Thursday (7/31/14), Microsoft was ordered by a US federal court to turn over e-mail that’s stored on a Microsoft server in Dublin, Ireland. The ruling was stayed, pending Microsoft’s appeal. The implication for Cloud companies based in the US (Microsoft’s Azure and Office 365, Evernote, Apple’s iCloud and Google’s Gmail to name a few biggies) is that… Continue reading Current Event: Are Privacy Bits Special?
What Are Controls (Safeguards)?
Controls are logical mechanisms applied in an effort to reduce risk. This may feel vague because the term is primarily an abstract, logical entity that has specific implementations and humans like more concrete, implementable things. Architecturally these entities sit at the logical layer but have concrete instances that are implemented by contextualizing the qualities of… Continue reading What Are Controls (Safeguards)?
Humans are STILL a Weak Link in Risk Mgmt
Checking out today’s current events from Feedly I ran across Bruce Schneier’s comments around a social engineering attack that resulted in ~ $300,000 loss to Apple in products. If you don’t care to follow the links, Mr Parrish attempted to purchase equipment using debit cards that were declined and then offered to call his bank… Continue reading Humans are STILL a Weak Link in Risk Mgmt
New Paradigm, Same Old Humans
In the last two weeks three major Cloud Service Providers (CSPs), Evernote, Feedly & Code Spaces, endured Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. For Code Spaces the attacks continued, changed tactics & caused that company to close. Who doesn’t make use of distributed services these days? From Facebook to Feedly to Evernote. We keep our… Continue reading New Paradigm, Same Old Humans
Architecture in General
Architecture is a strategic & holistic art/discipline that result in sets of views allowing people from different backgrounds and viewpoints to communicate & evaluate effectively about conceptual, logical and technical merits across any number of boundaries; real or perceived, technical, social or political. The end result of successful architecture should be decision-making based on accurate… Continue reading Architecture in General