Small Business Archives - Page 8 of 11

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.

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.

Is Samsung Installing Keyloggers on Laptops?

March 30, 2011 by techprognosis

UPDATE: It has now been confirmed that Samsung laptops do not contain keyloggers or spyware.

UPDATE: Samsung has issued a statement saying that the finding is false. The statement says the software used to detect the keylogger, VIPRE, can be fooled by Microsoft’s Live Application multi-language support folder. This has been confirmed at F-Secure and two other publications, here and here.

UPDATE: GFI Labs, the maker of VIPRE, has issued an explanation and apology for generating the false positives that led to these articles: “We apologize to the author Mohamed Hassan, to Samsung, as well as any users who may have been affected by this false positive.”

UPDATE: A Samsung executive is said to have personally flown from Newark, N.J., to Burlington, Vt., carrying two unopened boxes containing new R540 laptop computers. These units were immediately put under seal and details recorded for chain-of-custody records. At 17:40, Dr Peter Stephenson, Director of the Norwich University Center for Advanced Computing and Digital Forensics, began the detailed forensic analysis of the disks. The results are expected by Monday.

Original post:
There seems to be a claim (false, as it turns out) that Samsung installs a commercial keylogger called StarLogger on its laptops before shipping them out, apparently to “monitor the performance of the machine and to find out how it is being used.”

This was reported by Mohamed Hassan, MSIA, CISSP, CISA who bought two different models of Samsung’s laptop – the R525 and R540 models. If the report is true, it will be like a rehash of the Sony Rootkit snafu a couple of years back.

The AT&T, T-Mobile Merger: Small Business Implications

March 26, 2011 by techprognosis

AT&T Inc. and German telephone company Deutsche Telekom AG recently announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which AT&T will acquire T-Mobile USA from Deutsche Telekom in a cash-and-stock transaction currently valued at approximately $39 billion.

The lofty goals of this acquisition according to the AT&T Press Release are as follows: