9/04/2007

VOIP


Magic Jack - $40 for a year of phone service.

http://www.magicjack.com/site/index.html

This is interesting.

Labels:

3/07/2007

Totally Unrelated


Atlanta Time Machine
Very interesting site. I wonder if there are others for other cities.

Labels: ,

1/22/2007

Media::Recording Presentation



http://www.brianmadden.com/content/content.asp?id=649

How to record a technical demonstration video

Labels: , , ,

11/08/2006

Dumb Little Man - Tips for Life: "tips that will save you money, increase your productivity, or simply keep you sane."

Labels: ,

Mathematical recreation: "Mathematical recreation "
Very cool!

Labels: ,

9/28/2006

How To: Unattended Installation of the Citrix Web Interface: "How To: Unattended Installation of the Citrix Web Interface"

Labels: ,

9/26/2006

InfoWorld GripeLine by Ed Foster | InfoWorld | The Adobe License Manager and Acrobat | September 25, 2006 12:26 AM | By Ed Foster: "September 25, 2006

The Adobe License Manager and Acrobat
Filed under: None
Up until now, corporate customers have generally been spared having to deal with product activation and other anti-piracy technology in the software products they buy in volume. With Acrobat 8, however, Adobe is rather quietly and somewhat tentatively introducing an embedded license control technology called the Adobe License Manager.
For reasons I'm not entirely clear on myself, I seem to be the first trade press person in a position to report on the Adobe License Manager (ALM). It's not that Adobe's been keeping it a secret that it planned to introduce an asset management tool that would track Adobe volume licenses for anti-piracy purposes. For months Adobe has been openly discussing it with some customers and analysts in various venues. There is now a FAQ page on ALM on Adobe's website, and the company is beginning a customer education campaign about it this week. Which makes it all the stranger that Adobe's press materials last week announcing Acrobat 8 were silent on the subject of ALM, considering that it seems like something corporate customers interested in the new Acrobat will want to know.
Perhaps that's where the tentativeness I referred to comes in. Prior to the Acrobat announcement, Adobe made the decision that for the first year of version 8 volume license customers will be able to 'opt out' from using ALM. At deployment time - after the volume agreement has been negotiated and approved, in other words - the customer will have the option until Fall of 2007 to deploy Acrobat 8 software that does not have ALM embedded.

Labels: ,

9/08/2006

Physical Address Extension - PAE Memory and Windows: "Physical Address Extension - PAE Memory and Windows
Updated: February 9, 2005"
Fixing the 4GB memory limit issue

Labels: , , ,

8/31/2006

8/25/2006

Acrobat for Legal Professionals: "Acrobat for Legal Professionals"

Labels: , ,

8/21/2006

TechNet Webcast: Introduction to Terminal Services in Windows Server Code-Named ?Longhorn? (Level 200): "TechNet Webcast: Introduction to Terminal Services in Windows Server Code-Named ?Longhorn? (Level 200)"

Labels: , ,

8/18/2006

The Blogcast Repository: "The #1 FREE Video Technology Source on the Internet!"

Labels: ,

8/16/2006

NT RegFind: "Regfind is a utility for searching through a win32 registry."

Labels: ,

Download Free Windows 2000 Resource Kit Tools: "download the Windows 2000 Resource Kit software tools "

Labels: , ,

Viewing and Manipulating the Registry: "Viewing and Manipulating the Registry"

Labels: , ,

8/08/2006

ThomasKoetzing.de - Understanding and Troubleshooting Citrix's Seamless Windows Engine: "This article will explain how these technical components work and how you can fix seamless windows problems "

Labels: , ,

8/04/2006

5/11/2006

Link::File Types


http://mark0.net/onlinetrid.aspx

Labels:

5/02/2006

Links::Printing::TIFF::Acceleration



Graphic printing acceleration

http://www.ggx.com/downloads/datasheets/XipPRINT.pdf

Labels: , ,

4/12/2006

CD-R::CD-RW


Excellent source of information about CDR & CDRW technology.
Understanding CD-R & CD-RW - Disc Longevity

Labels: ,

3/28/2006

PDF Creation::Link


Create a PDF online

Labels: , ,

3/10/2006

Proportional Belief: "keep open, as it were, the ground that's already been cleared. Some falsehoods "

Not a technical Blog but a very interesting discussion

Labels: ,

3/06/2006

Links::Gartner


Recommendations for Security Administration, 2006: "
Recommendations for Security Administration, 2006"


Recommendations for Security Administration, 2006
13 February 2006
Ray Wagner Roberta J. Witty Tom Scholtz John Pescatore Greg Young Amrit T. Williams Lawrence Orans
Jay Heiser Vic Wheatman Neil MacDonald Ant Allan Kelly M. Kavanagh Mark Nicolett Kristen Noakes-Fry

