Internal Threats

We talk a lot about external threats. In our minds we see them; in a dark warehouse, the air filled with blue smoke from their cigarettes, thick foreign accents punctuate the frenzied clicking of keyboards as streams of highly secret data are lifted from your business. Now we flash stateside, an office building, inside there is panic as computers crash and network lights flash frantically calling for help as the President of the company collapses to the floor sobbing into his hands. Okay so maybe it’s not quite that dramatic, but we all know that fear – it’s why we spend millions of dollars each year on anti-virus, anti-malware, firewalls and security audits.. to keep THEM out of OUR networks, and to keep OUR data secure.

A USB stick being tucked into someone's pocket.
Who is taking your data?

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Do I trust this web site?

We want our web visitors to want to stay on our site, and we want our web visitors to buy from our site… right? Right. Yesterday I went looking on the web for an obscure part to repair a computer, after my usual suppliers came up empty I broke down and started running web searches. What do you know, I found what I was looking for on the first link. Gleefully I clicked.

A bottle of water.
For Sale : One Pickup Truck. $3000. obo.

I entered into what has to be the worst storefront on the planet. Images were generic and didn’t match the products, all of the store’s fifteen products were on the same page, and the shopping cart was a web form where you filled out the item numbers and e-mailed it to the “ship deportment”(yes it was that bad). Needless to say I backed out of there faster than a mouse who just heard a meow. Continue reading Do I trust this web site?

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Fire Drills

Recently I completed a disaster recovery plan for a friend. I updated the steps in their building evacuation workbook, developed an emergency call list and found they had a great start on their computer backups process but we found a large gap in the recovery portion of their plan.

They had a wonderful automated backup policy, each computer running a backup planA fire extinguisher. across their network to a file server that then burns the whole lot to a tape at the end of each week. They even tested their plan, recovering a computer from the daily network backup and from the weekly tape – I was delighted.

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Researching ways to improve scientist's access to data. Programming software to solve humanity's problems. Disseminating emergency preparedness knowledge. Sharing knowledge about science. Practicing amateur radio. Serving humanity through volunteer efforts.