Security meaning, in this case, something you can count on.

Amazon has had a monster outage the last few days of their primary cloud servers. This coming just days after Microsoft had the same. Unrelated issues, too.

ZDNet had a good breakdown of exactly what happened. It’s pretty technical, but the long and short of it is this: Cloud Servers aren’t totally dependable, and even the big boys break down. What can be shocking is how this can happen for 24-48 hours; with all the resources these big companies have, there is really no excuse for that.

See the ZDNet article here

For your convenience and their financial gain, scammers are
altering their “business” model and diversifying their payment options.

For years, scammers have been programming fake security
software designed to incessantly bug you about bogus infections on your
computer. While scareware tactics aren’t new, they’ve become increasingly
sophisticated; and, until recently, the only way to give the scammers your hard
earned money was to divulge a credit card number. But, now these nefarious
groups are expanding the methods by which you can give them your money.

Learn more about the new scheme here.

From Engadget, regarding MS Internet Explorer:

Out with the old

In with the new

As for me: I am a fan of IE9. I like the changes and it seems faster and a little less bloated.

I still use IE a lot…less than Google Chrome (first choice in most cases) and Firefox. I do use IE lots for Internet shopping – it seems to be consistently easiest with e-commerce sites. YMMW, of course…

ZDNet’s excellent “Tech Broiler” blog has an excellent piece on what happened with WikiLeaks data-dump fiasco. This concisely explains the technical part of what happened. It’s a little “inside baseball”, in that it gets pretty technical, but they break it down very well. The basic case they make is that it is all about following proper IT practice – just like on our own little business networks.

There’s a lesson to be learned here. You can have the most secure network(s) in the entire world, and all kinds of enabling technology to help you safeguard your information, but if you don’t follow consistent IT practices across the board, have gaping holes in your endpoints, and you don’t psychologically profile the people who have access to your most trusted, secret information, you’re just asking for trouble.

Find the article here