Password Strength and Security
xkcd has a cartoon that beautifully explains why strict password rules have brought us to a pass where it remains relatively easy for a computer to hack the password. But very difficult for people to remember them. My company, like most large corporates, has a password policy that forces the use of numbers, large caps, [...]
Your Security Rests With Sites You Don’t Even Own
What if your business could suffer a major security breach even though your own sites were all properly secured and not penetrated? ”How can that happen?” you ask.
Welcome to the world of typosquatting. The problem starts when employees send emails containing sensitive information. If they mistype the name of the destination domain slightly…
Private Social Networks
By now you’d pretty much have to live under a rock to be completely ignorant about online social networks, whether you participate in them or not. Earlier this week facebook hit the news again with its ever rising valuation now…
5 practical steps to keep your data secure in the cloud
Despite the increasing prevalence of cloud services, many of us remain naive about the necessary steps we should take to keep our online assets secure. These five simple guidelines will go a long way towards helping you keep online threats at bay.
Event Report: Dell’s Annual Analyst Conference Highlights Enterprise Software Future
Annual Analyst Conference Highlights The New Dell Strategy Dell held their annual analyst conference at The W Austin from May 3rd to May 4th, 2011. The event featured multiple sessions including: Services and Solutions For The Vitual Era Data Center and Information Management – Trends & Business Issues – moderated by Brad Anderson Senior Vice [...]
My thoughts on Dropbox, corporate and personal privacy and ToS changes
If you don’t know Dropbox you should. Its a wonderful service for sharing files between multiple people and machines. Its like magic, frankly. Most Web developers and designers I know use it. Why FTP when you can Dropbox? It spans native and the cloud beautifully- so a folder on your desktop is perfectly synchronised with [...]
Sorting out “cloud security”
What people fear is The Fear of the New – The Unknown. They think something about cloud computing is wildly different – more than likely, it’s about exposing your technical debt in security, your current weaknesses, not introducing new problems.
Foxmarks, Xmarks, LastPass, Xpass, LastX, X%^&% Quick Rant
Warning: I think I’m becoming a curmudgeon – except that title has until now been reserved for somebody else . But I still have doubts about the recent transaction: LastPass acquired Xmarks. I really liked Xmarks – when it was Foxmarks. A simple bookmark synchronization service that would keep your Firefox up-to-date no matter where [...]
Online Privacy: You’re Doing it Wrong
Today I delivered a keynote at Defrag 2010, one of the best and most interesting conferences I am lucky enough to be able to attend (their tagline is “accelerating the a-ha moment”). I was pretty anxious about this presentation because it was in the “big room”, in front of all attendees, and they’re a smart, [...]
Private cloud discredited, part 1
Microsoft, a most unlikely ally, has published a white paper that shows private cloud solutions are up to 40 times *less* cost-effective than public cloud alternatives for many companies. It vindicates my prediction that private cloud will be discredited by year-end.
