IT Insights Blog — cybersecurity

It's the end of National Cyber Security Awareness Month as we know it. Do you feel fine? Once every year, there are four weeks set aside on the calendar for those of us in IT — and, really, for all people everywhere — to focus on the importance of both improving our knowledge of information security best practices, and improving our actual implementation of said best practices. Your passwords, for example, aren't going to change themselves.

In the modern business world, many people communicate via text, or by using any of a variety of different chat apps. It's often more convenient than a phone call, and usually quicker (if inevitably sloppier) than sending an e-mail. It's likely to be a long time, however, before e-mail entirely disappears as a means of communication and sharing information. And as long as e-mail continues to exist, if not precisely flourish, it will remain a potentially dangerous point of entry to your workstation and, more problematically, your employer's network.

Earlier this week I had the opportunity to visit with a teenager named Paul. Paul just finished his junior year and has landed a summer job with a local tire repair shop. As a reader, he is familiar with many of western civilization’s great books, and would be considered well-read even for one twice his age. His communication skills are top-notch, and he has a GPA well above his peers. He also possesses another valuable non-teenager like trait — he knows how to save money.

This past weekend I went to see the latest installment of the Pirates of the Caribbean film franchise. I have mixed feelings about the movie. I spent the two hours and nine minutes of show time wading through a myriad of tangled storylines and interweaving plot threads, masked by lots and lots of action.

Seven years after launching an investigation into allegations of sexual assault brought against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Swedish Director of Public Prosecution Marianne Ny retired the field earlier today, formally closing her investigation. After being holed up at the Ecuadorian embassy in London since June 19, 2012, Assange now has the freedom to, well, not exactly walk out a free man.