Published: January 27, 2021 by Melissa Prunty Kemp

Happy 2021 to all new and continuing students!  It’s great to see you all back and ready to absorb, expand and innovate in your disciplines. If this is your first semester,  you may feel a mix of  excitement, anticipation,  even a little fear. You will find plenty of support and assistance from faculty,  fellow students,  and through iSchool MARA advising, all online and always available. 

I also encourage you to socialize,  network and professionally develop on the MARA student social media pages (Facebook and Twitter) and catch up on the latest news on MARA and VCARA blogs. We are a friendly, engaging bunch.  Your fellow students have vast and unique experiences in a variety of subjects.

And in case you missed it, some interesting industry news was published during the break. In Leveraging Digital Transformation in the Energy Market Adds New Value in Today’s Challenging Times, Melissa Kolodziej, Senior Director of Content and Communications, explains what is becoming a very familiar requirement today—digitizing archives.  In this case, the article discusses the difficulties and similar challenges that energy companies face when they embark on this task.

One of the hottest topics today is blockchain, especially BitCoin investing.  Unfortunately, another increasing hot topic to which we’re all subject is data breaches.  With crypto-investing, even worse than losing your password and your money is having it stolen through hacking.  That’s the unfortunate reality for BuyUcoin®, an Indian cryptocurrency. Hacking caused the leak of 325K users’ account information, according Pierluigi Paganini’s article entitled Cryptocurrency exchange BuyUcoin hacked, data of 325K+ users leaked.