Here are a couple of recent stories where a large information technology companies refused to turn over information to the government.
The first involves Apple, which was given a wiretap order to turn over certain communications between two alleged drug dealers on the iMessage platform. Apple wasn’t so much refusing to comply as pointing out that this messaging service is encrypted end to end, ...
Continue Reading →
I am often asked by frustrated clients “Why doesn’t traditional anti-virus and Internet security software products work?” The unfortunate answer I have to give them is “It’s your fault.” The more diplomatic answer I really use is that the security software cannot prevent something that is explicitly allowed by the computer user. And the computer user is easily tricked into opening a file ...
One of the goals of this website is to help small business owners and regular folks secure their digital world by providing useful information that can be put into practice. Today we are going to be looking at what sorts of digital assets need securing.
Back in August, presidential candidate Jeb Bush came out against encryption. Makes it too hard for law enforcement to figure out what the “evildoers” are up to, he says. I agree that encryption makes it impossible to figure out what the Wall Street executives who are funding every presidential campaign, by the way, are inventing now to ruin the American economy again and take a third trip into looting the 401K and IRA ...
Since 2013, cyber-criminal gangs working from the Middle East, Africa, and eastern Europe have scammed businesses out of $1.2 billion dollars worldwide, with over 700 US businesses reporting $747 million in losses to this exploit. In 2015 alone there has been a 270% increase in losses to this scam. On August 28th, the FBI warned business owners and manager to be on guard ...
Now that football season has started, there will be a lot of discussion about why great defenses don’t win football games. Defense is not enough in the realm of cybersecurity, either. I recently attended a webinar put on by The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) featuring Mike Benkovich (@mbenko) that discussed this concept as it applied to the DevSecOps (or SecDevOps) or the secure development of web applications. It is not enough to write code that works, it also ...
Continue Reading →I have been getting a lot of calls about this one, and I finally was able to get a screen print of the message. When this happens to you – DO NOT CALL the provided number. You will end up allowing them to connect remotely and then they will convince you to spend $300 to fix the problem. You do not really have a problem, until you make the call. To fix this, read to the bottom.
On of the banes of the Internet for a small business is getting a single negative review that makes your otherwise great business look bad. I’ve always told my clients to face it head on; leave the review up, but provide a backstory about what you did to resolve the issue. If someone didn’t like your stuff, and complain online, you need to let everyone know you refunded their money, or whatever you did to try and recover for this ...
Continue Reading →
There are really two stories here. The first is about how your Gmail account should become smarter about what you consider to be SPAM, as well as what you consider to be desirable email. We are talking about a system actually learning your personal individual preferences over time. For instance, I get a lot of email newsletters and marketing emails in my Inbox, ...
This spring I bought a new Kia Forte that came with a whole lot of electronic goodies including Bluetooth synchronization, voice command, and driver programmable features galore. And evidently, the potential to be hacked.
This is old news now, but security researchers were able to hack a Jeep Cherokee through the on-board Internet connectivity feature called “UConnect.”
Continue Reading →“They were able to change the temperature of the air conditioning, turn on the windshield wipers and blast the wiper fluid to blur the ...
