The Silicon Underground

Why is collaboration important? I once worked someplace that had collaboration as a core value, but not all of its employees collaborated. So I learned first hand why collaboration is important. It’s one of the best ways to be successful without making enemies.

I’m a security professional by trade. Security professionals are notoriously bad at collaborating. Collaboration may be the only thing I do better than other security professionals I’ve met, so I see the importance of it. And not just in security, and not just in IT.

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Brute force hacking is a crude form of hacking by guessing passwords over and over again until you guess right. As you may guess, it can be rather time consuming. But there are more than 40 gigabytes’ worth of stolen usernames and passwords in circulation that we know about, so obviously, it works.

In computing in general, brute force refers to getting something done inelegantly, relying on persistence and the computer’s ability to repeat things over and over quickly until it’s successful. Here’s how brute force hacking works, and some ways to prevent it.

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What is geolocation? It’s the practice, or some would say black magic, of inferring your geographic location from your computer, phone, or another device. It has legitimate uses, but also can arguably be an invasion of privacy. Here’s how it works, and how to defeat it.

In a nutshell, it works like algebra, where you solve something you don’t know based on two or more things you do know.

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Managed service providers have really taken off in recent years, partly due to the boom in cloud computing. But what is a managed service provider, and what are the advantages of using one?

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