There are no shortage of philosophies when it comes to computer and network security. Keeping data secure and private should be the number one priority for all those philosophies. One thing that is usually missing from these philosophies are the human component. As IT Technicians, most of the time we forget that the users we…
DetailsWindows 10 is slated to come out later this year, with the goal of not just superseding the oft maligned windows 8 (and windows 8.1), but actually replacing it. Microsoft will offer Windows 10 as a free upgrade to users with devices. This is good for consumers who love their device and want to try…
DetailsThe list of the worst password for 2014 just came out, and it looks like the people’s favorite worst passwords are still at the top: “password” and 123456”. Other winners (or losers) are ‘12345’ (#3), ‘qwerty’ (#5), ‘abc123’ (#14), ‘football’ (#10), and my favorite ‘letmein’ (#13). In my career as an IT professional, I’ve seen…
DetailsWhat’s the biggest threat to a company’s network security? Viruses? Hackers? Worms? The NSA? It’s none of the above. The weakest point are the users. That’s right, the same people that you trust to use the computers that you want to protect are the ones that are putting it at risk, according to a recent…
DetailsAs if there weren’t enough challenges for growing small and medium size businesses, there is another one to add to their list: Enterprise level malware software at affordable prices. Up to recently, the majority of Data breaches have been targeted at big corporation (Target, Staples, Home Depot, etc.), however now the targets have shifted to…
DetailsAs if there weren’t enough challenges for growing small and medium size businesses, there is another one to add to their list: Enterprise level malware software at affordable prices. Up to recently, the majority of Data breaches have been targeted at big corporation (Target, Staples, Home Depot, etc.), however now the targets have shifted to…
DetailsLooks like the trend of security flaws in encryption protocols continues. Heartbleed, Bash Shellshock, and now POODLE. POODLE stands for Padding Oracle On Downgraded Legacy Encryption. This basically means that on encrypted HTTPS connections, applications like browsers will be forced to default down from TLS to SSL 3.0 even when the application supports all the…
DetailsUnix/Linux platforms are not the only ones haunted by the old buggy code demon (daemon?). Bash Shellshock was the very serious flaw in the command shell Bash, which runs inside most of Unix/Linux devices, that affected millions of computer and devices around the world. This vulnerability allowed an intruder to take over the whole device,…
DetailsBash full of surprises Just when you thought that vulnerabilities could not get worse than the Heartbleed bug, (a serious vulnerability in the OpenSSL implementation of SSL cryptography, which can render a computer connected to the internet susceptible to have its communication intercepted by a third party, even when using a VPN) Shellshock bash…
DetailsThe New Normal Target, Kmart, Staples and Home Depot. What do these four retailers have in common (besides their killer Black Friday deals)? The answer is: they have all been hacked in the past 12 months. Staples is the last major retailer that has reported a data breach in their systems, in which potentially…
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