William McBorrough

Across all industries, small businesses are increasingly facing new threats related to cyber security. Whereas some have taken minimum steps to address these threats but most have not. New security threats and incidents are reported every day in news reports and a many remain unreported. This underscores the need for cyber security education of small business owners and managers. These threats have potentially serious consequences and could lead to unrecoverable damage to small businesses. What are some consequences of the lack of basic cyber security controls? Loss or stolen customer data Loss of intellectual property Decreased productivity Legal liability Regulatory sanctions and fines Computer systems downtime Loss of reputation and customer confidence Loss of revenue Banking Fraud Could this happen to you? It is very important to understand that neither size nor i... (more)

Moving Data Storage to the Cloud? What’s Your Business Continuity Plan?

Many trumpet increased availability as a reason to move to the cloud but what happens when your cloud provider is no longer available? Some companies are faced with this very question this week as storage provider, EMC  announced its plan to shut down its Atmos Online cloud storage service immediately, according to a posting on its website. EMC launched Atmos Online in May 2009, calling it “Cloud Optimized Storage [with] capabilities that can scale effectively, coupled with security and management tools.”  This placed EMC in direct competition with some of its service provider pa... (more)

IBM X-Force Handicaps Future Trends in Security

Looking ahead, the X-Force Research and Development team has identified some key trends to watch for in the future, including: Cloud Computing — As an emerging technology, security concerns remain a hurdle for organizations looking to adopt cloud computing. As organizations transition to the cloud, IBM recommends that they start by examining the security requirements of the workloads they intend to host in the cloud, rather than starting with an examination of different potential service providers. Gaining a good understanding of the needs and requirements first will help organi... (more)

Internet Explorer 9 "Preview" Now Available

Microsoft has released a preview of the new version of Internet Explorer, IE 9.It can be downloaded  from http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Default.html. I’m sure we will soon start seeing phishing emails and malicious sites being set up around this so if you are interested, be sure to download it from the REAL Microsoft, huh. Not impressed? Here’s Microsoft’s response, or should I call it a presponse. “The Platform Preview is an early look at the Internet Explorer 9 platform so some features are incomplete, some may change, and some may be added…..We ask that you refrain from... (more)

How Steganography Can Be Used to Steal Your Financial Data

Steganography is the means of "hiding" information within a larger file of data. It poses a risk to ecommerce security because it allows data or malicious programming instructions to be hidden in other media. In the case of the former, malicious insiders (i.e. employees, contractors, etc) with access to customers financial data may improperly access that data and use steganography to forward it to their accomplices without being detected. In the case of the latter, hackers can embed malicious code in other files, such as images, audio and video files. These files can be forwarded... (more)