Cafe Networks

After twelve months of increasingly dramatic press headlines about failures to safeguard personal data records, it’s time to assess the size of the issue and identify best practice steps for reducing the incidence of, and damage caused by, these data breaches.

The IT Governance Data Breaches Report identifies that spectacular data breaches, such as the UK’s HMRC CD-Rom fiasco and the prolonged theft of TK Maxx credit card records, are not caused by the misdemeanor of a junior employee but arise, rather, from systemically inadequate information security arrangements at the organizations where the incident occurs.

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A weakness has been discovered in the random number generator used by OpenSSL on Debian and Ubuntu systems. As a result of this weakness, certain encryption keys are much more common than they should be, such that an attacker could guess the key through a brute-force attack given minimal knowledge of the system. This particularly affects the use of encryption keys in OpenSSH.

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As of October 1, 2008 the PCI Data Security Standard version 1.2 became active. There are a number of changes to PCI DSS since version 1.1. Version 1.2 removes much of the ambiguity from earlier versions and provides additional details on items such as the use wireless devices.

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The low cost of web and email based fax delivery services may seem like a good way to save your business money but not if you receive credit card payments by fax. This would fall under the Payment Card Industry standard section 4 that requires transmission of cardholder data across open-public networks to be encrypted and section 12 for contracts that require partners or service providers who handle card data for your company be PCI compliant and accept all PCI security requirements. You will not find an affordable PCI compliant solution without using your own dedicated fax machine.

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Most webmasters and online business owners know that a blog can bring you additional revenue from advertising, and more traffic from search engines. Then there’s the additional benefit of having a great way to spark productive dialogue between you and your prospects.
But did you know that your blog itself may be worth thousand of dollars to you in its present form?

The day I learned that my blog held such hidden treasure was one of Read the rest of this entry »

The Pundits say the economy is slowly, but surely, recovering. Maybe not at the rate of the mid-90s stock boom, but recovering nonetheless.

It must be true, because ad agencies are running Help Wanted ads. So, ad budgets are getting bigger. Tsk tsk. They have been missing out. Actually, for maverick thinkers like you, that should be good news.

When the Pundits say, “Times are getting tougher,” usually the first thing to get axed in business are ad and marketing budgets. This makes nearly no sense. But, to your competition, you should say, “Tighten that belt another couple of notches!”

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