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Backblog—Security
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A more organic approach to computer security February 15, 2010 By Charlie Bess Categories: General Security I was catching up on my reading the other day and I came across an article on using Swarm Intelligence techniques to identify computer malware, describing research from Wake Forest University and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). In my predictions for 2010 I listed security as one of... Access Management and Protecting the Network January 19, 2010 By Vaclav Vincalek Categories: Security When we think about maintaining and protecting the network, we often focus on hardening the system against outsider threats. It makes sense, since the majority of attacks on a network come from the outside. But when insider attacks occur, they can do a lot more damage. That's where access management... Getting Rid of the Google Website Warning November 12, 2009 By Vaclav Vincalek Categories: General Security We've had such good response and interest in our white paper on "How to Remove the Google Website Warning" that we wanted to re-publicize this useful resource on our security site for newer readers. To provide a little background, we first started looking into the Google security warning when a... Access Management and Protecting the Network October 21, 2009 By Vaclav Vincalek Categories: General Security When we think about maintaining and protecting the network, we often focus on hardening the system against outsider threats. It makes sense, since the majority of attacks on a network come from the outside. But when insider attacks occur, they can do a lot more damage. That's where access management... Growing Not Quite Ready for Enterprise Use? October 9, 2009 By Vaclav Vincalek Categories: General Security I caught an interesting snapshot of some companies' experience in moving their email from Lotus to Gmail on what seems to be a purely cost-cutting basis: "Genentech, Hamilton Beach, and Johnson Diversey are among a smattering of large companies that have turned off their e-mail servers and signed up... Devfense Cyber Alert Goes Online October 2, 2009 By Vaclav Vincalek Categories: General Security We've just launched a new public service, Devfense Cyber Alert. The free service will help users know which websites have been flagged as vulnerable to hackers and may harm Internet surfers' computers or be used to violate their privacy. This information is published on Twitter at https://twitter... Court Allows Suit Against Bank For Poor Online Security September 24, 2009 By Ben Bradley Categories: General Security I saw this article on Finextra. Since I’ve been working with BrandProtect (www.brandprotect.com), I’ve become extremely aware of identity theft scams as well as the bank’s role in providing a sufficient level of security. The whole story is available here (http://www.finextra.com/fullstory.asp?id=204... IBM or Microsoft for your business needs? September 17, 2009 By Vaclav Vincalek Categories: General Security Which technology is better for your business, IBM's or Microsoft? Security Channel News has a great overview of the different features of Lotus Domino and Microsoft Small Business Server for the SMB market. As we always say, the technology you choose has to be based on the business process you're... Online Security Not an Oxymoron, Part 2 September 10, 2009 By Vaclav Vincalek Categories: General Security At the beginning of this year, we discussed some online security measures ordinary Internet users can use immediately to protect their computers and the data they contain from predatory hackers. Social networks are increasingly being exploited to commit ID theft and fraud, so it's time to add a few... 12 Steps to Setting Up Your Small Business Wi-Fi Network September 4, 2009 By Vaclav Vincalek Categories: General Security An excellent overview on all the basic procedures for setting up your Wi-Fi network for your business, courtesy of Eric Geier. Still a bit too technical for your typical SMB owner, but that's why they outsource these things. Great resource. Vaclav Vincalek Pacific Coast Informer Blog VoIP and Security for You and Me August 16, 2009 By Vaclav Vincalek Categories: General Security VoIP VoIP (Voice over IP) is an increasingly popular mode of communications, gaining ground since about 2004, when it started using broadband Internet access. VoIP is vulnerable to many of the same scams and fraudulent behavior as traditional voice communications and can be a weak point in your overall... Case for Security Webinar: Top 25 Dangerous Programming Errors, Part 2 August 11, 2009 By Vaclav Vincalek Categories: General Security Continuing our series on web application security, in this webinar we will continue our discussion of the top 25 web application programming errors that lead to security issues. The discussion will cover definitions of the programming errors, how to identify and assess risks in your application, and... Facebook Gets Poked for Privacy Violations August 6, 2009 By Vaclav Vincalek Categories: General Security If your privacy gets compromised, your company's privacy can be compromised and vice versa. Facebook has 30 days to comply with Canadian recommendations to improve privacy protection. Get the scoop at Facebook breaches privacy: Czar Rather