If you watch the news regularly, it is easy to notice that in almost any
given week some company seems to have experienced an electronic break-in or
in some other way experienced a form of computer or network compromise. While
computer security professionals can help to mitigate such risks via the
proper configuration of firewalls, careful crafting of Access Control Lists,
the application of updates, and the judicious application of file permission,
among other measures, it's important that one of the most fundamental ways of
improving the security of a computer or network resource not be overlooked -
that of a really strong password. To this day passwords remain one of the
weaker links in the security of electronic resources, and their potential for
exploitation needs to be examined more carefully than ever. With the growing
trend of cloud computing-based initiativ... (more)
With the release of Visual Studio .NET and the structured error-handling
capabilities of the .NET Framework came significant improvements in the way
that VS programmers are able to capture and deal with programmatic errors.
Yet these more robust abilities do not lessen the importance of one of the
most time-tested means of error handling: prevention.
In this article I will highlight various methods of data validation that can
be used to eliminate potentially problematic errors before they have a chance
to occur. Data validation checks any inputted data for potential problems
pri... (more)
In late May 2004, Microsoft made the announcement that it was considering
entering the High-Performance Computing (HPC) Market, a market that has
traditionally been dominated by custom-engineered Unix-based machines. In
recent years, advances in technology have made possible the construction of
lower-cost computing clusters that utilize off-the-shelf hardware such as
Intel- and AMD-based processors. The operating system of choice for these
lower-end clusters has been Linux. In fact, this market is representative of
one of Linux's strongest footholds. Many in the Linux camp consid... (more)
The security benefits and risks of Open Source code is one of the most
debated topics in information security today. The views of proponents of the
Open Source model are typified by Eric Raymond's argument that Open Source
software is intrinsically more secure since its open nature lets a greater
number of programmers view the source code and uncover potential security
threats before they're released to the wild.
Fewer people see closed source software, on the other hand, and so the odds
of uncovering a potential security threat before a system cracker finds it is
diminished. Op... (more)
Parallels have often been drawn between the computer security landscape and
the biological world, since security threats such as computer viruses and
worms can be viewed as digital incarnations of common biological threats.
Similarities exist in terms of modes of reproduction as well as infection,
and some research even suggests that digital threats follow the laws of
evolution that predict these threats will become more sophisticated and
effective as time progresses. A logical extension of this concept has
always been to therefore consider the idea of computer security as a fo... (more)
Christopher Frenz is the author of "Visual Basic and Visual Basic .NET for Scientists and Engineers" (Apress) and "Pro Perl Parsing" (Apress). He is a faculty member in the Department of Computer Engineering at the New York City College of Technology (CUNY), where he performs computational biology and machine learning research.
David Lucas
Shaul Efraim
Terence Martin Breslin
Cory Marchand
David Hughes
James Carlini
John Iffert
Dan Stolts
Joe Zeto
