A Rising Tide
In the world of college football, we have learned never to underestimate the power of a rolling tide. On the political playing field, though, we’re not sure what to make of a rising tide. It has been described as both global warming and climate change, but the inconvenient truth remains that our world is experiencing […]
eBay Data Yardsale
Data Yard Sale eBay recently revealed that in February or March of this year their site was breached and personal information from 145 million of their users was exposed. While frantically changing passwords and circling the security wagons, I sought a cultural correlation from my college Western Civ textbook. You too? Now that’s a coincidence. […]
Tom Cruise: IT Specialist – The Sequel
Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch: Before the break, our hero and ICS front man was engaged in some of the vital mechanisms of IT security. He was assessing risk, providing forensic services, modernizing legacy applications, slaying dragons, and rescuing damsels in distress. All in a day’s work for an ICS Specialist. Let’s pick up the […]
Tom Cruise: IT Specialist
IT Security looms large on the world stage. Cyber attacks on commercial and governmental concerns make almost daily appearances in the media. The importance of securing networks and data cannot be overstated, but cyber security suffers a paralyzing lack of star power, a desperate dearth of the glitz and glamour that might elevate our status. […]
Social Engineering – A Penetrating Politeness
Imagine the scene. You’re walking from the car to the side entrance of the third hotel this week, last stop on a sales junket that has raised more cholesterol than warm leads. You switch suitcase hands and struggle to fish the key card out of your pocket. You slide the card and hear the click, […]
Passwords and Protection
It’s 2014. Do You Know Where Your Data Is? You have racks of servers and migrate data religiously to the cloud and off-site storage. Your IT staff builds a firewall and posts a guard. Your commitment to network security is unparalleled in the industry. That’s the good news. The bad news? Security is always about […]
The Data Apocalypse
Imagine an older Marlon Brando lounging languidly atop your server racks, slicing an apple and waxing poetically about the tyranny of data, while your IT manager, buried up to his chin in untested security procedures and antiquated protocols, an RJ-45 crimper clinched in his teeth, struggles to eliminate the threat of man’s heart of darkness. […]
A Bitcoin for Your Thoughts
Collateral Influence In an age when it costs more to mint a penny than the penny is actually worth, Satoshi gave us money that moves freely through the ether and will never languish in the folds beneath sofa cushions. Encrypted currency for the digital world. Hermetically sealed and seemingly inviolable in the wonder of cryptography, […]
Lynyrd Skynyrd and Malaysian Air
The human tragedy of a plane crash acknowledged but set aside for the moment, consider the contrasting types of loss generated by similar events. For a business or an organization assessing its risk threshold, the real issue is operational recovery and stability. Statistical Inevitability and Unanswered Questions Ronnie Van Zant, the front man of Lynyrd […]
Breach is a Heartbeat Away
OpenSSL, the vehicle through which the Secure Sockets Layer protocol protects most websites that encrypt data, has reminded us again of both the vulnerability and security of open source development. The Heartbleed bug, an accidental code addition about two years ago, exploits the heartbeat option within OpenSSL, a mechanism that allows fluid connectivity between user […]
