50 | OCTOBER 10 • 2019
business SPOTlight
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MANUFACTURING-
CENTERED CENTREPOLIS
ACCELERATOR NOW OPEN
Lawrence Technological University —
joined by the city of Southfield and
the Michigan Economic Development
Corporation — cut the ribbon on its
new manufacturing business acceler-
ator Oct. 4.
The Centrepolis Accelerator is
6,300 square feet of state-of-the-
art business assistance for physical
product developers and manufac-
turing companies, a unique niche
among business accelerators in the
Detroit area.
Clients will include manufacturing
startups and existing companies
looking to move up to the next level
in product innovation. Services will
include access to office space,
co-working space, workshops, men-
tors, business planning services, and
laboratories and equipment for digital
product design and prototyping,
as well as virtual reality and mixed
reality labs.
Ransomeware is malicious
software designed to block
access to a computer system
until a sum of money is paid.
These kinds of cyberattacks
are on the increase and experts
warn they’
re likely to become
more common.
Here are some guidelines
from the FBI to ward off a
ransomware attack:
• Make sure employees
are aware of ransomware and
their critical roles in protecting
data.
• Back up data regularly
and verify the integrity of
those backups.
• Secure your backups.
Make sure they are not con-
nected to the computers and
networks they are backing up.
• Patch operating system,
software and firmware on
digital devices.
• Ensure antivirus and
anti-malware solutions are set
to automatically update and
conduct regular scans.
• Manage the use of
privileged accounts — no
users should be assigned
administrative access unless
absolutely needed and only
use administrator accounts
when necessary.
B I R M I N G H A M
Advocate
Advocate
for Women
for Women
in the Law
in the Law
Former president of the
Michigan State Bar keeps
women in the forefront.
JASON RUBENFIRE SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS
J
ulie Fershtman, former
president of the State Bar
of Michigan and equity
shareholder and vice president
at Foster Swift Collins & Smith
PC, has been a trailblazer in law,
particularly for the advance-
ment of women. It’
s been
her personal mission to help
women lawyers succeed, both in
and out of the workplace.
“When my career began in
the 1980s, there were promising
signs of women’
s advancement
in the profession,
” she says.
She was a member of Emory
Law School’
s first-ever entering
class with 50 percent women,
most who received job offers.
Despite this initial promise, she
says progress for women in the
law has surprisingly slowed over
the years, despite the greater
influx of female law school
graduates.
Fershtman works with a
nationwide clientele on a
broad range of legal matters,
primarily business and insur-
ance litigation. She’
s written
more than 400 articles and
published three books, one by
the American Bar Association
(ABA), and a fourth, with a
focus on horse-related law, to be
published by the ABA later this
year. She has spoken on legal
issues in 29 states. Still, she is
deeply committed to empow-
ering other women in the pro-
fession.
“In 2011, I was only the fifth
woman in 77 years to be elected
president of the 45,000-member
DERRICK MARTINEZ
Julie Fershtman
GUARD AGAINST RANSOMWARE ATTACKS
LAWRENCE TECH