tightrope that they have to walk,” said Martin Joseph, president of 360IT PARTNERS, a Virginia Beach-based IT company with clients using from 10 to 300 computers.

Doing nothing, though, is not an option because companies that suffer data breaches are more likely to go out of business, he said.

“The head-in-the-sand thing isn’t going to work,” agreed Jeri Prophet, president and CEO of IntellecTechs Inc., a managed IT service provider based in Virginia Beach that has about 375 clients of all sizes.

“If you’re browsing the Internet, you’re vulnerable; if you’re connected to a network, you’re vulnerable,” she said.

Prophet has found that small companies are where “making the switch, just pulling the trigger” has been an issue.

It can cost hundreds of dollars to upgrade or replace a computer, which translates into potentially tens of thousands of dollars for a company with a few hundred of them.

“To buy 250 computers for a large small business – that’s a lot of money,” she said.

Industry experts say the issue of who’s still on XP and who isn’t is somewhat sensitive.

“It’s probably not advisable to advertise that some Company X is 30 percent completed with their XP-to-7 migration,” said Mick Vollmer, executive vice president/technology innovation at Suffolk-based TowneBank. “You know, a 15-year-old sitting at home, reading a newspaper, might go, ‘Well, I think I want to go out there and see if I can hack their site or hack some of their computers, see what I can do.’ ”

Vollmer, who also is chairman of a Hampton Roads roundtable of chief information officers, said he couldn’t say accurately where most of the region’s businesses stand regarding the Microsoft issue.

“It’s one of those things that would be a closely held data point for most of them,” he said.

In use since October 2001, Windows XP dominated the operating system market.

XP had nearly 84 percent of global usage market share in November 2007 and it’s been declining ever since, according to the website Netmarketshare.com, whose data history began the same month.

A website spokesman said it’s almost certain that XP’s global market share was even higher sometime prior to that.

Microsoft released its Vista software to businesses in November 2006 and to the general consumer market in January 2007, according to the company.

Though it never really caught on, with most users choosing to stick with XP, in September 2007 Microsoft announced that it planned to end XP support.

So its demise hasn’t exactly been a surprise.

“Plenty of time to get off the product; plenty of time to move to Windows 7 or Windows 8,” Vollmer said.

“People refused to make that move because they like the product and it works for them. Well, now they’re using a product that’s not being patched,” he said.

The patches are code vulnerability updates, fixes that mend weaknesses found in operating systems that if not repaired could, over time, allow hackers to exploit them, said Rizwan Bhutta, an IT official at ODU.

The problem, he said, is that all of the Microsoft operating systems, even the newer ones, have some common code among them.

As vulnerabilities are found in the newer systems, Microsoft will identify them and release patches to fix them.

The concern is that hackers will be able to “reverse engineer” and try to exploit unprotected XP machines based on the patches sent out to fix the newer systems, Bhutta said.

“There’s a very high chance that they will succeed in doing that,” he said. “So that is the biggest concern everybody has.”

Prophet said work-arounds to the XP support problem can be easily found through Google searches, though she acknowledged that an IT-savvy person might be needed to assist.

And any of these fixes should be viewed only as temporary, she added.

“It’s a short-term solution to allow you a little bit more time to get those replacements in, but it’s definitely not a long-term solution.”

There seems to be general agreement that upgrading to a new computer that has Windows 7 on it is the most cost-effective choice in the long run.

While XP machines generally can support Windows 7, the cost of a new license as well as any IT help needed to make the transition gets one within range of the cost of a new computer.

©2014 The Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk, Va.)

View the original article here.

Originally from 13News Now Andre Senior, WVEC 4:33 AM. EDT May 25, 2016:

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WVEC) — Teenagers are being taught to hack… but not in order to commit a crime. It’s so they know how to defend against cyber attacks.

“We actually hack in order to defend the hack, but it’s all ethical hacking,” said Linda Lavender, an instructor at Advance Technical Center in Virginia Beach.

But after learning those skills at Advance Techjnology Center, Hampton Roads lost Chris Hultin to a better paying job Texas.

“There’s not nearly as much in the private technology sector in Hampton Roads,” said Hultin, a former student at ATC who honed his skills under Lavender.

Just like our service members on the front lines of combat, these teenagers are our new soldiers in the cyber-war, where there were an estimated 160 successful cyber-attacks per week in 2015! That was up from 50 per week in 2010, according to data collected by the Ponemon Institute.

“These are the attackers who are launching the attack as you can see going across,” said current ATC student Cory Petko.

The 16-year-old showed us a map that shows real-time cyber attacks from China launched against the U.S.

But for the 475 students that graduate from ATC every year, getting a job here may not be so easy.

“Are the benefits and the pay here? Maybe, no,” said Lavender.

Better incentives such as more money were offered to Hultin, who took a job in Austin.

According to a report that was released last week, Austin is one of the nation’s 20 largest cities that saw their population grow last year, blustered in part by the cybersecurity industry.

“We’ve got over 200,000 un-filled cyber jobs. Virginia alone has 18,000 and these jobs pay an average salary of $88,000,” said Sen. Mark Warner, who has been working to make Hampton Roads and the Commonwealth attractive to Cybersecurity companies.

Learning the skills for that type of job isn’t only happening at ATC, but also Old Dominion University’s cybersecurity program.

Norfolk State University got a visit from Vice President Joe Biden last year, after it won a $25 million grant for its cybersecurity program.

On the local level, Norfolk city leaders voted to offer tax incentives to lure tech companies last week. Chesapeake, Suffolk and Newport News have similar programs and so does Virginia Beach, which is home to the cybersecurity firm IntellecTechs.

“Because we have the talent down here, we could certainly make a good story to have those jobs down there,” said owner Jeri Prophet, who notes that a regional effort would be greatly beneficial to the Hampton Roads area.

That regional push recently started with help Rob Hegedus.

The CEO of Suffolk-based cyber risk management company Serra-Brynn is part of a newly formed group called “Cyber Protection Resources.”

“From an advertisement perspective and from a lobbying perspective, they’re situated very well to be able to kind of demonstrate to the rest of the world that we have the talent here. And that we can absorb some of the additional work that’s coming up,” said Hegedus, whose company was ranked as one of the top 10 cybersecurity companies in the country and 16th in the world.

While the regional effort ramps out, Virginia Beach city leaders are trying to lure what they call a major cyersecurity company to the city.

Negotiations are still ongoing, so the name of that company hasn’t been released just yet.

We’ll follow it, and let you know when a decision is made.

Our CEO Jeri Prophet will appear in Coach Lynn’s debut show on KMET 1489 am ABC News Radio Show. The show will air March 17th from 3 pm – 4 pm pacific time, 6 pm – 7 pm Eastern time.

You can tune in to the show by visiting http://www.kmet1490am.com/coach-lynn-show or watching below: