cyber Archives

WIFI or WI-Spy : Avoiding the Perils of Public Networks

For some reason, it seems to be a well-kept secret that public networks are not exactly secure. Just about anywhere you may go in a given day - coffee shops, libraries, shopping malls, office buildings, your hotel – there’s a network just waiting for your device to join it. Convenient? Sure. But from a security standpoint, this is not a good thing. Try telling that to a convenience-driven society that’s grown quite used to shopping, checking its email, dating, doing its banking, and chatting on social media, whenever and wherever it wants to. Despite the publicity given to data theft and identity theft, many if not most people don’t change their online behavior on vulnerable public networks, or even take advantage of even basic protective measures. A recent article in Harvard Business Review outlined the range of threats to public wifi users’ security, describing some of the common tricks the ...

Game-Changing Technologies, Part II: Get Ready to Forget Your Passwords. Forever.

We human beings are creatures of habit. Because something was a certain way yesterday, we expect it to be the same way today and tomorrow. But if you’re like most of us, technological changes in recent years have led you to rethink assumptions as familiar routines have fallen by the wayside: When was the last time you licked a stamp, used a payphone, or wrote a check at the supermarket? In my last blog post, I wrote in general about game-changing technologies that would radically transform the way we work with technology and conduct business. In this post and in weeks to come, I’ll provide some specific examples, beginning with another technological relic we can all say goodbye to soon: Passwords. Even though we’ve depended on them for decades, it’s clear that password protection provides only marginal security, at best. They’re easily lost, forgotten, and stolen. Worst of all, they ...