Archive for August, 2009
Rip of the Week: Australian Defence Department Laptop Stolen After Red-Light District Visit
Here’s an interesting laptop theft. And for once, it’s GOOD NEWS! Well, mostly.
The Age reports that Lieutenant Commander Peter de Maskens of the Australian navy left his five-star hotel in Bangkok, the Banyan Tree Hotel, at about 2 a.m., and headed to the red-light district of Nana Plaza in Sukhumvit Road. He returned [...]
Tip of the Week: Use the Safe
Laptop-toting business travelers, and even many personal travelers, tend to trust the hotel staff. Sometimes they take a small amount of precaution, by not leaving cash sitting out on the table or something obvious of that sort. But, overall, we tend to assume that the housekeeping staff (or others with room access) won’t rip off [...]
Rip of the Week: Williams Cos. Laptop Breaches 4,400 Employees
My home state, Oklahoma, is having a very bad year. Back in April, state government agencies breached 1.3 million Oklahomans (that’s about 1/3 of the population) via two laptop thefts. This month, a prominent, key corporation in the state, Williams Cos. Inc., announced the theft of a laptop computer containing names, birth dates, Social Security [...]
Tip of the Week: Use a BIOS Password
Since layered security is so fundamental to effective security, it helps to have yet another layer. This one is actually fairly strong, at least in one sense.
Set a password in your laptop’s BIOS. This is not the Windows password that would be used to access Windows, but a low-level password that is set right in [...]
Rip of the Week: Laptop Thieves Demand 100,000 Euro Ransom From Head Coach
This theft reminds me of the Auburn football team laptop theft. In the Auburn case, the laptop contained actual game plans–call it “athletic espionage.” The thief turned out to be a drifter, not a spy.
The London Evening Standard reports that former Cologne coach Christoph Daum suffered the ever-so-common laptop theft at the airport. But in [...]
Tip of the Week: Consider Private Web Browsing
I’ve already mentioned tips such as “forgetting your passwords” (not allowing the browser to store them), with respect to laptop security, and it’s good to be reminded of even the most simple, basic security precautions. Even experts need to be reminded sometimes, and certainly most other people do.
The latest versions of most of the major [...]
Rip of the Week: Army National Guard Breaches 131,000 Servicemen
In the federal government, perhaps the old adage “do as I say, don’t do as I do” is the most appropriate. After lambasting the PCI (credit card) industry for lack of protection of consumer data, the US government continues to fail to protect its own data. Or, that is, your data under the control of [...]
Tip of the Week: Don’t Even Trust Security Software
I should start by adding a wee bit of qualification to that title. Don’t even trust security software blindly. With all of the security, technology, and innovation of the day, trust is still at the root of a solid security paradigm. Trust is the backbone of security, but at the same time, non-trust is also [...]
Entries (RSS)