David L. Farquhar on technology old and new, computer security, and more
A frequent question people ask me, as a security professional, is why do hackers hack? The answer used to vary, but today they typically hack for the same reason I do. To make money. The difference is who pays them. Well, and that little detail called permission, of course.
It’s hard to believe now, and nobody should have believed it then, but around 1997, analysts were calling AOL the only blue-chip dotcom stock. The problem was the golden age of dialup ended around 1998. But AOL served a purpose, for a time. Here’s a look back at 1990s AOL competitors.
In the 90s, technology stocks were a slightly different category. Today we don’t distinguish them, but companies who made and sold physical goods like IBM were easier to understand than companies whose business model revolved around the Internet and or proprietary information services.
Maybe I’m the only one who ever has to do this, but here’s how to remove the last octet of an IP address in Excel using one (relatively) simple formula, not a series of calculations.
I didn’t realize that the question of Packard Bell vs Hewlett-Packard existed anymore. The search engines say otherwise. So here’s the difference between these two rather old brands.
On Dec 12, 1955, Louis Marx was on the cover of Time magazine, the subject of a story that called him the Toy King. Twenty seven short years later, Louis Marx died in his home, aged 86. The same day, a bankruptcy court ruled that his factory in Glen Dale, West Virginia, had to close for good. Marx and his company died on the same day. Why did Marx Toys close? And why so suddenly?
There were several reasons. I don’t think it was any one thing, but rather, several things that led to another, and the cascade brought Louis Marx’s empire down.
Compaq was a high-flying PC brand in the 1980s and 1990s. It created the first successful and fully legal IBM PC clone, set records as a startup, usurped IBM as the standard bearer in the PC market, and made sturdy, highly regarded desktop PCs and servers. But today it’s just a trademark that HP owns and doesn’t use. Why did Compaq fail?
There were several reasons why Compaq failed, but one stands taller than the others.
Vulnerability scanning is an essential part of any information security program. Unfortunately it’s also pretty widely misunderstood. In that light, let’s take a look at what a vulnerability scanner is, and how a vulnerability scanner works.
Like most people, I used consumer-grade switches on my home network for years and years, like TP-Link switches. They’re fine, but my older Linksys switch started acting flaky the other night. My oldest son’s computer kept dropping off the network. So that got me thinking. Do I need a managed switch at home?
Whether I need a managed switch for my home network or not, I bought a Dell Powerconnect 2824 smart managed switch, and I got it for less than a Linksys. This is a great opportunity to learn wired networking at home, the way businesses do it. Sure, it’s overkill, but here’s why I think it’s a good idea.
If you have kids, it’s inevitable. At some point you’ll need to know how to remove crayon from plastic. And while there are any number of ways to do it, I haven’t found anyone else mentioning the easiest way to clean up stray crayon marks. So I’ll share my secret.
What is a vulnerability management program? Well, it’s not a computer program, although you will need some software to run a successful vulnerability management program. But vulnerability management is a discipline. A vulnerability management program is an ongoing continuous operation to ensure the discipline is working in your organization.
That may raise as many questions as it answers, so let’s dig in.