Monthly Archives: July 2009
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Syndication
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July 30, 2009
Network Security: Passwords vs. Passphrases
Passwords tend to be the area where security-minded people annoy customers the most. There’s often tension around:- Password complexity requirement
- Password length requirements
- Password expiration requirements
Setting these up could easily push your staff into a complete revolt without the proper planning and training. Too often, management decides to focus on security and institutes a system that is self-defeating. If users have to change passwords every two weeks, you can be sure most will end up writing them down and taping them to their computer. (more…)
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July 27, 2009
New Signature’s CEO Guest Blogs on getpickd
New Signature’s CEO, Christopher Hertz, contributed as a guest columnist on the getpickd blog with his post “Common mistakes. Easy fixes. (part two) — Warning: Arriving early to an interview may adversely affect your chances of being hired. “ The blog post has been picked up by the popular blogs: Consumerist and Liferhacker.The blog entry begins, “It is important to show up on time for an interview. This is a rule of thumb that won’t come as a surprise for most readers of this post. Incorrectly, most job applicants believe it is important to simply not arrive late to an interview. However, it is nearly as important to not show up more than five minutes early either. With many employers, arriving too early for an interview is only a slightly lesser offense than arriving late.” To read the rest of the post, visit the getpickd blog. (more…)
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July 24, 2009
Network Security: Confidentiality vs. Availability
In the IT security world, there is a constant tension between the need to keep information confidential and the need to have it readily available. These form two of the vaunted three legs (the other being “integrity”) of every security practicioner’s model.One of the reasons these two concepts seem to be at odds has to do mostly with what actions a system takes when a failure occurs. There are two types of failure results for every test: false positives and false negatives. When it comes to biometric security, these are typically referred to as Type I (authorized person rejected) and Type II (unauthorized person accepted) instead. The question in information security is often viewed as “are you an authorized person” which helps map false negatives to Type I errors. (more…)
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July 17, 2009
Information Technology Audit Policies
In the information technology (IT) industry, auditing is a task that’s mostly misunderstood until too late. Properly configured, a solid IT audit policy can help organizations:- Know when users are created or deleted
- Determine if malicious activity is taking place on the network
- Perform a post-mortem analysis in the event of a server failure
- Rapidly solve application failures on workstations
- Isolate hardware problems affecting multiple people
- Ensure software and hardware is working as advertised
- Verify that confidential files aren’t being accessed improperly
Many of these abilities are built into the products purchased by consumers; they merely need to be enabled, configured and monitored. Because they are somewhat opaque to organizations, a best practice is often to ask your consultant for regular audit reviews. (more…)
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July 9, 2009
Defense in Depth
In the previous millennium, as networks of personal computers began to become commonplace, the security situation for many companies worsened.The problem was two-fold. First, instead of using dumb-terminals to access computer resources, users now had machines that were capable of crashing, slowing down and even creating network problems. Secondly, instead of just having to patch one central server, network administrators were now responsible for patching hundreds or thousands of client machines, all of which were connected to the Internet. (more…)
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July 4, 2009
Happy Independence Day!
Happy Independence Day to everyone!We hope you get to enjoy the fireworks, parades, barbecues, carnivals, picnics, concerts, baseball games, and other various events being held to celebrate the history, government, and traditions of these great United States.
If you will be in the Washington, DC area on July 4th, check out the Washington Post’s Fourth of July 2009 Guide.
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July 2, 2009
Improving Workflow Problems
Many of New Signature’s clients have invested large amounts of money in both hardware and software to solve specific problems. Problems such as “How can we communicate more effectively?”, “How can we measure and analyze how we are utilizing resources?”, or even “How can we consistently prepare highly designed documents for clients or constituents?” aren’t relatively new. They’ve been around as long as capitalism.As technology has advanced, the problems have become more complex, but the available solutions have grown much more powerful–especially in the last five years. Without a large amount of expertise, most users are accustomed to being able to easily perform activities today that would have been unheard of a decade ago. For example, office workers can now share calendar information, collaborate on shared documents, perform data analysis in spreadsheets, and put together compelling presentations. (Well, maybe not the latter, but there’s always hope!) (more…)