
I want out of Windows patch hell
You’d think that when it made patches pretty much inescapable, Microsoft would have made darn sure those patches were problem-free. But you’d be wrong.
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols | 06 Oct | Read more
You’d think that when it made patches pretty much inescapable, Microsoft would have made darn sure those patches were problem-free. But you’d be wrong.
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols | 06 Oct | Read more
Sure, cybercriminals are always improving their wares, but nothing has changed about how our machines actually get infected.
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols | 11 Apr | Read more
The new ‘enhanced’ security promised for CES turned out to be a joke, but the illusion of safety provided by security theater really fell away on the way home.
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols | 13 Jan | Read more
It’s time to put Flash out of our misery once and for all. And, thanks to Google, it may finally happen.
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols | 01 Sep | Read more
Oracle Chief Security Officer Mary Ann Davidson let loose a long rant about people who dare to look into the security of the company’s products. Oracle quickly backed away from those remarks, but has it faced up to the fact that its CSO has some wrongheaded notions about her own area of expertise?
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols | 25 Aug | Read more
Hi, my name is Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols and I had a security clearance in the 1980s. Because of that, my personal records are likely to have been revealed by the <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/article/2931976/cybercrime-hacking/us-govt-reports-massive-breach-of-personnel-data.html">Office of Personnel Management hack</a>.
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols | 30 Jun | Read more
An Internet joke that goes back at least to the early 1980s consists entirely of the phrase: "<a href="http://catb.org/jargon/html/I/Imminent-Death-Of-The-Net-Predicted-.html">Imminent Death of the Net Predicted</a>!" Every year, even more often than you'd hear "This will be the year of the Linux desktop!" someone would predict that the Internet was going to go to hell in a handbasket -- and nothing happened. This year it's my turn, but I fear I'm going to be proved right.
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols | 09 Jan | Read more
"Hey buddy."
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols | 25 Apr | Read more
While clinging to the 11-year-old OS after Microsoft issues its last security patch in April is defensible, the security risks are going to keep mounting.
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols | 18 Feb | Read more
TPM has always sounded like a good idea. But the problem with 'trusted computing' has alwasy been knowing how trustworthy it is.
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols | 09 Sep | Read more
Some people are deeply upset about the latest incursions into our privacy. But as a society, we don't seem to care all that much.
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols | 01 Jul | Read more
Some people are having fits about Google Glass. True, it will change how we think about privacy in public places, but such rethinking started years ago.
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols | 20 May | Read more
Get this: The CIA sees the Cloud as being more secure than conventional IT.
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols | 22 Apr | Read more
CAPTCHA used to be an easy and useful way for Web administrators to authenticate users. Now it's an easy and useful way for malware authors and spammers to do their dirty work.
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols | 15 Jul | Read more
Email fraud is nothing new, but online criminals have become ever more-effective at spoofing their identities to trick employees into sending them money. The Australian Centre for Cyber Security (ACSC) recorded losses of over $20M to business email compromise (BEC) attacks last year alone, up 230 percent over the previous year – and the full amount is certain to be much larger.
Cybersecurity Insights - Attack
No matter how robust your security, or how diligent your employees, network credentials are a free pass for cybercriminals. This is mostly because employees are relied upon for their own password management. And with more than 4.8 billion sets of stolen credentials said to be available online, odds are that at least a few of your employees’ user IDs and passwords are just waiting to be used by unscrupulous outsiders. Are you ready to stop them?
Cybersecurity Insights - People
Cyber resilience will be particularly important as Australian organisations face increased pressure to quickly detect, respond to, and manage the repercussions of breaches in the wake of 2018’s Notifiable Data Breaches (NDB) scheme.