Katharine Hadow

In September I mentioned that Michael Hickins had reported on phone spoofing with cell phones to avoid sanctions for calling to Iran. Now The Economist reports that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan complains that “they eavesdropped on me for six years.” "They" may possibly be the Turkish Justice Ministry.  Have something sensitive to say?  Take the battery out of your mobile phone, as Bruce Schneier has been saying for years. (Check that link in The Economist before 11/19/2010.  After a year all Economist content is only available to paid subscribers.) ... (more)

Remote Centralized Security Suite Reduces Reliance on Sneakernet

Keeping the security settings on just one PC up to date is a chore. Where PC networks span hundreds of computers, it can be a full-time job for their network administrator. New features of Comodo Endpoint Security Manager 1.4 make managing network security easier. Hackers look for the holes in security software. When they find holes, they write malicious code to attack. When security software developers detect the malicious code, they update their security software, which must then be installed on each PC. As the company that develops award-winning security software, Comodo is aw... (more)

Comodo Innovations at SC World Congress October 13 and 14

Jersey City, NJ, September 29, 2009 - Comodo Group will exhibit its landscape of products at the SC World Congress, a trade show for information technology professionals in New York City, October 13 and 14, 2009. Comodo products being demonstrated include Comodo Endpoint Security Manager, which now includes Disk Encryption at no extra charge. Comodo Endpoint Security Manager offers centralized administration of the award-winning Comodo antivirus, firewall and disk encryption software. Endpoint Security Manager also offers a new Offline Updater, permitting administrators to sched... (more)

Data Breaches Pain IT Executives

Jersey City, NJ, December 17, 2009 - The US unemployment rate is so high that two US Senators have introduced the Employ America Act, aiming to cut back on alien workers hired on H1-B visas. With a 10%+ jobless rate, there is a lot of talented competition for work. If an IT executive loses a job because of a data breach, he or she might be out of work for a long time—without benefits. IT executives at ChoicePoint, Inc., looked like heroes when they reacted swiftly to a potential data breach in 2005. More often, though, leaky data pipes lead to unpleasant consequences for the exe... (more)

Online Encryption: Roots Are Showing

Jersey City, NJ, December 15, 2009 - In X.509 encryption, discriminating buyers check to be sure that certificate roots are well-protected. Certificate owners also check the distribution of the roots: can they be found in as many of the major browsers as possible? Owners aim for widespread distribution across all browsers. Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) certificates allow computer users to encrypt information, scrambling it so that only someone with access to the certificate owner's key can unscramble it. The key itself is scrambled, as is the key used to scramble it, and so on ... (more)