How many IT disasters can you reasonably prepare for? The big “total wipe-out” disasters like the data centre hit by a plane (for those enterprises close to airports), systems rooms flooded out (move it to a higher floor beforehand), or ransomware attacks on your key data (get better IT security and backups) justify time and attention from DR planners. Read more
How many IT disasters can you reasonably prepare for? The big “total wipe-out” disasters like the data centre hit by a plane (for those enterprises close to airports), systems rooms flooded out (move it to a higher floor beforehand), or ransomware attacks on your key data (get better IT security and backups) justify time and attention from DR planners. Read more
Once upon a time, the software code was the only thing that mattered. Everything else was added as an afterthought, including testing (of any description), integration, security, and considerations like IT disaster recovery. Now, enlightenment is slowly spreading through the coding community. It started with testing and integration. Read more
Cyber criminals latched onto technical support a long time ago, seeing many possibilities for scams and attacks. Most recently, tech support scams to cold-sell support packages over the phone have been popular – according to the 2016 Internet Security Threat Report from Symantec, which also noted a 200 per cent increase in tech support scams overall in 2015 compared to 2014. Fake alerts on PCs try to get users to call a free phone number for assistance. At the other end of the line, a scammer tries to persuade users to install software to “fix problems”, software that in reality is malware, such as ransomware. But the real reasons for success with the scam are not technical at all. Read more
It’s not always easy to look at things from somebody else’s point of view. Sales and marketing people have to do so if they want to build products that customers want and get the customer’s order. Successful supply chains rely on each link meeting the requirements of the next link, meaning the next customer, right up to the end-customer again. Similarly, business continuity has its internal customers. BC needs to be “sold” to departments to get them actively involved in making sure they can keep on working even in adverse conditions. Now external business customers also want to know what BC precautions their suppliers are taking. It may not be long before consumers do too. Read more
Windows and Mac OS, watch out. A UK government agency tested different IT platforms to see which would be the most secure, and found that Linux (Ubuntu 12.04 in particular) was significantly better than Windows 8 and Mac OS X. The tests were run to evaluate performance in areas such as disk encryption, secure start-up, malicious code prevention and detection, virtual private networking and platform integrity under multi-tasking. The agency (CESG, Communications-Electronics Security Group) also identified a Samsung platform based on Android as a leader in mobile device security. Will the business world now flip over to Linux and Android as a consequence? Read more