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             Thanks to Orin Optiglot for permission to use this Photo.

I was reading CSO magazine the other day (Corporate Security Officer) and came across a fascinating new security product for executives who transport highly confidential company documents.  A pharmaceutical issued a high security briefcase for its research executives.  The briefcase has two security modes.  The “Loss Proof” function alerts the executive with an alarm signal when he is more than five meters away from the case.  This is to not only discourage someone from lifting the case, but prevents the owner from leaving the case incidentally unattended. 

The “Robbery Proof” mode is designed so that if the owner is accosted and forced to give up the case, the case will wait until the briefcase is more than 100 meters away and then send a 30,000 volt shock throughout the case as well as sound an ear shattering alarm.  Click here to check out a similar case. 

Brad Rudisail
Computer Network Technician-Network Security Instructor
Ashworth University

             Thanks to David Cardoso for permission to use this Photo. 

Ten years ago the big upgrade in network speed was from 10 MB to 100 MB.  Organizations quickly began upgrading their LAN infrastructures to take advantage of this increase in performance.  This meant of course that CAT 3 cable had to be replaced with CAT 5 cable and all the switches and routers that couldn’t handle 100 MB had to be replaced.  Most organizations had to upgrade the NICs in all of their computers as well.  Five years ago, organizations started upgrading their datacenter structure to 1 Gig for all of their servers in order to enlarge the pipeline of data moving into and out of the datacenter from users. 

Although some organizations have provided 1 Gig throughput for their entire network, meaning that once again most switches, routers and NICs have to be replaced, many have not felt that the return on investment (ROI) is worth it.  Despite this, vendors are now touting the new 10 Gig Ethernet standard.   It will be interesting to see what type of demand for a speed that will most definitely require an organization to upgrade all involved switches and routers and NICS.  The cabling for 10 Gig is different as well.  

Brad Rudisail
Computer Network Technician-Network Security Instructor
Ashworth University

               Thanks to Nick Cueva for permission to use this Photo. 

There isn’t a profitable business segment today that isn’t competitive and that even includes the SPAMMING industry.  Two of the biggest Spamming organizations, Nugache and Storm are currently going at each other head to head to dominate the SPAM/malware market.  Yes, there is a market for SPAM and malware.  Surprised?  These organizations are not owned and operated by legitimate business people.  No in is yet sure who is behind Storm but many IT security experts feel that Nugache is linked to the Russian Mob, aka the Russian Business Network. 

Both of these organizations distribute SPAM through Zombie networks and both have been involved in highly criminal activities.  Zombie networks are composed of PC’s across the globe, which have been compromised by some type of Trojan Horse which allows the Zombie controllers to then use them to send SPAM, conduct phishing attacks or other types of illegal activities.   Each of these organizations control hundreds of thousands of computers.  Take Storm for example.  Some IT security experts have estimated that the Storm Zombie network, called the Storm Botnet, runs anywhere from one to fifty million computer systems.   Even the most conservative estimates place the size somewhere around 150,000 to one million.  The Storm Botnet in 2007 accounted for 8% of all malware on Microsoft Windows computers. 

This year, Storm has an extremely viable competitor, Nugache.  Although its zombie technology is not as sophisticated as Storm’s (for instance, Storm is somehow able to send SPAM in the native language of the receiver while Nugache cannot) Nugache has a big thing going for it right now, price.  In an attempt to unseat Storm from its botnet dominance, Nugache has initiated a price war.  Nugache will send one million emails for only $100.  For $800 you can send 10 million emails. 

It is because of the ridiculously meager amount of money that is required to SPAM a million people that SPAMMING is very profitable, even if the response rate to SPAM is only .01%.   It is the sophistication of these controllable zombie networks that worry IT security professionals.  Many fear that the current war for control of the malware market is only the beginning of this illegal destructive industry.

Brad Rudisail
Computer Network Technician-Network Security Instructor
Ashworth University

 
                 Thanks to David K for permission to use this Photo.

Back in 2000, we were constantly told that the world was running out of IP addresses.  This was because IPV4, the IP standard we use for IP addresses only has so many mathematical combinations, thus there is a defined limit to the number of IP addresses that can be utilized.  Due to the wide spread use of IP in the world, a usage rate far beyond what the creators of IP ever visualized; the IT world was stressing out as to how to address the problem.  The solution was a new standard called IPV6 which introduced more bits into the addressing scheme.  In turn, millions of additional mathematical combinations were created, resulting in an equal number of additional IP addresses.   

Unfortunately, IPV6 is more complicated than its predecessor, requiring a degree of training for networking professionals.  We were told back then that IPV6 would be implemented by the middle of the decade and alleviate the crisis. 

Well guess what?  It’s 2008 and the world hasn’t run out of IP addresses which is why IPV6 is barely used in the industry today.  This is because of the wide popularity of NAT, Network Address Translation, which is used by most organizations that have a WAN presence.   

For those unfamiliar with NAT, Network Address Translation allows a single device, such as a router to act as an agent between the Internet (or “public network”) and a local (or “private”) network. This means that only a single, unique IP address is required to represent an entire group of computers.  This isn’t to say that IPV6 will wither on the vine.  As of right now, government offices are required to transition to IPV6 within the next couple of years and other organizations are planning such an implementation in the future, but IPV4 is and will continue to be alive and well for some time to come.

Brad Rudisail
Computer Network Technician-Network Security Instructor
Ashworth University

                          Image courtesy of Stephanie Simpson.