Source: Gartner
Note Number: G00137698

Information security continues to require a multilayered, multitechnology approach. In the security administration area, instituting a formal process, with dedicated resources, for the enterprise information security architecture is one of many actions that companies should follow.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Table of Contents

1.0 Recommendation: Business Continuity Management
2.0 Recommendation: Business Continuity Management and Its Five Components
3.0 Recommendation: Disaster Recovery
4.0 Recommendation: Security Team
5.0 Recommendation: Vendor Requirements
6.0 Recommendation: Operations
7.0 Recommendation: Risk Management
8.0 Recommendation: Security Architecture
9.0 Recommendation: Security Information Management
10.0 Recommendation: Application Development Security
11.0 Recommendation: Identity Management
12.0 Recommendation: Managed Security Service Providers
13.0 Recommendation: Application Layer Security
14.0 Recommendation: Vulnerability Management

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Analysis [return to Table of Contents]

Best-practice information security continues to require a multilayered, multitechnology approach. Gartner tracks many security technologies, as well as the administration and management of the information security program. Gartner generally classifies information security markets and technologies in three areas:

Infrastructure protection — This area can be summarized as "keeping the bad guys out" and includes firewalls, intrusion detection and prevention, antivirus, content monitoring, managed security services, and so on.
Secure business enablement — This area can be summarized as "letting the good guys in" and includes identity and access management (IAM), strong authentication, access controls, enterprise digital rights management, and so on.
Security administration — This area can be summarized as "keeping the wheels on" and includes business continuity planning, security operations, security awareness, the information security organization, and so on.
Analysts in the Security and Privacy group were asked in December 2005 to offer their top-of-mind recommendations for security practitioners in 2006. Some recommendations are new, while some indicate that previous advice remains valid in 2006. This Research Note brings together recommendations in the security administration area.

1.0 Recommendation: Business Continuity Management [return to Table of Contents]

Add regional disasters to your business continuity management (BCM) scenario planning and associated recovery plans. As a result, expand your minimum outage time frame to one month and start working with local, regional and state authorities to be better prepared for disasters.

Justification — Technology outages that lead to the execution of a disaster recovery plan are decreasing because of the better management practices of IT and the supporting infrastructure. The events that do result in major business interruption and downtime are natural disasters and terrorism, both increasing in number. Don't expect government authorities to come to you; you must initiate the dialogue.

Strategic Planning Assumption — By 2008, 75 percent of the Global 2000 will have "all hazards" BCM plans in place (0.9 probability).

Analysis by Roberta Witty

2.0 Recommendation: Business Continuity Management and Its Five Components [return to Table of Contents]

Unless the IT department has strong credibility across the enterprise, establish the BCM function outside of the IT department to ensure comprehensive recovery coverage across the enterprise.

Justification — BCM is a risk management program that must have senior management sponsorship to ensure effective communication, awareness and funding throughout the enterprise. BCM includes five components:

Disaster recovery (that should be under the CIO)
Work area recovery
Business resumption
Contingency planning
Crisis management
These five components must be in place to support the recovery of mission-critical business processes (including sales, back office, corporate services, IT and the personnel that support these functions).

Technology should be used to manage all aspects of the BCM program. Good places within the enterprise to locate the BCM program are the offices of the CRO, COO, CAO and CFO. If the IT department has credibility across the enterprise — and many don't — then organizing the BCM program under the CIO is a viable option.

Strategic Planning Assumption — By 2009, more than 50 percent of Global 2000 organizations will have BCM departments reporting outside of the CIO (0.8 probability).

Analysis by Roberta Witty

3.0 Recommendation: Disaster Recovery [return to Table of Contents]

Shop for emergency notification tools that can address not only centralized crisis communication needs but mainstream business messaging needs as well.

Justification — As emergency notification tools become more sophisticated, it makes sense to use their capabilities on behalf of the entire organization. For example, using one product and platform to replace various systems used in different units and departments permits easier management and consistent messaging policies and processes throughout the organization. Also, the database in an emergency notification tool can be applied to any situation in which information on staff members and business partners needs to be sorted and automated messages need to be delivered to the right group of people. For example, using these tools for IT alerting can take the alerts from the event console and/or service desk products and do closed-loop notification/acknowledgment/escalation functions. Advantages of mainstream application of emergency notification tools include:

Justifying the cost of the best product for the organization will be easier when it can be demonstrated that it can meet multiple needs.
Business continuity staff will be included in more mainstream discussions and decisions.
More employees will develop facility with products and tools, making them better prepared for a crisis.
More administrative consistency and more integrated processes and functions will result.
Strategic Planning Assumption — By 2008, the leading emergency notification tools will showcase integrated features with various general business communications uses, and client organizations will be able to justify the cost of top-of-the line emergency notification tools as an investment in enhanced productivity because of the value of these products in handling daily internal and external communication needs (0.7 probability).

