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Smartwatches Fail Security Test

HP’s security folks tested the security features on 10 smartwatches along with their cloud and management infrastructure and the results, while not surprising to me, are disappointing. Smart watches are in their infancy; the compute power is relatively limited and, as is usually the case, features win out over security.  The question to ask is […]

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Fallout From OPM Breach Continues

Not surprisingly, the fallout from the OPM breach continues.  Here are a few new items in the news after OPM Director Archuletta was basically fired. The OPM has changed it’s privacy policy to allow investigators to probe it’s databases.  This happened after the discovery of “significant entryways” for hackers in at least 3 more databases. […]

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The Gap Between The Board and IT Security

The Ponemon Institute released a study that compares the views of about 7,000 Board members and 11,000 IT security people and the results show some interesting data. The first question is ” Our board of directors understands the security risks to the organization”.  While 70% of the board members agree or strongly agree with that […]

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It’s Patch Day

Yesterday was Patch Tuesday.  Microsoft had 14 bulletins, 5 of which they deemed critical, covering 59 vulnerabilities. Oracle released patches covering 193 vulnerabilities, including 25 Java patches, one of which is already being exploited in the wild.    44 of these vulnerabilities came from third party components.  Of the 25 Java vulnerabilities fixed, 23 of […]

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Why Knowledge Based Authentication Is Useless

Knowledge Based Authentication – using information that only you know – used to be a very popular method for validating that you are you.  Examples of this are when a customer service agent asks you for your birth date, last four of your social or where you were born.  The credit bureaus even sell that […]

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