than an overreach by government, this seems to be a very... Case for Security Webinar: Top 25 Dangerous Programming Errors, Part 1 July 30, 2009 By Vaclav Vincalek Categories: General Security Continuing our series on web application security, in this webinar we will discuss the top 25 web application programming errors that lead to security issues. The discussion will cover definitions of the programming errors, how to identify and assess risks in your application, and references to... Shortened URLs Can Shorten Your Computer’s Lifespan July 27, 2009 By Vaclav Vincalek Categories: General Security Coding Horror has hit on the big threat to the World Wide InterWeb posed by the mainstreaming of shortened-URL services. While Jeff Atwood points to the real danger that the Internet will be turned on its head by monetizing the entire web experience, the security threat is obvious as well. The... How to Report a Web Security Breach July 13, 2009 By Vaclav Vincalek Categories: General Security Do you remember the Best Western security breach from last year? It is still relevant, in that it illustrated a case of what NOT to do when it comes to reporting a security breach. First, the Best Western hotel chain was quoted in a story that hackers stole eight million credit cards worth roughly 2... How often should we change passwords? June 30, 2009 By Vaclav Vincalek Categories: General Security The conventional wisdom from identity management and security wonks is that you should change your passwords frequently. WiseGeek puts it at once every three months. Some say as often as every day. But is it practical? With an ever-growing number of work applications, social networking and cloud... Passwords and Secret Questions June 25, 2009 By Vaclav Vincalek Categories: General Security If I know you, I bet I can guess your password within five guesses. The truth may set you free, but honesty will get you into trouble when it comes to your security questions for banking, social networking and other applications. Once again, Bruce Schneier has come upon some excellent research... Trading Up to A Tech Hub Requires Accountability June 19, 2009 By Vaclav Vincalek Categories: General Security If BC wants to compete globally, we need to focus on knowledge based industries through better education and training that goes beyond support for traditional trades. Of course, this has been a longtime goal of BCTIA members. It was emphasized again by BCTIA President Pascal Spothelfer in his pre... Security Awareness Training to Stem Data Loss from USB Drives May 6, 2009 By Vaclav Vincalek Categories: General Security USB drives are a great example of a business-enabling technology that carries an obvious security risk. Some USB drives allow you to store up to 64 GB of data, on something that easily fits into your pocket. You can pretty much swipe an entire company’s database. Whether someone is using that for... Outsourcing Security vs. Doing It In-House April 29, 2009 By Vaclav Vincalek Categories: General eHealth Outsourcing Security More companies, particularly those with over 1,000 employees, are increasing their security budgets and hiring chief information security officers, despite the recession, according to my colleagues in the industry. This makes sense, given that companies know they need to protect their business... Online Identity - Insecure on Social Media Websites April 23, 2009 By Vaclav Vincalek Categories: General Security Towards the end of my workshop on Identity Management at the Massive Technology Show, one audience member noted that on social media sites like Facebook, we are starting to see more granular capabilities to protect privacy. But these security measures may just be window dressing, in my opinion. This... Texting your stolen car: Best. Idea. Ever. April 17, 2009 By Peter Wolchak Categories: General Security About 400 cars are stolen every day, StatsCan tells us, and for the most part the car companies shrug their shoulders. Cars are easy to steal and with a few exceptions - GM’s premium OnStar service being one - manufacturers haven’t done a lot to stop these thefts. So it’s lucky for us that Canada... Everything I Know About Security, I Learned From Barack Obama April 9, 2009 By Vaclav Vincalek Categories: General Security I bet you didn't know that Barack Obama was a cyber security expert. The popular American President has been many things throughout an impressive career: community leader, best-selling author, political machine. And on further analysis of some of his statements he's made over the years, it's clear... Conficker Worm Making You Squirm? April 1, 2009 By Vaclav Vincalek Categories: General Security As you already may be aware, the Conficker worm threatens all computers using the Microsoft Windows operating system on April 1. As an indication of just how threatening this worm is, the French air force has grounded its jets and the UK parliamentary IT network is scrambling to fix what appears to... Myth of PCI DSS: Security Compliance is Hard January 5, 2009 By Vaclav Vincalek Categories: General Security While talking with Forrester analyst John Kindervag about IT security trends this week, we discussed the issue of educating companies about PCI DSS compliance. Of course, compliance is part of what PCIS helps companies achieve through a range of boxed services, so it came up naturally enough in the... How