Analysis by Kristen Noakes-Fry

4.0 Recommendation: Security Team [return to Table of Contents]

Consider moving the information security team out of the IT department.

Justification — Moving the security team out of the IT department reinforces the understanding that information security is not just an IT issue, but rather a core component of overall corporate risk management. It also implies a somewhat higher corporate profile, with a senior authority level supporting a more effective communication of awareness. However, such an organizational change should only be considered once the security team has matured into being primarily an oversight function, with operationalized security functions migrated to network and server operations. Other factors to consider include the cultural and political realities in the organization, as well as the maturity level of security practices (for example, risk management maturity and process formalization) achieved (see "Use Information Security Program Maturity Timeline as an Analysis Tool").

Strategic Planning Assumption — By 2008, more than 50 percent of Global 2000 organizations will have security organizations that report outside of the IT organization (0.9 probability).

Analysis by Tom Scholtz

5.0 Recommendation: Vendor Requirements [return to Table of Contents]

Require all product and service providers to demonstrate evidence of vulnerability testing and security before accepting their product or using their service.

Justification — The least expensive way to stay the most secure is to have the fewest possible vulnerabilities. In the manufacturing world, to reach higher levels of quality, it is critical not only to focus on quality in the enterprise's processes, but to force the enterprise's suppliers to higher levels of quality — businesses need to take this same approach to security as well. All requests for proposals and invitations to tender should require vendors to demonstrate the methods and currency of testing their product or service to minimize vulnerabilities. When evaluating competing offerings, security should be a highly rated evaluation criterion. Service offerings should be required to not only demonstrate successful completion of a security audit — such as Statement on Auditing Standards (SAS) 70 or BS7799-oriented — but also provide details on continual vulnerability management and intrusion prevention processes.

Strategic Planning Assumption — Through 2010, reducing vulnerabilities in commercially acquired products and services by just 50 percent will reduce configuration management and incident response costs by 75 percent each (0.7 probability).

Analysis by John Pescatore

6.0 Recommendation: Operations [return to Table of Contents]

Migrate mature security functions from security to network or server operations and have security oversee them.

Justification — The "operationalization" of security is one of the few positive processes in security: greater efficiency at the same or reduced cost. Network and server operations have the culture and processes to maintain mature security functions (ones that have been tested and proved) and, in particular, those that are repeatable tasks. The security responsibility for these migrated functions moves to oversight rather than operation. This removes the problem of security auditing and overseeing themselves, and being stretched as new security products are adopted. New security technologies may be selected by the security group in consultation with the operations groups, and later operationalized. Password reset is the classic operationalization example — the help desk or operations staff can implement it, while security oversees and audits that it is done correctly. Some resources must move to operations to achieve this.

The processes in the overall IT organization, however, must be mature. Operationalizing security functions where the processes are not mature will increase risk and reduce security. In these cases, the status quo will likely be less disruptive and introduce less overall risk. Otherwise, if implemented, operationalization can deliver the following benefits:

Overall lower security total cost of ownership (TCO)
More efficient achievement of security service-level agreements (SLAs)
Balance between risk and functional performance
Strategic Planning Assumption — Moving a mature safeguard to the operations group from the security group will reduce TCO for that safeguard by more than 10 percent and improve the associated security SLA metric (0.8 probability).

Analysis by Greg Young, John Pescatore, Amrit Williams and Lawrence Orans

7.0 Recommendation: Risk Management [return to Table of Contents]

Take a process-oriented approach to information security risk management based on International Organization for Standardization/International Electrotechnical Commission (ISO/IEC) 27001.

Justification — The information security community is increasingly accepting the Information Security Management System (ISMS) approach described in ISO/IEC 27001 (formerly BS7799-2:2002) as being a useful framework in creating a process-oriented approach to managing security risks. In addition to the benefits of process orientation, 27001 and its companion framework of security controls, ISO/IEC 27002 (formerly BS7799), are growing in popularity across the globe. Organizations that base their security management program on these well-accepted standards find that it is much easier to demonstrate the comprehensiveness of their management program to external partners and auditors. Familiarity with 27001 and 27002 also facilitates the evaluation of partner organizations and suppliers. Finally, because these standards have become the most commonly accepted security framework, they are supported by the majority of risk management products and service providers.

