Cybersecurity Expert

First of all let me just stress I certainly do not approve of any of the sexist remarks made by Andy Gray and Richard Keys on Sky Sports last weekend (21st Jan 11). I have been watching live football nearly all my life and I have seen some really bad football officials in my time. I really don’t care about a football official’s gender, as long as they are the best officials for the job. Believe it or not, Premier League officials are ruthlessly vetted and monitored to ensure they are the best of the best. Indeed it is said women are better at multi-tasking than men, that may be considered a sexist remark in itself, but if this were true, then ladies are going to make better ‘lines-people’ than men, anyone who’s tried being a linesman will know it is about monitoring several things at the same time, I can tell you it’s not an easy job. Anyway what business has the dismissal of Andy Gray and the resignation of Richard Keys from Sky Sports got to do with a ‘Security’ Blog. Well actually ...

Before I go into my thoughts on the recent Lush website credit card data breach, I have some important advice to all Lush online customers. If you have bought anything from the www.lush.co.uk website between October 2010 and January 2011, and even if you think your credit or debit card hasn’t been fraudulently used, you must consider your credit or debit card to be compromised, so cancel your card and have it replaced. Also note this breach does not affect anyone who used credit or debit cards over the counter at Lush shops, as it’s an entirely different payment system. When Lush announced their website, www.lush.co.uk had been successfully hacked last week (21 Jan 11), leading to thousands of their customer’s credit card details being stolen, I was genuinely surprised. I wasn’t surprised that yet another UK online business had completely shirked their responsibilities, in not properly protecting their customer’s information by neglecting one of the most basic of web application sec...

Disney’s Club Penguin is an online multiplayer game with social networking elements. Played by 6 to 14 year olds, Club Penguin is accessed and played through any web browser. Each player logs into the game with their own account, and plays in the Club Penguin ‘game world’ as their own specific Penguin character. Players use their Penguin avatar to play a series of games within the Club Penguin world, which in turn earns them in-game money which they can use to buy accessories for their Penguin character. While playing players can see other players’s Penguins in the game world and can interact with them. Club Penguin: Online Multiplayer Beware of the in game Chat Capability The player interaction, specially the ability to chat with other players is the prime area to be concerned about as a parent, as typically a child’s usage of Club Penguin goes unmonitored. I find most parents aren’t always by the side of their child when they play the game, and I even had one parent ...