Carroll County, MD Carroll 101, 6 Aug 2021

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From YouTube: Carroll 101 - Mark Ripper Director of Technology Services

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Carroll County Government
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My name is mark ripper. Welcome to carol 101. I serve as the director of technology services for.

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Carroll county government and chief information officer and today I'd like to tell you a little.

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Bit about my department, I'm going to start off by talking about how we're actually set up and then.

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Go into a little bit about what we do and then I'm also going to talk about the fiber network and I'm.

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Going to conclude with giving you some ideas on protecting yourself from any cyber thefts. First.

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Of all I'd like to start off talking about my vision and my mission, the mission of carroll.

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County government's office of technology services is to provide quality, cost-effective technology.

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Solutions and services that enable county departments, agencies and partners to be successful.

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In achieving their respective goals and always striving to exceed expectations, the.

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Role of the county to its agencies and to the citizens is to directly support the employees.

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Of the carroll county government, sheriff's department, states attorney humane society.

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With all of their computer needs, we also support all of the e-services that are out on the web.

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In order for our residents to be able to access information and give the county information about.

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Things that they need to know about the structure in my department, I have about 34 employees.

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I have six divisions, application and programming client services, enterprise gis, which is geographic.

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Information systems, networking production and distribution services and graphic design.

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I have an operating budget of about five million dollars.

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The applications and programming manager is responsible for all of the major applications that.

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Are run on our hp 3000, it includes things like the uh financial management system, the integrated land.

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Management system, which we call excela human resources and payroll systems and collections.

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In the client services division, this is the division that has the most contact with the actual.

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End users in the county, they are responsible for helping people manage their personal computers.

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Their data and to help the employees keep the data safe. The enterprise, geographic information.

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System oversees the gis operations of the county, it assists in coordinating what we call the gis.

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Layers that are available to people that include everything from property lines to actual pictures.

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Of properties and homes, businesses in the county and gis is used by multiple agencies, including.

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Planning public safety and economic development. My fourth division is the networking division.

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It's really really an important division of the county. Today, it's grown over the past 30 years.

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That I've been here today, their major influence, is to protect the county from cyber security.

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Attacks and to help make sure that the users have all of the access that they need to their files.

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But at the same time making sure that the data stays safe and protected from outside sources.

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Production distribution services serves as the copy center and the mail center for the county.

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Government they are responsible for producing all of the big jobs that you normally would not do.

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On a printer, where, generally dozens or hundreds of copies are required,.

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And they also are responsible for collecting the mail within the county office building.

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And making the runs back and forth to the united states postal service.

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The graphic design and media department actually consists of only one person, but.

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She's responsible for helping the county do all of its public forward facing letting people know.

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What the events that are going on, helping put together displays and those types of operations.

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Why we do it what it means for county service, community and residents? The response we're.

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Responsible for storing, maintaining and protecting all of the data that is used by county government.

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And partner agencies, we have been upgrading our technology over the years and continue to do so.

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To provide state-of-the-art technology so that our data is maintained in a safe and efficient manner.

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But is also easily accessible to the people who need to access it and as well to the public that.

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Needs to access that data, our customers do include the employees of county government and our partner.

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Agencies, but also you, the residents of carroll county. We are supporting you and being able to.

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Get to the data that you need and provide county government with any information that you need to.

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Give us we have multiple projects and challenges that we're facing again the primary challenge.

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Is cyber security you hear every day in the newspaper or on the radio television youtube.

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About another attack, that's taken place somewhere, where they've been able to get into the data.

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It's responsibility to department of technology services to do the best that we possibly can.

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And while nothing is a hundred percent, uh my staff works on a daily basis, making sure that.

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We are secure as we possibly can be another one of the big challenges is broadband in.

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The county and making sure that the residents of carroll county have access to high-speed internet.

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Access in 2019, the commissioners did initiate a broadband grant program.

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Where businesses in carroll county, whether they'd be in the towns or a small business.

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That's actually run out of somebody's home, a grant program that allows them to apply for money.

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So that they can have high-speed internet access brought into their houses, it is a maximum of.

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Twenty five thousand dollars with a fifty percent match one of the biggest tools that we have. That's.

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Used by the users and staff of county is accello, which is the integrated land management system.

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And it helps us track plans from the inception until the point that the permit is actually issued.

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But then it also allows us to track any issues that may happen after the property.

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Has been accessed, the project has been being developed for years and is continuing to expand.

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And we now have the ability for people to apply for certain permits online check. The ability of.

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Where their status is of any um oh in that horrible inspections that need to be done.

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In the county in 2020, the county increased the ability of the employees to work remotely.

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Due to covet, we put an awful lot of money into technology to allow people to continue to work.

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At the same level that they were able to work in the office from their homes or any other location,.

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So that county government could remain open and accessible to the public.

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One of the biggest things that we've been doing here in carroll county uh with the help of the.

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Commissioners is we have been able to build a carroll county, fiber network, the overall.

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Objective of this capital project was to build a robust, reliable, county-owned fiber-based network.

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We currently have over 130 county state and local connections to this network that are able to get.

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Internet access at no cost because we're able to bring that in through the state and did a fiber.

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Share with the state where we allow people the the state to use our fiber and then it.

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Allows us to have access to the internet at no cost. We also build a lot of extra fiber into.

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The network we build up 216 strands of fiber, and what this is allowing us to do is that, for.

