Author: Dave Farquhar

The safety of open source software is a question that comes up periodically from time to time. Let’s talk about why the question keeps coming up, and what’s different about open source software versus closed source software.

The main thing that can get you when it comes to the safety of open source software is anything but obvious. Hint: it isn’t the development model.

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Dave Farquhar

David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.

dfarq.homeip.net

The recent Log4J vulnerability brought increased attention on 0 day attacks, but it’s a question that never really goes away. How common are zero day attacks?

Zero day attacks are less common than they seem because attackers don’t understand them as well as less new and novel attacks. Managing those less novel vulnerabilities is a real challenge for many organizations, but it’s something they must get a handle on to defend themselves effectively.

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Dave Farquhar

David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.

dfarq.homeip.net

If you work in IT or security, you are pretty much expected to know what a user story is. That can be a problem if your background is not in software development, or if your education or background predates the agile software development model. So what is a user story and how do you write one?

User stories are similar to milestones in project management. That was how it was first explained to me. But you don’t write a user story quite the same way that you would write a milestone in project management. The other thing is mixing the two can lead to miscommunication. I was once involved in a meeting where a manager insisted on using user stories, because he had been a software developer, but this wasn’t a project involving software development. So nobody else knew what he was talking about.

User stories are a product management or software development tool. They aren’t something everyone knows.

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Dave Farquhar

David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.

dfarq.homeip.net