SysSecOps is a new phrase, still unseen by many IT and security administrators – however it’s being discussed within the market, by analysts, and at technical conferences. SysSecOps, or Systems & Security Operations, describes the practice of combining security groups and IT operations groups to be able to make sure the health of enterprise technology […]
Low-Quality Tools at Ridiculous Prices!
This fake message from “Netflix” almost got me, and as you know I’m quite skeptical about these things. Unlike most scams, it’s neatly formatted and well-written. And because my family has a Netflix account, it didn’t seem completely unreasonable. What gave it away? First, vendors don’t sent out emails demanding to “validate” information or your […]
This scam is comically bad, yet who knows if anyone fell for it? This is exactly how the mail came through. I’m leaving in the email addresses, well, just because. I love the question and answers below, and the attention to detail — even the FedEx address is fake. Be sure to tell her your […]
On this day before Thanksgiving (a U.S. holiday), let me share the concept of Shehecheyanu Moments. The Shehecheyanu is a prayer of thankfulness. Many Jews say the prayer immediately after the first time you do or experience something new and wonderful, or right after you experience it for the first time in a long time. […]
Ransomware is genuine, and is threatening individuals, services, schools, medical facilities, governments – and there’s no indication that ransomware is stopping. In fact, it’s probably increasing. Why? Let’s be honest: Ransomware is probably the single most efficient attack that hackers have ever created. Anybody can develop ransomware utilizing easily available tools; any cash received is […]
I unlock my smartphone with a fingerprint, which is pretty secure. Owners of the new Apple iPhone X unlock theirs with their faces – which is reported to be hackable with a mask. My tablet is unlocked with a six-digit numerical code, which is better than four digits or a pattern. I log into my laptop with […]
AI is an emerging technology – always, has been always will be. Back in the early 1990s, I was editor of AI Expert Magazine. Looking for something else in my archives, I found this editorial, dated February 1991. What do you think? Is AI real yet?
A lot of people share files with friends or colleagues by uploading them to cloud storage and sending an access link. I do this myself, sharing folders, documents or photo collections. Malicious scammers can do the same thing. It’s a great technique for them, because the email itself has no attachments, and thus won’t set […]
The secret sauce is AI-based zero packet inspection. That’s how to secure mobile users, and their personal data and employers’ data. Let’s back up a step. Mobile devices are increasingly under attack, from malicious apps, from rogue emails, from adware, and from network traffic. Worse, that network traffic can come from any number of sources, […]
In The Terminator, the Skynet artificial intelligence was turned on to track down hacking a military computer network. Turns out the hacker was Skynet itself. Is there a lesson there? Could AI turn against us, especially as it relates to the security domain? That was one of the points I made while moderating a discussion […]
Let’s talk about hackers, not through the eyes of the tech industry but through the eyes of current and former U.S. law enforcement officials. It’s their job to run those people down and throw them in jail. The Federal Bureau of Investigation MK Palmore is an Information Security Risk Management Executive with the FBI’s Cyber Branch in […]
Smart televisions, talking home assistants, consumer wearables – that’s not the real story of the Internet of Things. While those are fun and get great stories on blogs and morning news reports, the real IoT is the Industrial IoT. That’s where businesses will truly be transformed, with intelligent, connected devices working together to improve services, […]
The bad news: There are servers used in serverless computing. Real servers, with whirring fans and lots of blinking lights, installed in racks inside data centers inside the enterprise or up in the cloud. The good news: You don’t need to think about those servers in order to use their functionality to write and deploy […]
Critical information about 46 million Malaysians were leaked online onto the Dark Web. The stolen data included mobile phone numbers from telcos and mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs), prepaid phone numbers, customers details including physical addresses – and even the unique IMEI and IMSI registration numbers associated with SIM cards. Isolated instance from one rogue carrier? No. […]
