U.P. Hospice Serenity Garden Rededication
Lasco employees attend the rededication of the U.P. Hospice Serenety Garden in Marquette.
Strengthening Security
Implementing security controls is a critical part of doing business in today’s digital landscape.
[07/29/2025] – CBM UP Banking Summit and Golf Outing
July 29 marks the CBM UP Banking Summit and Golf Outing.
What the heck are all these cyber attacks, anyway?
Bad actors have so many ways to attack your data, it’s hard to keep track! Sometimes, you need a partner to help!
[09/12/2025] – CBM Annual Convention & Expo
2025 CBM Annual Convention & Expo was held September 10-12 at the Grand Traverse Resort in Traverse City.
[08/07/2025] – Quarter 3 Lasco Roundtable
Mark your calendars for Lasco’s 3rd Quarter Virtual Roundtable!
July is Ransomware Awareness Month
July is Ransomware Awareness Month. Lasco can help protect your sensitive information from data “kidnappers.”
E5 Security for Microsoft 365 Business Premium Users
E5 Security for MS 365 Business Premium Users Did you know that Microsoft has now enabled its E5 Security for all MS 365 Business Premium customers, offering protection for identities, endpoints, and data? As we continue to respond to current cyber threats, Microsoft E5 Security offers advanced features to keep your systems safe. Defender for Office 365 Plan 2 Microsoft Defender for Office 365 offers seamless integration into MS 365. There are two plans, but we are focusing on Plan 2. The key features of Defender for Office 365 Plan 2 include: Threat Trackers/Explorers -Threat Trackers are queries that you create and save in Threat Explorer. You use these queries to discover cybersecurity threats automatically, with real time reporting tools to help I.T. investigate and respond to threats Teams Message Quarantine/Entity Panel – Admins can view, release, and delete quarantined messages in Teams for users. In addition, the entity panel includes data about suspicious or malicious chats, groups, or channels. Compromised User Detection – When a user account is compromised, atypical or anomalous behaviors occur. Defender for Office 365 can detect such anomalies in email patterns and collaboration activity within Office 365. When this happens, alerts are triggered, and the threat mitigation process begins. Attack Simulations – Attack simulation training in the Microsoft Defender portal runs realistic attack scenarios for your organization. These simulated attacks can help you identify vulnerable users before a real attack impacts your bottom line. Campaign Views – The Campaign feature identifies and categorizes coordinated phishing and malware email attacks. Microsoft’s categorization of email attacks into discrete campaigns helps you to: Efficiently investigate and respond to email attacks, better understand the scope of the email attack that’s targeting your organization, and lets you see the overall picture of an email attack faster and more completely than any human can. Automated Investigation and Response (AIR) – AIR enables your I.T. team to operate more efficiently and effectively. AIR includes automated investigations of well-known threats and provides recommended remediation actions. This would allow for automated responses to specific cyber events. Entra Plan 2 Entra Plan 2 offers enhanced identity and access controls. The features include: Access Reviews – Access reviews in Microsoft Entra ID, part of Microsoft Entra, enable organizations to efficiently manage group memberships, access to enterprise applications, and role assignments for SharePoint and other 365 resources. User access can be reviewed regularly to make sure only authorized people have continued access. Entitlement Management (Basic) – Entitlement management is an identity governance feature that enables organizations to manage identity and access lifecycle at scale, by automating access request workflows, access assignments, reviews, and expiration. Entra ID Protection – During each sign-in, ID Protection runs all real-time sign-in detections, generating a sign-in session risk level that indicates how likely the sign-in is compromised. Based on this risk level, policies are applied to protect the user and the organization. MFA Registration Policy – Microsoft helps you manage the deployment of multifactor authentication (MFA) by configuring the Microsoft Entra ID Protection policy to require MFA registration regardless of the modern authentication app you’re signing in to. Privileged Identity Management (PIM) – PIM is a service in Microsoft Entra ID that enables you to manage, control, and monitor access to important resources in your organization. These include resources in Microsoft Entra ID, Azure, and other Microsoft Online Services, such as Microsoft 365 or Microsoft Intune. Risk Based Conditional Access – Multiple conditions can be combined to create fine-grained and specific Conditional Access policies. For example, when users access a sensitive application, an administrator might factor multiple conditions into their access decisions, such as: Sign-in risk information from ID Protection, Network location, or Device information. App Governance To understand the potential risks and stop these types of attacks, you need to gain clear visibility into your organization’s app compliance posture. You need to be able to quickly identify when a 365 app exhibits anomalous behaviors and respond when these behaviors present risks to your environment, data, and users. Defender for Cloud Apps Software as a Service (SaaS) apps are ubiquitous across hybrid work environments. Protecting SaaS apps and the important data they store is a big challenge. The rise in app usage, combined with employees accessing company resources outside of the corporate perimeter, has also introduced new attack vectors to consider. Defender for Identity Microsoft Defender for Identity is a cloud-based security solution that helps secure your identity monitoring across your organization. Defender for Identity is fully integrated with Microsoft Defender XDR, and leverages signals from both on-premises Active Directory and cloud identities to help you better identify, detect, and investigate advanced threats directed at your organization. Safe Documents Safe Documents is a premium feature that uses the cloud back end of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint to scan opened Office documents in Protected View or Application Guard for Office. All-in-all, Microsoft is offering bulked up security features that will enhance your security and offer a more robust defense against modern day cyber attacks. Need some help navigating Microsoft 365 E5 Security? Please call Andrew or Dustin at 906-228-9770 or 800-800-6197, or email sales@lascoinc.com.
