What’s Your Identity Exposure Index?

Quick: On a scale of 0 to 5 (0 being nearly invisible, 5 being at risk), how much of your identity is exposed on the Internet? If you're wondering, there are some tests you can try that will give you a good idea of you Identity Exposure index (iEi). Here are the tests I performed and some...
Swine Flu Breeds Spam

As usually happens with major disaster events—in this case the impending Swine Flu pandemic—email scammers are busy perpetrating pharmaceutical and other types of scams. In some cases, they’re using celebrity names to grab attention. Spam is hitting inboxes with various subjects. The...
10 Immutable Laws of Security Administration

My last post on this subject discussed the 10 Immutable Laws of Security. This one takes the next step--also a Microsoft "archived" essay, but still relevant today. These are so self-evident that...
Lighten Up! We All Need a Good Laugh

I don't know about you, but I sometimes get a little queasy when I'm thoroughly overloaded dealing with security and other user issues. So, while this post is completely off-topic, it's certainly therapeutic; laughter, after all, is the best medicine. (Yes, I know. This has been floating around for...
It’s Not Your Fault

I’m going to take a lot of heat for this post. Maybe. Unless I’m right (which I usually am). So, let me just get it out of the way: The state of security on the Internet today is NOT YOUR FAULT. Neither is it the fault of the clueless surfers who click on any and every link in their email and...
10 Immutable Laws of Security

I search the web constantly for security-related news and content. One day last month, I came across a series of articles on TechNet buried in the archive. Microsoft prefaces the articles with this statement: "Archived content. No warranty is made as to...
Beware U.S. Tax Phishing Scams

It's tax time in the U.S. and with that generally comes an increase in the number of phishing scams directed at taxpayers. The IRS, whether we like them or not, has an excellent anti-scam/anti-phishing web site. One key thing to remember is that the IRS does not initiate taxpayer communications...
Conficker’s raison d’etre? Profit, of Course

More than a week after Conficker’s much-hyped April 1st activation date, the botnet has come to life and is using a P2P communication system to update itself on what is believed to be millions of infected PCs. Along with the update, the worm is downloading