ComputerWorld – Page 122 – Computer Security Articles

Credit to Author: Gregg Keizer| Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2018 04:39:00 -0800

Microsoft plans to extend support for its Windows Defender ATP service to devices running older operating systems, including Windows 7.

The decision, announced this week, is a turn-about for Microsoft, which had limited the service to Windows 10 machines. In a post to a company blog, a Microsoft director cited customers’ heterogeneous set-ups to explain the change.

“We know that while in their transition, some [customers] may have a mix of Windows 10 and Windows 7 devices in their environments,” wrote Rob Lefferts of the Windows group’s security and enterprise team. “We want to help our customers achieve the best security possible on their way to Windows 10 ahead of the end of support for Windows 7 in January 2020.”

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February 13, 2018 admin

Chrome 68 to condemn all unencrypted sites by summer

Credit to Author: Gregg Keizer| Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2018 03:10:00 -0800

Google has put a July deadline on a 2016 promise that its Chrome browser would tag all websites that don’t encrypt their traffic.

“Beginning in July 2018 with the release of Chrome 68, Chrome will mark all HTTP sites as ‘not secure,'” wrote Emily Schechter, a Chrome security product manager, in a Feb. 8 post to a company blog.

Google has scheduled Chrome 68 to release in Stable form – analogous to production-level quality – during the week of July 22-28.

Starting then, Chrome will insert a “Not secure” label into the address bar of every website that uses HTTP connections between its servers and users. Sites that instead rely on HTTPS to encrypt the back-and-forth traffic will display their URLs normally in the address bar.

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ComputerWorld Independent

February 12, 2018 admin

Get Windows Update locked down in preparation for this month’s problems

Credit to Author: Woody Leonhard| Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2018 06:44:00 -0800

January 2018 will go down in history as one of the worst patching months in Microsoft’s very checkered history. That isn’t an isolated muck-up. It’s a harbinger. We had a couple of really bad months in 2017 — February and November come immediately to mind — but an unconscionable number of patches left bricked machines and busted programs in their wake.

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ComputerWorld Independent

February 12, 2018 admin

Managing open-source mobile security and privacy for activists worldwide | Salted Hash Ep 18

Nathan Freitas, who heads The Guardian Project, talks with host Steve Ragan and senior writer J.M. Porup about the group's easy-to-use secure apps, open-source software libraries, and customized mobile devices being used around the world.

ComputerWorld Independent

February 9, 2018 admin

Governments eye their own blockchain cryptocurrencies

Credit to Author: Lucas Mearian| Date: Fri, 09 Feb 2018 03:11:00 -0800

Last year’s blockchain pilot projects are rapidly becoming this year’s live implementations in a variety of industries, and even sectors that have until now been vexed by the distributed ledger technology are following suit.

Case in point: Governments, which are moving to regulate blockchain technology and the cryptocurrencies it underpins.

Cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin that live in open networks, have so far inhabited a regulatory gray area, because there’s no way for a central authority to track users. The distributed ledgers, however, are useful because they can enable cross-border transactions over peer-to-peer networks in real time, anywhere in the world – without a central governing authority such as a bank or credit card company.

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ComputerWorld Independent

February 6, 2018 admin

Spectre and Meltdown | Salted Hash Ep 17

What is it about the Spectre and Meltdown attacks that scared everyone so much? Host Steve Ragan and J.M. Porup talk through the impact of these hardware flaws.