Having worked quite a lot in recent years in the public sector in the UK, I’m not at all surprised that RIM (Research in Motion) is bullish about being assessed by CESG as suitable for use with restricted government data. However, it’s not altogether clear from the documentation published by RIM what this actually means.

I’ve just been observing a slightly bizarre email thread about the whatdoestheinternetthink?net site, which is apparently aiming to be the place to go if you want a global enquiry tool to find out what the online world thinks about any given subject. You enter a search term, it submits to one or more search engines, and it

I recently read an article about Facebook security problems at http://www.securitymattersmag.com/security-matters-magazine-article-detail.php?id=411 in which some advice on passwords was given.   Some of the advice was quite good, but some was a bit shaky. I’ll go through the tips and tell you what’s hot and what’s not! Use a combination of uppercase and lowercase letters, symbols,

The news broke a short time ago that pop star Michael Jackson died of a heart attack. It is all too predictable that the bad guys will use this news event to spam out fake videos or links to alleged pictures in order to trick users into installing their malicious software. If you receive an

It’s often claimed that men think about sex very seven seconds. Sorry, where was I? Oh yes… I’m not sure where that pseudo-statistic comes from: apparently not from the Kinsey report as is often claimed, and a more recent poll, while reflecting perhaps more liberated views about sexuality than could be admitted to in the

I was recently reminded of the truism that security is about managing risk. You cannot eliminate all risk. When we think of cyber criminals we tend to think of phishers, criminal gangs writing malware to steal passwords, and eBay scammers. So we try to deal with “reputable” companies to eliminate the risk of theft and

I really didn’t think that Microsoft’s beta AV product would necessitate three blogs: it is, after all, just a beta release. However, I was surprised just now to read an article by Mark Mayne of SC Magazine that claims the product is “going head-to-head with a range of AV vendors, from Symantec and McAfee through

Alex makes a couple of interesting points in his comment on Randy’s blog yesterday about Microsoft’s "Security Essentials" antivirus (as does Randy, of course, but there’s no surprise there.) Alex is suggesting, I think, that Security Essentials isn’t so much a freebie as a value-add to something you’ve already paid for (i.e. Windows). That’s a pretty interesting,

Microsoft is releasing a beta of their new antivirus product. Previously Microsoft announced that they would discontinue OneCare. The choice of the name “Security Essentials” is amusing. I’m not in the camp of those who think that you can’t have “Microsoft” and “security” in the same sentence, but just the same, Microsoft does say “If

The City of Bozeman, Montana effectively joined the ranks of phishers when they asked job candidates for their usernames and passwords for social networking sites that the applicant belongs to. In a report at , after considerable outcry the city rescinded its mindless policy. To begin with, the city was asking applicants to breach their