Tech Prognosis Blog Technology Tips for Businesses in Round Rock, TX

The Cloud And Your Business: Where is Your Umbrella?

May 4, 2011 by techprognosis

That there is a lot of hype in the technology industry about “the cloud” is pretty obvious these days. You will be hard pressed to read an article about technology (this one included) without some reference to the beauty, ease and affordability of cloud services.

The argument is that IT infrastructures have become too complex and fragile for the pace and dynamism of modern day business. Champions of everything to the cloud are quick to point out that over 70 percent of current IT investment remains focused on maintenance. Worse yet, it is argued, users are clamoring for faster response times and of course management wants all the good stuff but are unwilling to pay for it. So, cloud computing to the rescue.

Beware The Ides of April: Web Indexing and Tax Data

April 13, 2011 by techprognosis

Tax season is in high gear and with it comes the need to be extra vigilant on how tax records are handled. After all, your tax records “has everything” that can be considered as Personally Identifiable Information (PII). PII refers to information that can be used to uniquely identify, contact, or locate a single person or can be used with other sources to uniquely identify a single individual.

Stephen Chapman over at ZDNet observed that as of 4/10/2011, there were over 50 tax documents containing any given combination of Social Security numbers, credit card information, names, addresses, tax IDs, and phone numbers being made available online.

“Windows license locked”: Ransomware Targets Windows

April 12, 2011 by techprognosis

“Windows license locked!”
“This copy of Windows is locked. You may be a victim of fraud or there may be an internal system error” – malware message

Mikko Hyppönen of F-Secure has warned of a new variant of what he calls “Ransomware” or ransom trojans. These are attacks by malware that takes a computer hostage and then tries to extort a payment in return for returning control of the computer or its files to the owner. Sometimes, the malware will encrypt files (using AES – Advanced Encryption Standard, for example) until some “ransom” is paid by buying a key to unlock the hostage computer.

Unlimited Data Storage Space: A Good Thing or the Sword of Damocles?

April 6, 2011 by techprognosis

“Does not Dionysius seem to have made it sufficiently clear that there can be nothing happy for the person over whom some fear always looms?” – Cicero

I walked into a local electronics store the other day and saw a 2TB SATA hard drive for $80, and a 3TB drive was on sale for about $160.00. I unconsciously blurted out “You’ve got to be kidding me!”. Of course everyone around gave me that “what’s up with that?” look.

Not too long ago, one terabyte of data storage space was “unthinkable”. Even worse was the projection of the cost. I have a hard drive an engineer friend of mine gave me a while back. It weighed a ton and had a whopping size of one gigabyte (1GB) and the astonishing price was $1, 248.99.

WeR1 v Cyberlynk: Ethics and Danger in the Cloud

April 5, 2011 by techprognosis

A recent lawsuit involving WeR1 World Network and CyberLynk Network brings up the issue of ethics, responsibility and danger in the much hyped “Cloud” storage utility that has been agressively pushed by most of the major vendors in recent times.

The gist of the case is that a disgruntled employee of Cyberlynk managed to log back into the Cyberlynk network after he was fired and proceeded to delete about 304GB of data which happened to include an entire season of the TV show called “Zodiac Island” produced by WeR1 network.

APTs and Small Businesses: Hype or Real?

April 1, 2011 by techprognosis

A new buzzword seem to emerge every few hours these days. If it’s not “Cloud”, it is “DLP”. One of the latest, in the security field at least, is “APT”. For Debian-based Linux users, we think of Aptitude, the update tool when we hear the word Apt. This APT refers to Advanced Persistent Threat – a term that is argued to have been coined by Washington D.C.-based security firm Mandiant.

It is a new attempt at restating an old problem of information security. Think of the old telephone trap and trace, satellite imaging, the presence of undercover operatives on the enemy’s side of the fence etc. Just like “Cloud” and “DLP”, the phrase sounds catchy and has enough ominous ring to it that will make CEOs and CISOs perk up when it is thrown at them by master pitchmen of security providers.