The EPC Data Containment Unit has arrived at Homeland Secure IT

This is our DCU, it is like many other DCUs, but this one is our own…. I bet you are wondering, “What the heck is a Data Containment Unit?” aren’t you?!! The trashcan-like device pictured above is a DCU or “Data Containment Unit”.  Its purpose in life is to hold old hard drives that are destined to be destroyed PHYSICALLY …

Yahoo data breach exposes 400,000 user names and passwords

Last month it was LinkedIn who was making the news due to a data breach that exposed millions of user names and passwords, and this month it is Yahoo. It seems as though 400,000 user accounts and passwords have been exposed in the recently discovered breach, though it may be a while before the severity is truly known. Our suggestion …

Secure IT Alert: Adobe patches address Reader & Acrobat vulnerabilities

Homeland Secure IT Alert for Wednesday, January 11, 2012 Yesterday was Adobe’s first patch day of the new year and the security bulletin describes a total of six vulnerabilities in Adobe Reader and Acrobat X 10.1.1 and older, on both Microsoft Windows and Apple Mac. The issues that are addressed are considered “critical” in nature and the solution is to …

Who sends a letter to the RIAA informing them of their pirating activities?

I’ve written a number of blog posts about the RIAA, and how people have been wrongfully accused of stealing (pirating) by the RIAA, and law suits threatened. Well, it appears, that someone at the RIAA has been doing a little illegal downloading of their own, though the RIAA claims it was not them. Here’s more information: http://torrentfreak.com/riaa-someone-else-is-pirating-through-out-ip-addresses-111221/ So secure those …

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Password for life? Yeah, maybe…

I just read an interesting blog post over on http://www.baekdal.com/tips/password-security-usability which gives a good case for not using random letters, numbers, case and special characters… The writer claims the password of “this is fun” would take about 2500 years to hack. Most business security policies require passwords that are a minimum of 8 characters, with upper and lower case, numbers and …

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Safe Browsing from Public Wi-Fi Hotspots is possible with a VPN

WSPA’s Amy Wood (@TVAmy) had a great segment on last night (2011-02-07) in which she had Doug Cone (@nullvariable) a local web/graphics “devsigner” discussing the dangers of using public Wi-Fi. You can find that story here. He demonstrated a tool which allows even the most novice of “hackers” to see a list of others who are using any given open …