Stories by Bob Brown

Is securing your network worth the money?

We often hear corporate IT pros complain that justifying security expenses is tough because they don't necessarily generate revenue or enable new business opportunities. In fact, figuring out the economics of IT security is so challenging for customers and vendors that lots of the world's best researchers are putting their minds to the task.

EMC exec targets open source for sustainable innovation

A completely new kind of approach to innovation is required to ensure EMC doesn't lose its way as storage needs grow and change, in light of companies' adopting Web 2.0 applications, service-oriented architectures and software-as-a-service offerings.

'Offensive technologies' can secure networks

<a href="http://www.usenix.org/events/woot07/"> The First Usenix Workshop on Offensive Technologies </a> is coming to Boston on Aug 6. It's hard to resist an event called WOOT, even though we weren't quite sure what it was all about. So we shot an e-mail to Tal Garfinkel, a Ph.D graduate student in Stanford University's computer science department and one of WOOT's program chairs, and asked him to explain.

Is organized crime moving into cybersphere?

As if FBI special agent Tim O'Brien and his cybercrime fighting comrades don't already have their hands full with bot herders, virus writers and other loosely-aligned crooks, now people are wondering when more traditional organized crime will grab a piece of the action.

INFOSEC - Making a honeypot network security system work

Honeypots have largely been relegated to use by academia and antivirus vendors because most enterprise IT teams figure they're too expensive to run and could land their companies in legal trouble. But honeypots aren't as scary as all that, according to an expert on the topic who spoke at the InfoSec World Conference & Expo in Orlando Tuesday.

Here's why your Web apps are sitting ducks

Despite improvements in code quality, Web servers remain at high risk of being hacked, according to a new paper from researchers who use honeypot technologies to examine how hackers tick.

Voyeurism and the future of Internet video

Internet video of the future will be slicker, more widely distributed and more profitable, but the success of this medium to date owes much to pirates, proud parents and people who like to be watched or watch others.

Researchers tout zippier way to squash computer worms

Penn State University researchers have created technology they say can nab computer worms more quickly than traditional signature-based systems and speedily set free the traffic if it's determined to be harmless after all.

Behind the scenes of MIT's network

Massachusetts Institute of Technology Network Manager/Security Architect Jeff Schiller is leaning back in a plum-colored recliner in his office, but he isn't relaxing. The victim of a back problem that has forced him to forgo a more traditional office chair for now, the 25-year MIT network veteran has more than enough to do, with the school forging ahead with several major network projects, including a massive VOIP rollout and its foray as a regional fibre-optic network operator. Schiller covered the gamut in a recent interview with Bob Brown.

Does your company have a clue about Web 2.0?

Web 2.0 might mean something different to nearly everyone familiar with the term. According to Fidelity Labs' Charles Berman, it could one day mean wider use of colorful, 3-D, graphical interfaces along the lines of what you see in virtual worlds like Second Life and popular games like World of Warcraft on business Web sites and desktops.

Gates, Ballmer could be mistaken for actors

Maybe you're one of those people turned off by the thought of buying software from that billionaire brainiac Bill Gates and his rabblerousing sidekick Steve Ballmer. But maybe you'd change your mind if you thought about them more as say, actors Ben Kingsley and Spencer Tracy.

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