Encryption Security

The Art of The Possible – Legislating in An Apple and Amazon World Apple, Google and Amazon have adapted extremely complex technology to the consumer world; and have forever changed the perception of what is possible with technology. This is now bleeding over into legislation that is designed to govern the way all businesses interact with their clients. The legislators too enjoy same-or-next day delivery of any product they so desire, they have an app for everything [...]

Halloween Is Soon to Be the Only Anonymous Day. Good or Bad? All of those family photos and selfies you have uploaded to your favorite sites have helped governments and big tech create your digital identity. Your government digital identity is refined with each new verified drivers license photo and each facial image captured at the border when you return from your Cancun vacations. When you first see your government digital identity used in real time, it really is qu [...]

The FBI Wants You to Stop Inadvertently Giving Criminals Money The FBI Elegantly Asks You to Stop Sending Money to Internet Criminals. We are now in the 16th annual National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, a collaborative effort by the US Government and participating industry groups to educate all computer users enough so that they stop clicking those pesky links that download viruses and stop sending personal, health, employment, and tax information unencrypted. [...]

Beware of Hollywood Sim Swappers, The New Posers Hollywood Sim Swappers are the New Posers. Your mobile phone is often the second key to your life. When you forget your password at key accounts like your email or bank, you may be prompted to enter a code that appears by text message to your phone. Perfect security, multi-factor authentication. But what if you are targeted and someone can access your phone? As we have seen, today’s internet cri [...]

Now ‘TIS The Season for Security Autumnation Autumn May Bring Digital Serenity with Security Autumnation. Over the last year, while the user experience for technology has been progressively becoming simpler, the jobs of the business owner, IT director, and privacy and compliance officers have been progressively becoming more complex. Far more complex. Europe recently introduced the most aggressive data privacy laws ever imagined [...]

End of Summer Phishing, Hooks Office 365 Users The phishermen are getting smarter, using better lures to catch ever smarter phish (in this case, you, as an Office 365, OneDrive, SharePoint, or Dropbox user). Armed with better grammar and embedding your company name and email address within the email and images, and further, using authentic OneDrive or Dropbox URLs to link to, these latest scammers are luring users into providing their username and passwords to the sca [...]

Equifax’s $10 Billion Bet. You Really Don’t Care (Enough to Do Something) With so many big-name data breaches in recent times, your eyes may have glossed over the recent Equifax consumer data breach settlement. The numbers were big, 147 million consumers had their sensitive information exposed. The penalty, $700 million (or about $5 per person). Source: New York Times, Krebs. Factored into this amount are ways in which consumers can request extra perks, compensati [...]

Do Recommendation Engines Make Us Simpler Minded? Recommendation engines operate behind the scenes everywhere, to make life a little more enjoyable, simpler, and more relevant. But do these make us all narrower minded? YouTube, Netflix, Google Search, Apple News, Facebook feeds, Pinterest posts; these services are all focused on increasing user engagement. More engagement means more reliance on their platforms and ultimately more profits. How do they increase user [...]

Is FOMO Today’s Addiction? LOL, LMAO, BRB, IMHO, OMG, BTW, FWIW, ILY, THX, JK. Ahhh, all of those elegant overused texting abbreviations that we all know. What about FOMO? FOMO or the “Fear of Missing Out” is that nagging feeling that you are not included in current trends or aren’t experiencing the same level of excitement that those around you are. For those of the Snapchat generation, it is the lure that creates the urge to quickly op [...]

Your Friends Siri and Alexa Have Changed IT Security Your close friends Siri and Alexa may have done more to change how IT staff are re-inventing how they think about Internet security than years of tech tips and training sessions. In a Siri and Alexa world, we normal humans are trained to believe that what you need is a click or voice prompt away. Anything. And, it should just work. Never mind the thousands of Amazon human workers all over the world that [...]