It’s always nice when a friend is quoted in an article. In this case, it’s one of my dearest and closest, John Romkey, founder of FTP Software. The story is, “The Internet Of Things Just Got Even More Unsafe To Use,” by Harold Stark, and published on Forbes.com. The story talks about a serious vulnerability in […]
Humans can’t keep up. At least, not when it comes to meeting the rapidly expanding challenges inherent to enterprise cybersecurity. There are too many devices, too many applications, too many users, and too many megabytes of log files for humans to make sense of it all. Moving forward, effective cybersecurity is going to be a […]
Here’s a classic example of a scam that cites a news story as validation that the claim is authentic, or at least credible. It’s not. Despite the scammer’s citing a famous story about an heiress bequeathing a fortune, that’s no proof that this is an heiress looking to give her millions to you. Because it […]
Still no pastrami sandwich. Still no guinea pig. What’s the deal with the cigarette? I installed iOS 11.1 yesterday, tantalized by Apple’s boasting of tons of new emoji. Confession: Emoji are great fun. Guess what I looked for right after the completed software install? Many of the 190 new emoji are skin-tone variations on new […]
You want to read Backlinko’s “The Definitive Guide To SEO In 2018.” Backlinko is an SEO consultancy founded by Brian Dean. The “Definitive Guide” is a cheerfully illustrated infographic – a lengthy infographic – broken up into several useful chapters: RankBrain & User Experience Signals Become a CTR Jedi Comprehensive, In-Depth Content Wins Get Ready for […]
Our family’s Halloween tradition: Watch “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” singing along with all the songs. Great songs! I must make my usual complaints about this Disney movie. The biggest is there’s only one major female character (Sally), who is Jack Skellington’s love interest. Would it have killed Tim Burton to have the Mayor, Doctor Finkelstein, or […]
What happens when the sun goes disappears during the daytime? Rabbi Margaret Frisch Klein, of Congregation Kneseth Israel in Elgin, Illinois, wrote in her Energizer Rabbi blog on Aug. 22, 2017, just before the solar eclipse: The sun is going to disappear on Monday. It is going to be hidden. The Chinese thought that a […]
Software developers and testers must be sick of hearing security nuts rant, “Beware SQL injection! Monitor for cross-site scripting! Watch for hijacked session credentials!” I suspect the developers tune us out. Why? Because we’ve been raving about the same defects for most of their careers. Truth is, though, the same set of major security vulnerabilities […]
Apply patches. Apply updates. Those are considered to be among the lowest-hanging of the low-hanging fruit for IT cybersecurity. When commercial products release patches, download and install the code right away. When open-source projects disclose a vulnerability, do the appropriate update as soon as you can, everyone says. A problem is that there are so many patches and […]
You can call me Ray, or you can call me Jay, or you can call me Johnny or you can call me Sonny, or you can call me RayJay, or you can call me RJ… but ya doesn’t hafta call me Johnson. That’s a great line from the comedian Bill Saluga in the 1970s… but […]
This is a common scam: The scammer pretends to be a famous person, and links to the bio or a story about that person. That means nothing. A person wants to share some gold with you, and links to a BBC story about a battle in Iraq or Afghanistan. That means nothing. A person claims […]
Open source software (OSS) offers many benefits for organizations large and small—not the least of which is the price tag, which is often zero. Zip. Nada. Free-as-in-beer. Beyond that compelling price tag, what you often get with OSS is a lack of a hidden agenda. You can see the project, you can see the source […]
For no particular reason, and in alphabetical order, my favorite episodes from the original Star Trek, aka, The Original Series. Arena Kirk and the captain of the Gorn ship are told to fight to the death as proxies for a space battle, but neither is happy about it Balance of Terror “Run Silent Run Deep” […]
Those are two popular ways of migrating enterprise assets to the cloud: Write new cloud-native applications. Lift-and-shift existing data center applications to the cloud. Gartner’s definition: “Lift-and-shift means that workloads are migrated to cloud IaaS in as unchanged a manner as possible, and change is done only when absolutely necessary. IT operations management tools from […]
I can’t believe my luck – Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates wants to give me $5 million. Hurray! And not only that, he’s contacting me from an email address at Nelson Mandela University in South Africa. It’s also a shame to learn that he’s sick and is going to Germany for treatment. Obviously, this is spam. […]