Cybersecurity Expert

Internet privacy controversy in the air at the moment, as adverting company Phorm are engaged on a PR campaign to gain acceptance of their new method of Internet advising, which they plan to roll out at the ISP level with BT, Virgin Media and TalkTalk. In fact today I will be speaking on BBC Radio Coventry and Warwickshire about this very subject. Who are Phorm? Well they are an “adware” company formally know as 121Media. They were responsible for the “PeopleOnPage” desktop adware application, which gathered information about the host PC and recorded which web sites were visited by the user, before passing this information on to a third party server, in order to direct specific pop-up advertisements. In fact security company F-Secure regarded their app as Spyware, whether it is labeled officially as Adware or Spyware does really matter to me, as I believe such software is an unnecessary nuisance and any company behind duping users into installing it on their PCs should be viewed with...

These days most people think nothing of donating their old unwanted PCs to noble and worthy causes such as their local School, charities, or they do the “green thing” by sending their PCs to be recycled at their local rubbish tip or at the supermarket. This is all great and dandy, however I find more often than not personal data security is completely overlooked. So I’m going to explain these pitfalls in the form of a story… Once upon a time there were three blokes, John, Colin and James who won a regional pub quiz championship sponsored by a major computer manufacturer, each of them won a powerful super quick Windows Vista PCs. The next day all three transferred their personal data from their old dilapidated PCs to their spanking new computers and then decided to do the “green thing” and drop off their old PCs at the local supermarket for recycling or charity donation if suitable. John went through his old PC and very carefully deleted all his personal data files, and Email accoun...

Businesses are relying on the Internet more than ever, whether it’s sales through an e-Commerce website, or low cost “site to site” communications by way of Internet VPNs, Email communications or general web information gathering/distribution, there are many businesses which just can’t “do” without the Internet for a sustained period of time. In my view businesses are very complacent with their reliance on the Internet, and don't have plan B, should worst happen. Sure the Internet was originally developed to withstand a World War III nuclear attack, but businesses which heavily rely on the Internet to conduct business, should be wary of a new wave of Cyber Warfare threats as we progress into the 21st Century. The fact is there are individuals, criminal gangs and even governments and terrorist organisations which have the ability to take down websites, and effect geographic parts of the Internet, even a slow down of Internet traffic in a specific region can have a financial impact...

Today is the fifth annual "Safer Internet Day", which has a focus on promoting safe internet usage awareness to children and their parents, a cause which I'm well and truly behind. It still troubles me that some parents don't seem to understand the Internet can be a dangerous place for children. I've seen parents who strictly don't allow their children to watch inappropriately age certified movies, play Cert 15/18 computer games, but when it comes to Internet usage, just leave their kids to it, completely oblivious that their children could be viewing inappropriate material, posting personal info and pictures on social networking sites, or chatting with complete strangers. http://www.saferinternet.org

Post Updated - See  WinZip Encryption Password Security (2017) Recently I have received several Emails asking about WinZip encryption, and specifically, whether it is good enough for business use, especially in light of the current climate of data breaches in the UK, where serious data breaches involving public information are announced almost on a weekly basis. So can WinZip do the job to encrypt sensitive data held on disks posted through public postal systems? Well, the answer is Yes, but only if used properly… With WinZip encryption, it is important to understand older versions of WinZip, pre-version 9, uses its own proprietary encryption, which simply broken. Essentially data archived with WinZip version 8 or below, using “WinZip Encryption” with passwords of any strength can very easily be recovered. WinZip version 9 and above has the option to use an industry strength and NIST approved encryption algorithm, namely AES (Advance Encryption Protocol). The application provid...

Perhaps I am being a little naive but I would of thought all MOD laptops would be deployed with hard disk encryption, but apparently not so, as the MOD laptop stolen last week from a parked car in Birmingham didn’t have any hard disk or file level encryption, despite holding masses of private data. This MOD laptop held 600,000 records of military personnel, personal data including passport numbers, national insurance numbers, drivers' licence details, family details, doctors' addresses and bank details, which is probably why we know about this breach, I'm sure the MOD would rather this incident to be kept out of the public eye. Organisations which use thousands of laptops in the field (should) accept and understand that a certain percentage of laptops will be stolen. Sure you can try to reduce the numbers stolen and the risk by educating users, but it inevitable that a minor quantity of laptops will be stolen, it's the way of the world. This is nothing new either, the...

BBC TV Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson who writes for the Sun newspaper, was so convinced the HMRC Data breach in his own words "was a fuss about nothing" published his own bank account and sort code details in the newspaper, and I quote "All you'll be able to do with them is put money into my account. Not take it out. Honestly, I've never known such a palaver about nothing," he told Sun readers However when he next checked his bank statement he saw someone had set up a direct debit which automatically removed £500 from his bank account, apparently transferring the money to a charity, now that's what I call ethical hacking! To quote Clarkson further after discovering this, "The bank cannot find out who did this because of the Data Protection Act and they cannot stop it from happening again. I was wrong and I have been punished for my mistake." I think it just goes to show that there are many people who just don't care that their pe...