Strategic Planning Assumptions — By 2009, more than half of all security management programs will be based on a 27001 ISMS and will use 27002 as their primary set of controls (0.7 probability).

By 2007, 70 percent of security management programs will use 27002 (0.8 probability).

Analysis by Jay Heiser

8.0 Recommendation: Security Architecture [return to Table of Contents]

Institute a formal process, with dedicated resources, for enterprise information security architecture.

Justification — Larger enterprises are increasingly embarking on strategic information security programs. An enterprise security architecture is an important component of such a program, given that one of the main objectives of a program is to improve consistency in security practices and solutions. Security architecture consists of a layered set of documentation that links an accepted vision for information security in the enterprise to blueprints for implementing security controls. Because it must provide for continuously evolving technology, business and risk dynamics, developing and maintaining it is an ongoing process rather than an ad hoc activity.

Strategic Planning Assumption — By 2008, 80 percent of large enterprises will formalize an enterprise information security architecture process (0.8 probability).

Analysis by Tom Scholtz

9.0 Recommendation: Security Information Management [return to Table of Contents]

Implement centralized application-level event and information management.

Justification — Centralized logging and monitoring of application-level events is driven by regulatory compliance, highly publicized data theft incidents, the changing nature of vulnerabilities and targeted application-level attacks. Organizations must implement solutions in support of centralized application-level monitoring. Security information and event management (SIEM) tools are beginning to provide a deeper level of monitoring of applications. Vendor-specific solutions also exist for large enterprise applications, such as SAP and Oracle. Centralized log analysis should, at the very least, include the forwarding of application log files to a centralized location for the purposes of identifying specific strings or variables — through the use of a script that uses a utility such as grep (short for general regular expression parser) — to find pattern matches.

Strategic Planning Assumption — By the second half of 2006, 60 percent of SIEM vendors will provide robust application-level monitoring (0.8 probability).

Analysis by Amrit Williams

10.0 Recommendation: Application Development Security [return to Table of Contents]

Begin your efforts to push security further back into your own application development process. Review customized software/application development practices with an eye toward improving sensitivity to security issues within these systems, at the interfaces to legacy systems, and with each and every new technology adoption. Whenever something new is being planned and implemented, someone must ask, "Is it secure enough?"

Justification — We estimate that 75 percent of successful attacks occur at the application level (see "Now Is the Time for Security at the Application Level"). Application vulnerabilities are increasing with the complexity of those applications. Furthermore, threat agents are moving from data and networks to the applications themselves to cause harm and to extract valuable data from the application side (see "Prevent Targeted Attacks").

Strategic Planning Assumptions — Through 2009, the financial damage experienced by businesses because of targeted attacks will increase at least five times faster than damage caused by mass events (0.8 probability).

By 2009, 80 percent of companies will have suffered an application security incident and, as a result, will react by creating roles in the application development and testing organizations to ensure that security is handled at the application level (0.7 probability).

Analysis by Victor Wheatman and Neil MacDonald

11.0 Recommendation: Identity Management [return to Table of Contents]

Review, consolidate and document all your IAM processes in 2006.

Justification — Recognizing that IAM is primarily about processes and not about technology is critical in the success of IAM projects. In any organization, all IAM tasks can be mapped into one, two or three fundamental process flows: access modeling, workflow and identity (see "Consider Identity and Access Management as a Process, Not a Technology"). Understanding that IAM processes are driven by information security, operational and — above all — business needs rather than dictated by the functionality of a particular IAM product allows much-more-effective use of such a product. For organizations without IAM offerings in place, the IAM processes can be used for justification, planning and vendor selection; for those with IAM offerings, the IAM processes can be used to determine the fit of the current solutions and identify mismatched and missing components.

Strategic Planning Assumptions — By year-end 2006, 20 percent of financial services and investment organizations will use IAM process approaches as planning methods or justification arguments, in which they have been unsuccessful to date in organizing an effective approach to introducing such solutions (0.7 probability).

In 2007 and 2008, 25 percent of process-centric enterprises involved in the defense, automotive and manufacturing sectors will update existing IAM services with process-specific feature sets (0.8 probability).

Analysis by Ant Allan

12.0 Recommendation: Managed Security Service Providers [return to Table of Contents]

Outsource repetitive operational security activities to a managed security service provider (MSSP).

Justification — All information security teams are struggling with resource constraints, both from a financial and skills perspective. Outsourcing some activities (for example, systems administration and 24x7 monitoring) frees up resources to focus on more-strategic requirements. The MSSP market is maturing to the point that, coupled with effective SLAs, many security activities can be outsourced successfully.

