Category: Security
Security
Fixing the Weak Link in the Security Fence
Unless you've been completely off the grid for the past few days, you've probably heard about the global havoc caused by the outbreak of the "WannaCry" ransomware variant. This one is particularly nasty, in that it includes some worm-like characteristics...
Best Practices, Business Practices, Security
Hardware Firewall for USB Devices
This is one of the best low-cost security products to come along in a long time. Here's why. A few years ago, I attended a security conference sponsored by Ingram Micro (a large distributor of technology products, for those of...
Best Practices, Business Practices, Security
SSL and Certificates – Part 4 of 3
Yes, it's time to add on another post about SSL certificates. I suppose I could have gone back through all of the posts and corrected the titles to "Part x of 4," But, in the spirit of Douglas Adams, whose...
Best Practices, Business Practices, Security
Tips for Securing an IoT Deployment
Hard on the heels of updating my earlier post about the Internet of Things (IoT), I came across another post on ZDnet entitled "How to Secure Your IoT Deployment in 10 Steps," that was published a few days ago. While...
Best Practices, Security
Change the Damned Passwords!
According to a post today on ZDnet, a team of researchers from Trend Micro revealed, at the RSA conference in San Francisco, that there are more than 178 million IoT devices visible to the Internet in the ten largest U.S....
Security
Compelled Certificate Creation Attacks
Last October, we published a three-part series on SSL certificates: what they are, how they work, and how they’re used to secure transactions over the Web. You’ll find the series listed in our “Security” category. For most of us, this...
Business Practices, Security
SSL and Certificates – Part 3 of 3
Part 1 and Part 2 of this series covered the basic cryptographic concepts behind SSL certificates, and looked at how an SSL certificate is constructed and how it is validated. This installment will discuss what different kinds of certificates exist,...
Business Practices, Security
SSL and Certificates – Part 2 of 3
In Part 1, we discussed basic cryptography, and worked our way up to symmetrical encryption systems such as AES, which accepts key lengths as long as 256 bits. We also discussed why key length was important to a cryptosystem, and...
Business Practices, Security
SSL and Certificates – Part 1 of 3
There has been a lot of confusion regarding what SSL certificates are all about – what they are, what they do, how you use them to secure a Web site, what the “gotchas” are when you’re trying to set up...