Here's the perfect plan to solve all those pesky security problems. Confidentiality and data leakage, secure backups, individual privacy, data integrity, identity and access management - all can be dealt with in some way by encryption. So why don't we all just use it then, and be done?
We all know that data protection regulations are gaining teeth. As we discussed before, it is becoming more difficult to keep data losses private, and the damage to reputation and other penalties incurred following data breaches are now significant.
Two university researchers are to present a system that could greatly advance the use of cryptography in computing..
Bristol University computer science professor Nigel Smart and Dr Frederik Vercauteren from Belgium's Katholieke University Leuven will present a paper that outlines a scheme for handling and computing encrypted content.
Yesterday, it was announced that physicists at the University of Toronto in Canada have successfully attacked a commercial quantum cryptography system for the first time in history.
Quantum cryptography was supposed to be unbreakable, and up until this time it had been impossible for an eavesdropper to intercept communications sent using this type of technology.
In late 2008, the Strategic Command’s Joint Task Force-Global Network Operations (JTF-GNO) put in place an immediate ban on the use of flash drives — USB storage devices that have become the modern version of the floppy disk.
Last year, in between writing Take Control books and Macworld articles, I managed to squeeze in another little project - writing the 900-page "Mac Security Bible," published in January 2010 by Wiley. Although Rich Mogull is the real staff expert when it comes to Mac security, I've also written a good deal on the subject, including Take Control titles dealing with backups, spam, and passwords. This new book is a compendium of everything a typical (or even advanced) Mac user might want to know on a wide range of security topics.
Jacob Scheuer of Tel Aviv University's School of Electrical Engineering has emerged from his smoke-filled lab with a laser based defence system designed to repel hackers.
The technology does not cut hackers in two, instead it uses existing fibre-optic and computer technology to protect communications security. According to Science Daily, Scheuer's method transmits binary lock-and-key information in the form of light pulses. This means that a shared key code can be unlocked by the sender and receiver and absolutely nobody else.
That little lock on your browser window indicating you are communicating securely with your bank or e-mail account may not always mean what you think its means.
Normally when a user visits a secure website, such as Bank of America, Gmail, PayPal or eBay, the browser examines the website’s certificate to verify its authenticity.
Since 1977, RSA public-key encryption has protected privacy and verified authenticity when using computers, gadgets and web browsers around the globe, with only the most brutish of brute force efforts (and 1,500 years of processing time) felling its 768-bit variety earlier this year. Now, three eggheads (or Wolverines, as it were) at the University of Michigan claim they can break it simply by tweaking a device's power supply.
Over the past two decades, private, public and governmental organizations have built walls to contain their businesses. More specifically, firewalls. These firewalls were built as safeguards to establish secure perimeters within which enterprise computing, communication devices and data are safe from attack from outsiders.
