It's the fourth annual GetSafeOnline campaign week whereby the team will raise the profile of consumer internet safety through a revamped GetSafeOnline website (containing a wealth of commonsense "how to" information) and a range of media activity. It's a great cause as the campaign is not trying to sell you any products or services and it aims to help consumers to help themselves to be safer on the Internet. I've been heavily invovled in supporting this important initiative in previous years and

There’s a really good (free) TechNet webcast coming up on the 17th September which will be a great resource for those of you who’d like to learn how to take advantage of Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) in your organisation. The full details of the event are as follows “To register simply click on this hyperlink TechNet Online Presents: MCS Talks Enterprise Architecture session 4 – Security and PKI 17 th September, 16.00-17.15 This session will start by discussing the areas you should consider when

Kai Axford has posted a series of short video interviews with representatives of the FBI – they are well worth a look – particularly if you are based in the United States as they include advice regarding whom to report breaches to. Check out The Security Show – the link is to a tag hence future episodes will be listed too if you re-visit it. The videos are streamed via Silverlight. They’re not deeply technical but they do provide interesting background material.

Credit to Ed Bott from ZDNet who interviewed Alexander Sotirov to get his perspective on the stories that have circulated in the press following the talk he gave with Mark Dowd at the recent BlackHat Securit conference. The talk was titled "How to Impress Girls with Browser Memory Protection Bypasses" which is certainly an unusual title for a technical talk. Ed's interview is interesting as it enables Alexander to clarify what the technical threats were and the context for exploits - he very clearly

I was recently asked this very question and I responded with "Windows Server 2008/2003/2000 and Windows Vista/XP" provide excellent built-in Virtual Private Networking features that are standards compliant and assuming they are correctly configured can be highly secure too. There's no additional license cost required to use Microsoft Windows VPN. In addition Microsoft offer a product named Intelligent Application Gateway which provides a high-end alternative to traditional VPN - it's part of the

I still come across Oracle enthusiasts who mistakenly believe that Oracle’s database suite is more secure than Microsoft’s SQL database suite – this is nonesense as I shall explain. The point to this post is not to gloat – it’s simply to set the record straight. Microsoft SQL Server’s suite of products ARE more secure than Oracle’s database suite. A single vulnerability in any mission critical product can cause serious problems for whomever relies upon it and ALL software is subject to both code

You can read the full details here - it's free, technical and should be fun too - just add a comment to their post if you're coming along The agenda is as follows: 6pm - 6.30pm: Arrive and introductions 6.30pm - 7:30pm: Building RIA Apps 7.30pm - 8:15: Break, Pizza and drinks 8:15pm - 9:15: Security - live demo of Network Access Protection 9:15pm: Wrap up!

I enjoyed reading the Hacking Coffee Makers post on Security Focus . Thanks to Barry Dorrans for sharing it with me via Twitter Thanks to Faye Yu for the image (which isn't related to the story - it's just a nice looking coffee machine) - she's reserved some rights as explained here It reminded me of the infamous story of one of the most popular webcams back in the "old days". You may know the details but the story that was passed by word of mouth to me was that someone worked in a building where

Many of the questions I've been asked recently regarding Bitlocker are covered on the excellent Windows BitLocker Drive Encryption Freuqently Asked Questions . For me the most important thing to consider is how on Earth to deal with the "the dog ate the USB key used to unlock Bitlocker" or "I can't remember for the life of me what my BitLocker PIN is" user scenarios. Planning is the way to make sure you can solve these problems quickly and easily. The best way to deal with key recovery is to ensure

My Grandmother was wise. She asked me the question back on 25th December 1984. "What does it do?" After lunch on Christmas day like many other twelve year olds I was keen to share my excitement of the amazing things I could do with my computer. My poor old Grandmother patiently sat through a twenty minute demo of my computer. It seems bizarre looking back but I was most enthusiastic about a drawing program that required the most obtuse key combinations to manipulate the various tools and functions.