Pen Testing the US Cyber Strategy

If it's not an era of intense faith in the multilateral system, somewhere among the Trump Administration's anonymous adults in the room there is a believer, and the Internet might be the better for it. Evidence for the existence of this fifth columnist lies in the US National Cyber Strategy, launched last month under the commander-in-chief's unprepossessing signature, which looks to provide security for America's connected economy. more

Professional Services Are a Safe Bet to Address Staff Shortages

Many organizations today are tightening their belts. They have smaller budgets and fewer resources even though they face an ever-growing list of projects, tasks and corporate IT initiatives to complete. IT departments are hard pressed to streamline operations but don't necessarily have the manpower -- be it resources or specific skillsets -- to add capabilities that will achieve such efficiency. There are only a few possible solutions organizations can consider to address this common problem... more

Google Data on State of Web Security

As part of its Transparency Report, Google recently released large amount of data related to unsafe websites. Google groups unsafe websites into two main categories: Malware and Phishing sites. more

VeriSign Announces Increase in .com and .net Domain Name Fees

VeriSign today announced that effective July 1, 2010 there will be an increase in registry domain name fees for .com and .net, per its agreements with ICANN. According the press release, the registry fee for .com domain names will increase from $6.86 to $7.34 and the registry fee for .net domain names will increase, from $4.23 to $4.65. more

The 3 Keys to Unlock Your Operational Performance

Like any business, service providers must constantly evaluate the success of their operations. For implementations and installments, this is usually done by setting a strategic objective and then measuring progress made towards completion. But for operational teams, success is often measured by the repeated achievement of daily goals aligned to corporate objectives. Setting these benchmarks and collecting this data is accomplished by frequently running key performance indicators (KPIs). more

Google Set to Survive in Oz, but Far Bigger Threats Are on the Way

The signs are that the Australian Government and Google are close to a compromise. The Government's main demands stay in place, but some of the details will be changed. This allows the Government to claim victory, while the damage to Google will be limited... Publishers will, in one way, or another be paid for news, either through a payment based on the value of the news and the value of the Google search facility. more

Internet Society: ITU-T Failure to Adhere to Its Own Agreements With Respect to MPLS

Today, the ITU-T Study Group 15 determined a Recommendation that defines Y.1731 based operations, administration and management (OAM) for MPLS transport networks. This decision sets the stage for a divergence in MPLS development; it creates a situation where some vendors will use the IETF standard for MPLS OAM while other vendors implement the ITU-T Recommendation for OAM. This situation ensures that the two product groups will not work together. more

TAS Outage Shows Tech Errors Can Happen in Any Organization

Last week, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) was forced to extend the deadline for the new gTLD application to April 20th, after the application system crashed and the technical issue which enabled some applicants to see file names and user names that belonged to other applicants. ... ICANN's decision to extend the deadline is reasonable in the circumstances. more

Am I Safer Within an Organization or by Myself?

An Internet Bill of Rights may or may not be a good idea. The point here is that, besides highly commendable topics such as net neutrality and privacy, some of them seem to mandate cybersecurity. Approved in Brazil last May, the Marco Civil includes the principle of preservation of stability, security and functionality of the network, via technical measures consistent with international standards.  more

Why Mid-Sized Businesses That Embrace the Cloud See Improved Revenues

According to a recent study from IBM, mid-sized businesses that embrace cloud technology see nearly double the revenue and increased profit growth compared to their more hesitant peers. The study, which included 800 leading global IT professionals, found that the 20% of organizations that had committed more resources to the cloud were reaping significant cost-cutting advantages and improved levels of efficiency. more

Satellite Cell Service: What’s Coming

T-Mobile and Starlink made a joint announcement recently about an arrangement where Starlink will enable voice and texting capabilities to T-Mobile cellphones by the end of 2023. This is a service that would work with existing cell phones and would supposedly kick in when a phone can't find a signal from a cell tower. Starlink said the technology would be enabled by new satellites that have significantly larger antennae than the current satellites in the constellation. more

Zero-Touch Provisioning… Really?

Zero-touch provisioning (ZTP) -- whatever does that mean? Of course, it is another marketing term. I think the term "closer to zero touch provisioning" is probably better, but CTZTP -- as opposed to ZTP -- is a bit more of a mouthful. Whenever I hear language like this that I'm not familiar with, I get struck by a bolt of curiosity. What is this new and shiny phrase that has just appeared as if from nowhere? more

Security Researchers Find Serious Vulnerability in SSL

Sophie Curtis of eWeek reports: "Researchers have discovered a hole in the secure sockets layer (SSL) protocol, enabling man-in-the-middle attackers to hack into secure applications despite traffic encryption. According to security researcher Chris Paget, hackers can exploit this flaw by breaking into shared hosting environments, mail servers and databases, and inserting text into encrypted traffic as it passes between two end users. This could lead to fragmentation of SSL transactions, giving hackers the opportunity to inject false commands such as password resets into communications which are otherwise encrypted." more

ETSI Launches Industry Specification Group: Europe for Privacy-Preserving Pandemic Protection

Nothing can describe the situation the world is living today more accurately than the current aspect of the Dolores Park in the town of San Francisco (USA). These days the green grass shows an abnormal aspect. A series of white circles span all the ground around. It is not the effect of an extra-terrestrial visit, it is just the consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic: the circles mark the safety areas where families can enjoy the park, socially-distanced, under the Sun. more

VeriSign and CFIT Resolve Over 5-Year Long Litigation

VeriSign reports that it has reached a Settlement Agreement and Mutual Release with the Coalition for ICANN Transparency, Inc. ("CFIT"), CFIT's members, and specified related parties that resolves the over five-year long CFIT litigation. Under the terms of the Agreement, no payment will be made and the parties immediately will file a dismissal with prejudice of all claims in the litigation. Further, the parties executed mutual releases from all claims now and in the future related to the litigation. more