Data Security

"Of course, the whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost, if you *keep* it a *secret*!" – Dr. Strangelove in "Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb," Columbia Pictures (1964)

At last month's Black Hat, DefCon events…you could almost smell the cyber napalm in the morning.

While there are a lot of good things about Las Vegas (business-friendly policies), it's a logical location for a hacking, malware, cyber penetration convention. After all, it was founded on a fundamental human frailty … personal greed, beating the odds.

HINT: It's impossible to beat the odds!

Unfortunately, you also can't beat the odds when it comes to protecting personal, corporate and government secrets. Malicious and pain-in-the-behind bad guy hacking, hacktivism wins more often than the good guys. It's why no one with half a brain uses any of the ATM machines when the nearly 9,000 "attendees" are in town. They're hacked just for the heckovit!

It was here that Aruba wanted to demonstrate the strength of their cryptographic technology and wireless technology by provisioning the two events.

Now that takes … well, you know!Read more

Advancements in mobile computing and lower hardware costs have literally moved people out of their offices and into airports, remote offices, customer facilities, conference rooms, libraries and home offices. Because of the migration, people work differently than they did years ago and require increased data mobility. Today, users are more likely to have access to a variety of computers; and, like their mobile phones, they want to take their data with them wherever they go.

The Internet has been pivotal in the growth of solutions that enable mobile users to transfer and share any type of digital data. Many inexpensive file transfer solutions (some are even free) have given users the freedom of having access to their data without having to carry their laptop with them. Email, FTP sites, CDs/DVDs, USB drives and cloud-storage services can all be used to transfer and share files. However, as we hear almost daily, they all have security, privacy and other issues that need to be considered.

Their limitations have underscored the compelling need for a better, cost-effective solution that doesn't trade-off data security for simplicity of access, doesn't limit the capacity of file transfers and doesn't have hidden, long-term fees. Read more

Instant information, instant entertainment, instant communications to and from anywhere in the world, with anyone is fantastic. It’s all been brought to us by the computer and communications industries. It’s a lot like Forrest Gump’s magic shoes, “They could take me anywhere.” The problem is a lot of other people also have magic shoes. Some good. Increasingly, some bad. Some just a major pain in the behind. The good varies as to your needs and tastes. Read more

The Working Bad Folks
The bad are the growing number of Black Hatters, Doom9ers, hackers, cyberthieves and cyberspies. These folks are dedicated and ingenious. And…they work really hard at their job! They’re rather like rodents. They find software holes even the most conscientious programmers never thought were there. They spend hours and days testing, probing, tickling and trying to grab your information. Sometimes it is hard and they really have to work at it. Most of the time it is surprisingly simple (as long as you’re bent on doing bad things). Sometimes … we do it to ourselves! It’s called click fraud and it is virtually unstoppable.