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Every communications generally, you require two strands county government uses about 72 of those.

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Strands on the fiber, but we also allocate a fiber for business and industry to use.

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And lease from us so that they could get access to high-speed internet. We currently have several.

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Different companies, including carroll hospital center and ting, who provides service to the city.

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Of westminster, leasing fiber from us on a monthly basis in order to bring in their connection from.

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The world down into county government, the other thing I wanted to cover- and I wanted you to be.

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Aware of is that when we try and protect ourselves here at county government from cyber attacks, we.

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Also want you to be able to protect yourself from cyber attacks. I want to talk a little bit about.

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Some of the things that are out there and the types of things that can happen.

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The first and the most common type of thing that happened and been happening for years as.

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A virus which is a piece of code, that's capable of coming into your system and could do one of.

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Multiple things one is, it could start to get data off of your computer and provide it to somebody.

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It could also start to damage the data. That's on your computer and cause you to have to reloading.

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Your system, something that's become more common in recent years, is phishing. Phishing is when somebody.

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Either sends you an email or makes a phone call or any type of communication with you.

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Where they're trying to get you to give trying to get you to give them secure information, do not.

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Ever give your information as far as credit cards bank statement account numbers anything like that.

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To any individual, if they call up and ask for it, if you receive an email that says we need this.

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Information, the safest way to actually go about doing this is to go out onto the actual website.

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That you're familiar with log into your account and check and see if you have any messages there.

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No respectable company is ever going to ask you for that data to be sent across an email message.

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Another type of attack, which is actually more common to businesses, is something called a denial.

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Of service attack and what they do there is they start to flood the amount of data. That's actually.

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Coming into the institution and it slows down the institutions, ability to be able to communicate.

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With the world and actually sometimes can make it next to impossible.

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To get access to the internet, the other thing that you've probably heard about more recently.

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And is becoming more common, unfortunately, is ransomware. Ransomware is when somebody.

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Takes over your system, they've loaded, some software onto the computer- and they are now.

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Asking you to provide them some type of payment in order to release your data. The problem with.

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This is is that, even if you pay them in a lot of cases, you're never going to get 100 recovery of.

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The data that you lost there's always going to be something that you're going to have to rebuild and.

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It's going to take a lot of time and effort to do it. One of the ways that they're asking for payment.

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Nowaday that you may have heard of is something called bitcoin, which is an electronic payment.

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System that can be used to pay the ransomware if it is something that is decided to be done.

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So what can you do to protect yourself and it's the same things that we do here? First of all,.

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Update all of your software, all of the time if microsoft says I've got an update for this or.

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One of your games or other programs says we have an update for your system, update the software a.

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Lot of times, when they're providing those updates they're providing security patches to holes, that.

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People may have found in the software that would allow them to enter your system. Second of all,.

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Understand how scams work there is again with your bank statements, your credit cards, anything.

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Where you work they're, never going to send you an email asking for personal information such.

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As your social security number credit card information, including your security code,.

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Even your address and zip code, there's no reason to ever respond to those types.

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Of attacks, whether they be by phone or by email also, people are becoming more and more.

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Creative in the way that they're going about doing it, they can be sending you an email that says this.

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Is from one of the shipping companies or from an airline or maybe a purchase of a product? And.

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We can't ship your product or you can't get your tickets until you respond to this email and give.

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Us the information that we're asking for those are all different types of phishing attempts that you.

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Really really need to watch out for again always go out to the original site log, in with your name.

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And password, if, if you have any concerns and if there's any messages there, that you need to read.

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Then they'll be there in that location, use strong passwords, strong passwords, aren't simple things.

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Like apple123, that's a very easy password. First of all, it's a word that can easily be.

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Found in a dictionary and then a series of numbers, there's software out there that can literally run.

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Hundreds, if not thousands, of passwords against systems to see if they can possibly get a hit a.

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Strong password would be something like taking a phrase that says I love to work for carroll county.

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Government and maybe take the first letter of each word, make some of them capital and lowercase.

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And then you can also do things by adding special characters at the end, such as exclamation points.

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Or pound signs, the other thing you can do is you can replace numbers and letters with symbols on.

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Your system, maybe the letter, a with the at symbol that would give you really really strong passwords.

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And they should be at a minimum eight characters, but obviously 12 to 16 characters are going to be.

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Much much stronger. The last thing I want to leave you with as far as best practices.

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Is do not use public wi-fi to do transactions that involve sensitive information, in other words,.

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Don't go out to a restaurant and decide. Oh, I got to pay my mastercard bill here.

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Because the network that you're connecting to there is probably not as secure as it needs to be.

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And there can literally be other people sitting in the restaurant with the equipment that they need.

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To monitor exactly what you're doing, and they can see every keystroke that you hit.

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And gather that information and then in the future, use that the fact that they've gotten that.

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Information and be able to attack your accounts. I thank you for listening to this today. Again,.

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My name is mark ripper and you have my contact information there on the screen m ripper county.

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Carrollcountymaryland.Gov or 410-386-2053, if you have any questions at all, whether it be about.

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The office of technology, department of technology services or anything about the fiber network, the.

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The one other thing that I'll, let you know is that I also serve as the chairman of the.

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Cable regulatory commission here for carroll county government. So if you ever have any.

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Questions about cable, don't hesitate to contact me about that as well. At those same locations.

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