Much Would You Trust Third-Party Web Applications with Your Medical Records? November 25, 2008 By Vaclav Vincalek Categories: General Security As I’ve mentioned before on this blog (What are Strangers Doing With All of Your Information?), when you willingly hand over your information to Google via Gmail or a third-party application, they own it. Once they own it, they can sell it. But businesses, non-profits and individuals willingly... People will buy convenience November 20, 2008 By Charlie Bess Categories: General Security Wireless When I was going through my MBA, we were studying entrepreneur and product development techniques. One of the things we were always looking for were products and services to make life easier. There are numerous examples for this holiday season. One that caught my eye the other day was Schlage Link.... So You Followed Proper IT Security Procedures and Still Got Burned? (Part 2 of 2) September 22, 2008 By Vaclav Vincalek Categories: Security Continued from Part 1 of So You Followed Proper IT Security Procedures and Still Got Burned? My innocent laptop computer was stuck in a dreamless sleep because my password no longer worked – even though I had followed the manufacturer’s own procedures when setting up and updating security on the... So You Followed Proper IT Security Procedures and Still Got Burned? (Part 1 of 2) August 18, 2008 By Vaclav Vincalek Categories: Security I got my laptop computer shipped back to me today and its working perfectly fine – which upsets me a great deal. You see, the computer isn’t supposed to be working. The manufacturer’s finest customer service reps assured me repeatedly that the only fix for my password-locked machine was replacing... How To Protect Your Information On Your Laptop From Being Stolen July 31, 2008 By Vaclav Vincalek Categories: Security Pretty much everyone and their dog has a laptop, Macbook, Blackberry or some other kind of portable computing device (all hereafter referred to as "device"). Protecting your information on that device from cyber thieves (or just plain ordinary thieves) isn't easy. But it gets easier if you take... How to Calculate Return On Investment (ROI) for Web Security July 25, 2008 By Vaclav Vincalek Categories: General Security Calculating ROI on web security doesn’t have to be tricky. Actually, it can be pretty straightforward. And it's critical for organizations to do the calculation, since we can reasonably assume that unprotected web applications will get hit eventually. Industry analysts suggest just one in 30... Would You Give Me Your Password For A Candy? July 7, 2008 By Vaclav Vincalek Categories: Security The human factor can make identity management a tough challenge. There’s a classic scene in the popular TV sitcom Seinfeld where Kramer tries to figure out George’s secret password. Through a process of deduction, Kramer starts getting very close to the secret word (“Bosco”, a chocolate sauce George... Stay away from Hong Kong online: McAfee June 25, 2008 By Peter Wolchak Categories: Security Backbone has been devoting a fair bit of ink lately to the problems of botnets and the threat posed by Web sites which can infect a computer that simply visits the site; at one time, infection occurred when users clicked a link or downloaded an application, but now a visitor can be hit with malware... Is Your Website Safe? June 20, 2008 By Vaclav Vincalek Categories: Security Well, is it? It seems like a simple question. But as I said in a presentation about web security last week, when it comes to this question, far too many IT professionals are reduced to shrugging their shoulders, turning to their clients or bosses and nodding their heads. “Sure, it’s safe. “We’ve got... Don't get botnetted April 25, 2008 By Peter Wolchak Categories: Security "Botnet" is not a verb, but it should be. As a noun, it refers to a group of computers (called zombies) that have been compromised by worms, Trojan horses or some other type of backdoor software and are secretly being used by a controller, called a bot herder or a botmaster. An article by Danny... Information security and Green IT conflicting over enterprise mindshare in 2008? January 13, 2008 By Charlie Bess Categories: Security Privacy International just released its privacy protection rankings by country. It’s interesting that almost every country with widespread Internet usage is marked as low on the list. It made me wonder if there is a similar assessment of commercial (or criminal) use of personal information – this... Fun with wireless networks January 8, 2008 By Danny Bradbury Categories: Security Wireless Most tech-heads will know what an SSID is. It’s the public identity of a wireless network that broadcasts itself to the public. You’ll see them in airports and coffee shops all the time. Spark up your laptop and you’ll find “Starbucks wireless”, or “Chicago Airport Public WiFi”, or “Boingo Hotspot”,... Beware Olympic scammers and other baddies December 21, 2007 By Peter Wolchak Categories: Security 'Tis the season for lists: top seven, 10 or 25 compilations detailing everything from songs and celebrity scandals to bad business ideas and best-selling digital gizmos. Backbone's January issue includes a list of the top eight predictions for 2008. One of these is that computer security is going to... Please select a category:
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