We’ve all been subjected to it: ” Install our software or hardware and use it for 30-60 days and if you do not like it, simply remove it and you will get your money back, no questions asked”. Well, there-in lies the problem – that no questions are being asked.
Have you ever subscribed to a “free” magazine only to spend frustrating months trying to get them to stop billing you for the useless magazine? Think of that situation magnified ten times. Here’s why.
The recent rash of exposures about successful attacks against information security vendors may come as no surprise to a lot of people in the information security world who probably see or hear about it frequently, but it will surely come as “shocking” to most “ordinary” folks.
HBGary, RSA, Comodo and Barracuda Networks are the latest of high-profile security vendors to be breached. As a quick refresher, EMC’s RSA group disclosed that someone had broken into its networks and obtained information that could compromise its SecurID products.
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.
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!”
“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.
“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.
