oracle Archives - The Silicon Underground

Patch management strategy

Dave Farquhar — Mon, 03 Apr 2017 11:00:47 +0000

Vulnerability management and patch management are close relatives. In most companies, think of them as siblings who hate each other. That’s usually how it plays out. It doesn’t always have to be that way, but it takes some thought and

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Simple tips to prevent ransomware

Dave Farquhar — Tue, 08 Mar 2016 12:00:23 +0000

Last week at work, I noticed some odd events in an event log, and when I investigated them, I found they were part of a failed ransomware attack. This got me thinking about how to prevent ransomware at home. Ransomware,

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Whitelist Java to provide better security and a better user experience

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 09 Dec 2015 12:00:29 +0000

One of the best things you can do to improve your security in a corporate environment is to limit the use of Java, or whitelist Java. Undoubtedly there will be one or more legacy web applications your company uses that require

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Unchecky is another tool to help with staying out of trouble with malware

Dave Farquhar — Thu, 22 Oct 2015 11:00:52 +0000

I found a mention of a tool called Unchecky as a minor point in a story about something else entirely. Unchecky helps to solve the problem with downloaded programs including a bunch of extra junk you don’t want. I won’t be

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Resources for learning SQL

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 30 Sep 2015 11:00:32 +0000

Whether you’re a sysadmin, an analyst, or use a computer for something else professionally–even if you’re not a database administrator or developer–SQL is a useful skill to know. I’ve gotten by for 20 years without knowing much more SQL other

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Expect a rough road ahead for Flash

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 15 Jul 2015 11:00:05 +0000

Adobe has patched Flash twice in two weeks now. The reason for this was due to Hacking Team, an Italian company that sells hacking tools to government agencies, getting hacked. Hacking Team, it turns out, knew of at least three

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How to patch less

Dave Farquhar — Thu, 20 Mar 2014 11:00:06 +0000

One of my former supervisors now works for a security vendor. He told me the other day that someone asked him, “Does your company have anything so I don’t have to patch anymore?” The answer, of course, is that there’s

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Things to do for your relatives’ computers this Christmas

Dave Farquhar — Thu, 05 Dec 2013 11:00:33 +0000

I wish I’d posted this last week, since many of us see one set of relatives at Thanksgiving and a different set at Christmas (and perhaps New Year’s). Here are things you can do as preventative maintenance for relatives whose

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Doing more than one operation per line in a Windows batch file

Dave Farquhar — Fri, 13 Sep 2013 11:00:25 +0000

Sometimes in a batch file I find myself needing to perform more than one operation on a server, especially inside a for loop. Rather than do a pair of for loops, which isn’t always desirable, you can use the &

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Libre Office and Open Office both grow up a bit–together

Dave Farquhar — Fri, 26 Jul 2013 11:00:20 +0000

Both Libre Office and Open Office released new versions this week, and the changelog indicates a good amount of shared code between the two, at least in this go-round. The animosity between the two—Libre Office is a fork of Open

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