How Mobile Is To Mobile?

This year has seen hundreds of cases where personal information lost were on mobile devices. Laptops and PDAs rank the highest risk device that gets lost carrying sensitive data. Cell phones and USB sticks come in third and fourth. All of them are small, easy to carry, thus being mobile they are very hard to make secure.

Every week we hear of private data theft, this is not limited to the federal government. We hear of a business entrusted with names, addresses, and credit card numbers losing the information. What about the traveling salesman who carries customers’ personal information on their sales route? A celebrity cell phone address stolen without touching her cell phone. What about the family on vacation that takes the family laptop to watch DVDs while wait to getting to their vacation location.

Taking important information out of the office or house must have good habits attached with the practice. When I go outside of the office or my house, with sensitive information, two things happen. First, the sensitive information is encrypted. Second, I do not let it out of my sight. Third, the information needs to transport for a purpose. Afterwards that information is return to the secure location where I kept it.

Taking sensitive information out of its assigned secure area is like playing with fire. The risk of it getting stolen is very high. Knowing how easy it is to lose and/or get stolen data, the best thing is to develop a group of secure habits for transportation of that data.



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

326 Days - Time to Get Tough On Computer Users!

I received a call from a customer, who it had been about a year since I had looked at his computer. When I arrive the customer greeted me with the usual warmth of a hand shake and smile.

After I was led me to their computer, I set down in front of the computer and proceeded to go through my usual checks. The symptoms kept pointing to spyware or a Trojan issue. I open the spyware program. Then I checked for the last up date. To my shock it was 326 days since it had ran a scan or updated.

It is people like this customer, who did not take the time to verify that his spyware program was update and performing the needed scans that can promote the spread of malicious software. When I say malicious software I am talking about any computer program that reduces the operation or takes the control of the computer from the owner.

Maybe, it is time we need to get tough on computer user. Make them take responsibility for their actions. We hold car owners and truck drivers for the fitness of their vehicles’. These malicious programs are costing us millions and billions of dollars in damage. It is past time to get tough. A computer user needs to be held responsible for the malicious programs control his or her computer will put in danger other computers, networks, and websites to attack.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Laptop Battery Recall

We all have been hearing one laptop manufacture after the other has to recall their laptop batteries. I heard of Sony and Dell recall their laptop batteries. This has prompted me to do some serious research on what is really going on at this point in time. We have had laptops for some time and not this degree of trouble.

Searching the web the bad batteries were found in Apple, Dell, Panasonic, and Hewlett-Packard laptops. The batteries are traced back to Sony, Sanyo and Matsushita the three major Japanese producers of lithium-ion batteries. They were manufactured between March of 2004 and September of 2004.

I like at a common thread in the manufacture of these batteries. What I found was that the chemical composition of the lithium-ion batteries has been a concern for sometimes. The focus of this of this concern was in the aging.

I quote from Battery University in their report. “Aging of lithium-ion is an issue that is often ignored. A lithium-ion battery in use typically lasts between 2-3 years. The capacity loss manifests itself in increased internal resistance caused by oxidation.”

The quote from Battery University was first created in February 2003, and last edited in August 2006. Notice before and the manufacture of these recalled batteries, and after the recall.
Is this the last of the battery recalls? Has the problem been solved? Is battery manufacture of lithium-ion batteries going to have to say not to use them after 2 years?

2006
E.F. Cussins
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License
.

Lots of Little Problems

After installing Internet Explorer 7, I could not view a any flash that is on a website. I have to fall back to Mozilla to watch the flash video on Nascar.com. Vista would not let me burn a CD. I had to use another computer. Word 2007 would not connect me with my blog. I had to switch back to my regular computer. You would think that Microsoft engineers would fix these important issues, before releasing them in beta.

Over the years I have learned that the bigger the project requires longer time needed to deal with start up problems. I got to admit with Internet Explorer 7, Vista, and Office 2007 being released within a six month period is quite a task. Each one is a major project.

I got to admit that with all the different eyes and testers will reduce the problems when it comes to release date. I may not upgrade for a year or two, but quality will be higher than when Windows 98 and XP were released.



2006
E.F. Cussins
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License
.