Tag: system security

So begins a quote we use in our Introduction to System and Network Security course.  Too often we view security as an afterthought – something to add to our network or organization. We talk about hardening systems to mean making them more secure. This is totally a backwards approach. We need to consider security and […]

I love gumbo and my wife and friends love the gumbo I make. I have computers in my home office. I am an Eagle Scout. These three things, combined with an experience from college, make me have and test backups of my data and of my power. First, the power. My office is at home. […]

A French security researcher named Jonathan Brossard has demonstrated that a virus can infect your computer’s BIOS. That virus is not stored on the hard drive and that makes it difficult to detect and then remove.  Brousard’s presentation at Black Hat 2012 has been discussed a great deal in security columns and blogs recently. Here […]

Why am I spending so much time talking about passwords? To begin with it’s because we can’t get rid of them, and that’s my first pet peeve. I know that static passwords (those that must be explicitly set) are easy to implement and use. That makes them convenient. For passwords on the web, I can […]

There is a drought here in New Mexico, according to the weather folks on TV. We’ve had some rain, but our precipitation is below normal this year. You may have read about the forest fires in New Mexico and that is a direct result of the drought. Yahoo! had a password “leak” last week  (as […]