Salesforce Buys Slack
In a $27.7 billion megadeal, Salesforce has announced it will acquire Slack. Salesforce, a CRM powerhouse, will wade deeper into enterprise social with the purchase. Rumors of the pending deal surfaced earlier, causing Slack’s stock price to spike.
Marc Benioff, Salesforce co-founder and CEO says of the deal: “This is a match made in heaven. Together, Salesforce and Slack will shape the future of enterprise software and transform the way everyone works in the all-digital, work-from-anywhere world”. Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield agreed, in his equally excited statement about the deal. Slack allows co-workers to communicate easily, but also facilitates external communication with partners or customers which would be even more useful for Salesforce. Slack entered 2020 with lost value after going public, plus additional lost value after the latest earnings report. So while the takeover is not too surprising, the sale price is.
But, the new deal is beneficial to Salesforce too; it brings the company more on par and potentially in competition with rival Microsoft, whose Teams product has been directly challenging Slack. Microsoft has passed on Slack in the past, making Teams their priority. To learn more about Slack’s company history, and the current acquisition deal, visit here.
New Phishing Attacks
With the spike of Zoom usage since the beginning of the pandemic has also come the spike of Zoom-themed phishing attacks. These criminal campaigns have also affected Teams.
When the pandemic began and a large portion of people began working remotely, attackers used this time to adapt and improve their lures to exploit the dependence on video-conferencing platforms. Scammers have registered more than 2,000 Zoom-related domains from late April to early May of this year alone; the domain names include the word ‘Zoom’ or ‘Teams’ which can then be used to send phishing attacks that look as though they are coming from the official video conferencing services. Though the finding is not surprising, it serves as a reminder to stay alert and aware of how to defend yourself against such attacks.
Some security best practices include double checking the sender’s information for any invites you receive, not clicking the links on unsolicited emails, and resolving issues directly rather than through a communication that might not be legitimate. If you have any questions or would like to discuss these tactics further, feel free to contact the office.
Virtual Holiday Party
The MCG team wasn’t willing to give up our annual holiday party tradition, so like most other events this year, we took to Zoom to celebrate virtually. Everyone ordered their favorite dinner, we cheers’d virtually, and then played a game while reminiscing on 2020 and sharing our excitement for 2021! It will certainly be a party to remember, and we can’t wait for the next time we can all safely be together to celebrate again.