[08/18/2025] – Charity Golf Outing
The Annual Charity Golf Outing will be held on Aug. 8, 2025, at the Indian Lake Golf Course in Manistique, Mich.
Lasco Walks the Walk
Lasco Walks the Walk Lasco is chasing away the winter blues and hitting the (virtual) road! Upper Michigan can get a little claustrophobic sometime around the beginning of March. Often, we will get some significant snow, and most of us are tired winter by now. Physical activity can really help as we get a little more daylight and a little more warmth. So we at Lasco decided to try something a little different. And, in the spirit of teamwork, we decided on a collaborative effort to chase away the doldrums and show that everyone’s contributions can garner impressive results. We chose the My Virtual Mission app to help us coordinate the journey. Our Mission: Lasco’s Virtual Mission is to travel from Marquette, MI, west to Seattle, WA. Then we’ll head south to Las Vegas, baby! Our tour then passes through the Rocky Mountains and goes through Kansas City and St. Louis to Nashville. We’ll turn northward from here and hit Louisville, Indianapolis, Chicago, and Milwaukee on our way back to home turf. Lasco’s Virtual Mission is a total distance of 5821.6 miles. How does it work? Well, each member of the Lasco Virtual Mission team is tracking daily activity. The My Virtual Mission app takes all of that activity, converts it to miles, and maps that out along our virtual route. It’s a fun way to make sure we’re all moving more and how each person’s efforts contribute to a large goal. Activity can be actual walking, biking, running, swimming or any activity that can be tracked. So a walk into work, a hike with the dog, watching a movie while on a treadmill, biking on the road or on trails, using an elliptical machine, even cleaning house helps contribute to the whole. If you’d like to create your own mission, find out more about the My Virtual Mission App and start walking! We’ll update our progress as we tackle our mission. DAY 12 – March 21, 2025 Our Virtual Mission has us nearing the border of North Dakota and Montana. We are currently 110.5 miles ahead of the pace MVM set for us. Collectively, we’ve traveled 815 miles in 12 days! We’ll cross over into Montana any time! A special shout out goes to Jared from our Tech Services for crossing the 100 mile mark! Westward, ho! DAY 10 – March 19, 2025 We are halfway through North Dakota, completing a total of 660 miles! To help keep motivation high, a local resident of North Dakota passed on this encouragement. Let’s not lose our steam! We’ve got 5160 miles left on our My Virtual Missions journey. Let’s get below 5000 miles this week DAY 8 – March 17, 2025 Hi, North Dakota! Whew! The Lasco Team has walked the equivalent of 518 miles. We’ve set a pretty brisk pace and are currently 75 miles ahead on the way to our goal of 5821 miles. We’ve got 5303 miles to go. We’ve got this, Team! Let’s go! DAY 4 – March 14, 2025 We did it! The Lasco Team has pushed through Duluth, Minnesota, bringing our total miles to 275! We’re on to North Dakota now. We’re expecting some rain in the Marquette area, but balmy temperatures, so we’ll all want to get outside in between raindrops. If we keep up this pace, we’ll have no problem reaching our goal. Walking has a number of benefits. Aside from burning calories, a walk can boost your mood. Even just a 10-minute walk can make you feel refreshed and happier. Your heart also loves a walk! Walking can reduce your blood pressure and significantly lower your risk of heart disease. Other benefits can include longer life expectancy, more creative thoughts, a decrease in stress, and more. Even walking just 10 minutes a day can help improve your range of motion and mobility. It’s time to make tracks! See you in North Dakota! DAY 3 – March 13, 2025 We’re on Day 3 of our My Virtual Mission journey, and we’ve made tracks! Collectively, the Lasco team completed 207 miles! We’re midway through northern Wisconsin & on our way to Minnesota. Can we make it today? It’s beautiful outside–should be a walk in the park! Hopefully we will reach Duluth early Friday morning. Stay tuned to see how far we go! DAY 1 & 2 – March 10, 2025 Lasco is really going places–virtually! We’ve joined My Virtual Missions and are taking a loooooong walk. Each team member is tracking their daily steps, and then My Virtual Missions shows us how far those steps would take us. It’s just Day 2, and we’re already over 70 miles in! Our virtual walk will take us westward to Seattle & then return to Marquette. We’ll keep you updated on our progress! Only 5750 miles to go!