20 years a tech journalist: Shift happens at warp speed
Exactly twenty years ago today I started at Computerworld. To say the industry has changed in truly remarkable ways since then is something of an understatement.
Consider:
Digital Equipment Corp, Sun Microsystems and Data General...
Booze, bots and other RSA ruminations
SAN FRANCISO -- Dan Kaminsky looks like he could really use some rest. "Long day?" I ask him. He shrugs. It's been a long several days, weeks, and months, he says as we trudge our way to a table in the south foyer of San...
Eric Schmidt’s outrage at the NSA: The pot calling the kettle black?
Google chairman Eric Schmidt’s concern for citizen privacy following reports that the National Security Agency (NSA) may have broken into the company’s data streams is ironic considering the Internet giant’s own spotty record on...
If no one's to blame for Healthcare.gov glitches, then maybe everyone is
After listening to over three hours of testimony in Congress from some of the contractors behind the Obamacare Healthcare.gov site, one thing has become abundantly clear: No vendor is responsible for the problems that have plagued...
If he's smart, Edward Snowden will shut up
Edward Snowden needs to shut up for his own good and for those who support his actions. Seems like every time the self-confessed document leaker opens his mouth these days, he says something that gives the government more fodder...
Overhyped or not, the Spamhaus attacks are important
Questions over whether CloudFlare exaggerated the impact of the denial of service attacks on Spamhaus should not be allowed to divert attention away from the real security threat highlighted by the attacks.
Any distributed denial...
Manti Te'o meet 'Robin Sage'
If beleaguered Notre Dame football linebacker Manti Te’o’s story about being duped by an online imposter were true, he certainly wouldn’t be the first -- or the last – person to fall victim to such a hoax.
In fact, a social...
Four cybersecurity items that need less talk and more action
For all the effort that is being put by enterprises, government and vendors into combating cyber threats, there are still a few areas where progress has been slow at best and non-existent at worst. Here in no particular order are...
Drone industry's Code of Conduct disappoints
People concerned about the privacy implications of civilian drones operating over American airspace are likely to be disappointed by a recent “Code of Conduct” released by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International...
VA apologizes for list serve snafu
The Veterans Administration finally has an explanation for why subscribers to its List Serve (including myself), kept getting copied in on Unsubscribe requests and sundry irate messages from other subscribers all day Monday. Turns...
The non-story about the RIAA seeking $72 trillion from LimeWire (It did not).
There have been several breathless news stories this week, including a few in some pretty respectable media outlets, about the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) seeking a mind-boggling $72 trillion (that's not a...
Mobile apps heighten security perils of BYOD
A survey by Check Point released in January shows that the number of personal mobile devices connecting to corporate networks has doubled over the past two years. Close to 50% of the 750 IT and security professionals surveyed said...
Security industry has abundant resilience, says RSA's Art Coviello
SAN FRANCISCOArt Coviello bristles at my suggestion that security products may not be working quite as effectively as vendors would have everyone believe considering all the breaches that keep happening on a daily basis. The...
SOPA/PIPA: Down but not out (yet)
The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) have both taken some pretty serious body blows over the last few days, but it would be premature to write them off just yet. Both pieces of legislation are backed by...
Why SOPA deserves a closer look
Seldom has a piece of proposed Internet legislation evoked as much as outcry and debate as the Stop Online Piracy Act. Over the last few weeks, hundreds of consumer and technology groups, industry associations, trade unions, free...
Will arrests slow down Anonymous, LulzSec?
The continuing arrests of alleged members of the Anonymous and LulzSec hacking groups suggests that either the hackers are not as clever as they want us all to believe, or that law enforcement is getting better at catching them. ...
Say something Sony
Sony's deafening silence in the midst of a snowballing security nightmare is puzzling to say the least. Maybe the company hasn't noticed, but people are getting increasingly concerned over how easily hackers have been able to...
You will get breached. Get over it
It's no longer really a question of 'if' but 'when. Maybe not all companies will get breached, but many will, especially those that are specifically targeted by attackers. That's not about waving the white flag (more on that in a...
Epsilon breach highlights importance of vetting third-party security practices
People appear surprised and even upset, that so many banks and other businesses have been happily handing off our personal data to a third-party such as Epsilon, and that too without any notice. It's a bit discomfiting for sure to...
Is RSA listening?
Seldom has there been so much parsing, of so few words, by so many, as there has been since RSA's cryptic disclosure last week that "some" information on its SecurID two-factor authentication products had been compromised in an...
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