Strategic Planning Assumption — By 2008, 60 percent of enterprises will outsource some part of their security operations to a third party (0.8 probability).

Analysis by Tom Scholtz and Kelly Kavanagh

13.0 Recommendation: Application Layer Security [return to Table of Contents]

Use application layer security instead of platform layer security for fine-grained security mechanisms to provide better control through space and time.

Justification — Security controls are moving up the stack, within the network and on the operating system (OS). Platform security mechanisms, in the network and on the OS, will continue to be used because of their low implementation cost and high convenience. However, platform mechanisms cannot be effectively applied in a highly distributed environment, especially when the information owner lacks ownership and/or managerial control over the endpoints, let alone the intermediate processors. Controls located higher in the stack provide greater granularity, and they can provide a greater variety of services, which explains why SSL VPNs are taking market share away from IPsec (the Internet Protocol security). Document authenticity controls, such as digital signature, can be applied only within the application layer. Security mechanisms that are bundled into a compound object with the data itself, such as Secure Multipurpose Internet Messaging Extensions (S/MIME), pretty good privacy (PGP), digital rights management (DRM) and Web Services Security (WS-Security), continue to provide security protection, no matter where in time or space the object is located. Although such services take more effort to implement and manage than do platform-based mechanisms, they are the only practical way to provide information protection in a highly distributed, multiorganization environment.

Strategic Planning Assumption — By 2009, the majority of new applications will use application-layer security mechanisms as the primary form of security protection (0.8 probability).

Analysis by Jay Heiser

14.0 Recommendation: Vulnerability Management [return to Table of Contents]

Organizations need to implement controls against the changing nature of vulnerabilities.

Justification — The majority of external attacks take advantage of known vulnerabilities and misconfigurations. An important aspect of improving an organization's security posture is to eliminate these conditions that can lead to exploitations. The nature of vulnerabilities is changing, and organizations must prepare for this change by understanding that threats are shifting to take advantage of vulnerabilities at the application layer and on networking devices, open-source software, enterprise software applications, database software and embedded systems. The principles learned from managing vulnerabilities against Windows PCs and servers can be utilized here; however, it is important that security aligns its process with the business by understanding the services provided by these new vulnerable entities.

Strategic Planning Assumption — Through 2007, Windows vulnerabilities will decrease; however, vulnerabilities against networking devices, large-enterprise applications and open-source products will increase (0.8 probability).

Analysis by Amrit Williams, John Pescatore and Mark Nicolett





--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

© 2006 Gartner, Inc. and/or its Affiliates. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction of this publication in any form without prior written permission is forbidden. The information contained herein has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable. Gartner disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. Although Gartner's research may discuss legal issues related to the information technology business, Gartner does not provide legal advice or services and its research should not be construed or used as such. Gartner shall have no liability for errors, omissions or inadequacies in the information contained herein or for interpretations thereof. The opinions expressed herein are subject to change without notice.

Labels: , ,

3/02/2006

Instant Messaging


Instant Messaging Security Issues
http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/reference/malicious.threats.instant.messaging.pdf

Labels: , ,

2/17/2006

Links::Freeware


This is a great "top free software" list that includes great free security utilities.
The 46 Best-ever Freeware Utilities
http://www.techsupportalert.com/best_46_free_utilities.htm

Labels: , ,

10/06/2005

Links::Forensics


Searching and Seizing Computers and Obtaining Electronic Evidence in Criminal Investigations
http://www.cybercrime.gov/s&smanual2002.htm#_IB1_

Very interesting read.

Labels: ,

9/23/2005

E-Mail::Blackberry::Links



http://www.blackberrycool.com

Labels: , ,

9/14/2005

Annoyances.org: "Annoyances.org is the most complete collection of information assembled for and by actual users of Microsoft Windows."

Labels: ,

A2Z Computers Inc. 1-800-983-8889: "Teac USB 2.0 TV Tuner - TV input adapter - Hi-Speed USB"

Interesting product. Our AV dept may need to capture training video off dvd on a somewhat regular basis.

Labels: , ,

9/13/2005

Mark's Sysinternals Blog: "Mark's Sysinternals Blog"

Labels: , , ,

9/12/2005

Active FTP vs. Passive FTP, a Definitive Explanation: "Active FTP vs. Passive FTP, a Definitive Explanation"

Labels: , ,

9/02/2005

Freeware::Utility


The last free versions of PowerArchiver, BCWipe, PrintKey, and SE Maker!
Download older versions of freeware programs that went commercial!: "Freeware programs that either went commercial after these versions or were discontinued, or are hard to find or just plain good"

Labels: , ,

7/22/2005

6/28/2005