Miles Associates LLC

Instability and Modern Anti-Virus Software

I can remember back when anti-virus companies used to test their updates before they sent them out to customers… times have changed. The anti-virus business has moved to the Netscape business model of shipping products and letting the customers do the testing. I hear and see more cases lately of things going wrong with those frequent and untested updates.

–Larry Seltzer, eWeek

Current Column – CSO Alarmed

The Real Barrier to Security: We’re All Too Lazy

What if someone offered you a free 60-inch plasma TV and free cable for life–provided you never again used a remote control? The reason you’d say no is the same reason information security is so bad.
by Scott Berinato

I like to use the Alarmed column for broad contemplation at the start of each new year; it just seems like a good time to reflect on ideas like the erosion of privacy, security types doing Good in post-tsunami Indonesia, or the relative merits of cash. This year I’ve been ruminating on a major barrier to improving information security: You’re lazy.

The Disappearance of IT
First Nicholas Carr dropped a bombshell of a book, Does IT Matter? Information Technology and the Corrosion of Competitive Advantage, which argued that corporate IT is increasingly becoming a commodity. Now he’s back with a provocative new tome, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, From Edison to Google (W. W. Norton, 2008), wherein he makes the case that IT as we know it may disappear completely.

The idea is that computing in the age of the Internet is well on its way to becoming a utility, much as the electricity grid changed power distribution more than a century ago.

» The value of accidental security through obscurity | IT Security | TechRepublic.com

A great essay on “popularity” (or non-obscurity) correlated to observed security characteristics, focused on OS’s.

Google and the Wisdom of Clouds
A lofty new strategy aims to put incredible computing power in the hands of many

Why Dyslexics Make Great Entrepreneurs

The ability to grasp the big picture, persistence, and creativity are a few of the entrepreneurial traits of many dyslexics. Just ask Charles Schwab

When Alan Meckler, the CEO of IT and online imagery hub Jupitermedia (JUPM), was accepted to Columbia University in 1965, the dean’s office told him he had some of the lowest college boards of any student ever admitted. “I got a 405 or 410 in English,” he recalls. “In those days you got a 400 just for putting your name down! Yet I was on the dean’s list every year I was there, and I won a prize for having the best essay in American history my senior year.”  It wasn’t until years later, at age 58, that Meckler learned he was dyslexic…

Microsoft Security Bulletin Advance Notification for December 2007
This is an advance notification of seven security bulletins that Microsoft is intending to release on December 11, 2007.