Facebook is finally catching up to some of their perpetual security concerns and is strengthening their privacy policy and therefor the settings as well. It took a while but as of this morning (when I noticed the change) privacy settings have been tightened a bit and are finally working as expected. It will take some time for majority of folks to review their current settings and tweak their profiles as desired, but this is definitely a step in the right direction.

Considering the size of their social network (350 million) and ever growing popularity worldwide it is important to seriously evaluate all aspects of security from profiles to servers, routers, including physical access at their company.
In today’s world you can never spend too much attention on security.

Post from: Milos Topic

Facebook’s new privacy settings

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I‘m on a search for a few replacement windows and have been looking all over north New Jersey for a place that can provide them in less than the standard 2-6 weeks time frame. One of the places recommended to me was “Air-Chek Window Depot” in Clifton, NJ.

First thing I did is went online to see if they had a website and to get their address and contact info. They were the first hit on Google and while they had the info I was looking for I remember thinking that they should probably have a better, more modern website with less clutter and pages of plain text. I went there and they said that they would take two weeks as well so I kept looking. Now, two days later and unsuccessful in locating a place that has the sizes I need in less than two weeks I decided to go back to them and place the order but I forgot their hours so I went back online only to see that they were hacked.

They seemed like nice people and I feel bad for them, but hopefully they have someone who will be able to recover their online presence soon. Unfortunately, this is another example of why it is important to keep your website secure, up to date, backed up and monitored regularly. This can happen to anyone so don’t take your online security for granted.

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Keep your websites secure

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In today’s world where network and system security is of great importance and we live and operate behind firewalls, VPNs, SSH, encryption, anti-virus software and many other tools that help make us more secure, it is often difficult figuring out that winning combo to stay safe online and protect your personal information.

One component that in a sense started it all, but is now often overlooked (especially by non-Windows users thinking that viruses and malware don’t apply to them) are Anti-Virus products. Today, they go beyond simple signature scanning and early days of amateur heuristics behavior; most of them also include HIPS (host-based intrusion prevention system) and can even blacklist/white list applications, files and directories. Having said that and considering that many of the above mentioned technologies work on protecting your data while it travels from and to your computer it is still important to have a good local solution for when unwelcome code enters your file system. Over the past several years I have tested numerous AV products and while they performed most functions as advertised I didn’t find any of them to be impressive (Kaspersky being the exception in this case). They are either memory/processor hogs; too slow in updating they definitions or cause more problems then solutions they provide (anyone remember few years back Norton locking down your system and outbound ports if something wasn’t to its liking?).

Here’s where my question comes in. As I look to test new products for both internal use and to recommend to clients I want to make sure we use the best solution currently available. Based on your knowledge and experience even if it is derived from simple observations of what was installed by your IT department what anti-virus software keeps your data secure? Ideally, I’m looking for a solution that works equally well on Windows and OS X based systems. Furthermore, if it worked on popular Linux distros (Ubuntu, SUSE to name a couple) as well I would be grateful.

Post from: Milos Topic

Anti-Virus software

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Recent phishing schemes targeting Microsoft’s Hotmail, Google’s Gmail, Yahoo and other e-mail providers represent a new larger wave of an ever-present problem and it once again emphasizes the importance of educating your users, clients and staff how to recognize threats and stay away from them.

Basic things to remember:

- Your bank, IT staff, utility company or any other service provider will NEVER ask for your login credentials of any kind (password, PIN, social security number…). They simply don’t need to do that as other means of accessing your account (should there be a need for it) are already in place.

- Don’t open attachments you don’t expect/need or know where they came from. Same goes for links, don’t get click happy by clicking on every link you see. Also, when placing your cursor over a link you should look at the status bar (lower left hand corner to see if the two match).

- Don’t use public computers to access your financial (or other important) data. Why? Well, you simply don’t know who maintains those machines and how frequently; you don’t know what’s installed on them and if someone is capturing your keystrokes for later use.

- Change your passwords and change them often. Also, maintain multiple passwords for different account groups. You shouldn’t be using the same password for your banking that you use to access a simple news site. Furthermore, try not to keep your passwords simple and guessable. “welcome” ” password” “12345″ and other similar choices are examples of poor selection. I know what you must think, secure passwords are complicated and difficut to remember. Not true. All you need to do is try sentences.

Ex. “I was born on a Thursday” and then group them together “iwasbornonathursday” and if you really want to get fancy (read: SECURE) change some letters for numbers and you come up with “1wa5b0rn0nathur5day”. Simple enough and a lot more secure than “welcome”, isn’t it?

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Friends don’t let friends go phishing

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As I’m setting up the previously mentioned laptop I keep coming across minor tweaks needed to make everything work as expected. This is somewhat of an updated post back from 2007 (posted on a previous blog) when I first encountered WebDAV issues on Vista.

I wanted to map a new network location to our NetDrive, but as it didn’t work by default on a freshly installed Vista laptop I had to make the following changes:

1. Install Software Update for Web Folders (KB907306) (still not sure why this isn’t a required update)

2. Go to Local Security Policy –> Local Policies –> Security Options, click on Network security: LAN Manager authentication level and change it to Send LM & NTLM – use NTLMv2 session security if negotiated

That’s all, now I can establish a new network location (via WebDAV) to NetDrive by typing https://netdrive.montclair.edu/oneNet/NetStorage

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WebDAV connections on Vista

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On this morning’s news I head that over the past year some 10,000,000 Americans were victims of identity theft. That’s little over 3% of the U.S. population. Someone might say, well it’s only 3% which is not bad, but when you look at the number it is staggering, frightening even.

10 million people!

While there is no guarantee that it won’t happen to you there are steps you can take to minimize that possibility.

Additional resources:

Post from: Milos Topic

Prevent identity theft

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Photo Source: Edupics.com

Earlier today I attended a meeting with two very intelligent individuals who have significantly improved their respective areas with every day they have spent here. One of them used to work on my team, but has since moved onto bigger and “better” things at a different department and has made significant strides towards increasing their productivity and effectiveness. The other is one of the most knowledgeable Mac guys we have on campus and one of the nicest people to know and work with.

Today, we talked about our anti-virus enterprise vendor of choice and how to implement its Helpdesk Console locally (at a college level) in order to segment monitoring and improve the overall response time should an attack occur across our systems. We have talked about functionality, policies and settings and are all in agreement as to how to proceed and implement this important component in securing our campus infrastructure and faculty/staff/students’ data. The following step should take place next week when we begin the local implementation in our college and therefore take on additional responsibility in monitoring machines operating on our subnets.

While this might be a small step or a step already taken by some organizations, here it is that of necessity, importance and definite sign of progress. This is not the first major improvement taking place across our enterprise, but it is one of great importance towards achieving our overall goal of efficient, stable and secure operating environment.

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Progress is a beautiful thing

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Please know that there is no such thing as a system which is 100% secure 100% of the time. The importance of system security shouldn’t be taken for granted or overlooked in any way. If your are a system admin, be responsible for your systems…make sure that they are not a security equivalent of Swiss cheese.

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The importance of system security

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I have been following MacRumorsLive for a while now when it comes to Macworld and other Apple related events, but today they seems to be experiencing difficulties.

Their AJAX way of updating readers with text and photos seems to have been compromised as you can see in the above photo. Few minutes later, things started to get worse.

As I write this they have went offline in order to identify where the breach occurred and hopefully correct the issue.

I hope they get it all sorted out soon as I enjoy their service.

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MacRumorsLive stream compromised

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