Security Made Simple
The amount being generated these days is more than ever before, and it’s growing exponentially. It won’t be long before we see yottabytes of data, and making sense of what we have is going to be a growing problem for us. I’ve made a start on reading about how this will be done and how … Continue reading Big Data
Yottabyte You may not be too familiar with this term, but you will be within the next year or so I think. Disk space is measured in bytes, and each term used is a multiple of 1000 of the previous one. So we have: Bytes Kilobytes (1000 bytes) Megabytes (1000 kB) Gigabytes (1000 Mb) Terabytes … Continue reading Y is for …
X-rated It’s well known that the internet hosts a wide variety of pornography sites, from the legal on the surface web to the illegal on the dark web. But what of other adult only material, which is also x-rated and may be illegal. Sites showing gore, mutilation, torture and worse? Again, they’re split between the … Continue reading X is for …
Whaling When people launching spear phishing attacks against senior members of staff, this is known as whaling (because they’re after the big fish). That’s the only real difference in the terms, though the types of attack may differ slightly. Whales are more likely to be the target for mandate fraud, where an email purporting to … Continue reading W is for …
Earlier this week an article appeared on the BBC website called How can we stop being cyber idiots?. I took umbrage at this for a number of reasons. First, why alienate readers by calling them idiots? Most people who use computers (I won’t call them users because, as a friend of mine pointed out, users has … Continue reading Unhelpful media headlines
VPN A virtual private network (VPN) is a form of network connection between two points which is encrypted. This helps protect the network traffic from being intercepted by others, and helps to keep the message secure. It’s a really good idea to use a VPN if you’re away from home eg in cafes or using … Continue reading V is for …
Updates This is just another term for patches, and is pretty much used interchangably. So these are fixes for parts of code which are found to have vulnerabilities in them, and are generally released on a regular basis by software vendors. UPS An Uninterruptable Power Supply (UPS) is basically just a large battery which allows a device … Continue reading U is for …
Tailgating Tailgating is very easy to spot. It’s when you follow someone through a barrier without swiping your entry card, adding your pin number etc. You might have seen someone do this in a car park or elsewhere, following another vehicle in without paying: it’s the same principle. Trojan Taking its name from the Trojan … Continue reading T is for …
Just as my recent post focussed on a selection of books related social engineering and the psychology behind cyber crime, this post will look at a range of films, documentaries and TV shows which offer insight into the industry. They’re not intended to be a definitive list, and there are many great examples which aren’t … Continue reading Cyber viewing
I’m often asked, particularly by new entrants into cyber, what books they should read, and what podcasts they should listen to. The list of both is endless, but I thought I’d share some titles with you. Before we start though, a word about my relationship with books… I’m a passionate reader, and a compulsive purchaser … Continue reading Social Engineering and Human Nature
Easy Cyber 