I enjoyed this insightful video interview on the growing power of Participatory Web Media.  The interviewees are acknowledged in the industry as leading figures in the social media marketing realm.  You’ll notice their cynicism regarding companies who attempt to “spin” or manipulate social media with little understanding of new media culture.  I agree that these companies are doomed to fail in the online market.  As an internet marketer, you can’t just follow the ”buzz.”  You have to understand the the ”buzz” and relate to it from the consumers’ perspective.  After you’ve done your research, you can begin figuring out where your business might fit in and ultimately add value to the consumers’ experience.  Continue working hard through your program studies.  There are exciting careers waiting for those who dedicate themselves to their education and training.  I believe you can be one of these dedicated people with bright futures.  Stay focused.      

Cheryl Syrett
Internet Marketing Instructor
Ashworth University

I just read Computer World’s glowing review of the latest Webkit deveopmental build.  If you’re not familiar with Webkit, it’s an open source web browing engine that’s been “buzzing” around the I.T. industry.  It’s somewhat confusing to understand at first, but Webkit is also serves as the developmental version of the engine used in Safari.  As the review indicates, Webkit runs at a considerably faster rate than Firefox 3, Internet Explorer, Opera, and Safari’s standard browser.  I highly recommend that you keep a close eye on Safari-Webkit’s every development.  I’ll keep you updated on our blog, so be sure to check in frequently.  Take care.

David T. Ronan
Computer Training Instructor
Ashworth University 

                        Thanks to Seth Hosko for permission to use this Photo.

Most of what we define as data or information is what we explicitly create or gather. For example, if I write an article or contribute to a wiki, the resulting information is intentional and a result of active work on my part. When a scientist discovers a cure to a disease, or a new drug to treat or reduce symptoms, the information is again a consequence of intent. Our conversations are similar - we are active, intentional creators of data (I’ll call this first tier information). But we create a second kind of information on a daily basis. Second tier information is a by-product of what we do - our actions and our choices. We are largely not aware of this information. It’s difficult to capture - unless we are hyper self-aware or we are being stalked. This information used to vaporize as it was not embodied in text, images, or any other conceptual or physical product. That’s changing. Facebook - with its Beacon program - follows us and observes our choices, essentially turning our transient information into first tier information. This is a significant development; one that has enormous future implications in privacy and the rights of citizens and corporations. (more…)

In my opinion, Google continues to walk into reputation management and trademark problems one after the other, and today is no exception. Not too long ago it was their attempt to force people to give up domains legally registered using the acronym “g.m.a.i.l” or gmail, which Google uses for their email service. The Polish Poets are still in business, and apparently Google also lost in other countries. The recent news relates to Google’s new “Open Social” platform for social media web developers. (more…)

            Thanks to slagheap for permission to use this Photo.

Whenever I search for a particular domain name, I still cross my fingers hoping it is not already registered. If not, then I register it, whether it is for me or for my clients. If it is already registered, then several steps come into play, from monitoring the domain name for when (or more likely if) it becomes available to the search for alternative names. On occasion there is that certain domain name or names someone wants that is worthy of taking yet another step – trying to purchase it from the current registrar.

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If you have your own website, then getting your website to cooperate with search engines is critical to getting traffic to your site. There are many strategies for optimizing your website for Google, but optimizing Google for your website can also be beneficial. Google Webmaster Tools allows you to submit information to Google about your website and tweak how Google crawls and indexes your website. It also gives you feedback and statistics about how Google’s search bot sees your website. With Webmaster Tools you can be sure that Google is bringing the most amount of traffic to your website.

The first thing you can do with Webmaster Tools is to verify your website with Google. You can either insert a special meta tag within the HTML of your homepage which Google would then verify, or you can create a specific filename on your server. Once you’re verified, Google gives you access to the rest of their tools for your site.

In order to ensure that Google can get to every content page within your website, Google allows you to submit a sitemap of your website. A sitemap is an XML file which specifies page locations and update times for your website. Many server-side web applications like Wordpress can automatically generate a sitemap file for you. Once Google has the sitemap, it can more efficiently cover your entire website in their index.

If your website makes uses of the robots.txt file for restricting areas where you don’t want the bot to crawl, then Webmaster Tools has a feature for verifying that your robots.txt file is being properly interpreted by the Google crawl bot. Webmaster tools also gives you the ability to keep an eye on how high your Google PageRank is doing. It gives you an indicator that tells you what the PageRank distribution is across pages on your site.

            Thanks to Beth Kanter for permission to use this Photo. 

Finally, Google Webmaster tools gives you an interesting look into exactly how your site is being indexed within Google. They give you charts that list all of the keywords that the crawler picked up when they crawled your site. They also give you tables indicating which search queries have had your content turn up in the search results, and how far down in the search results your site showed up. Also useful is the tool which shows you all of the other places on the Internet that Google found a link to your site. For each page within your site, Google Webmaster Tools lists every page on the Internet that links to that page. This is very helpful for discovering how much your site is interlinked from other sites and who is doing the linking. Also it allows you to see what kind of sites link to you and in what context they link to you. Finally, Google has a tool for summarizing what terms have been used in linking to your site. So, for example, if another site links to your site with a hyperlink that uses your full name then your full name will show up in the link text tool. These statistics are important for understanding what keywords are driving your page up in the search results.

There are several other features within Google Webmaster Tools which can help you better integrate your site with Google, but I’ve tried to cover just the main ones here. I’m sure that other search engines have tools similar to these, but since the majority of traffic to my website comes from Google, I’ve focused most of my energy on Google’s tools.

Jason Kress
Creator of micrux.net
Ashworth University Contributing Blogger

*Jason Kress is a computer science student, web developer, and tech aficionado.  Mr. Kress particularly enjoys blogging on topics related to the Linux operating system, in which he demonstrates an ability to explain complex issues in a very clear and concise way.  Visit Jason’s blog, micrux.net, to see more from this up and coming computer scientist.  We’re excited to have Mr. Jason Kress as a member of AU’s contributing bloggers’ network.