Stories by Thor Olavsrud

Thor Olavsrud's image

Malware Strikes With Valid Digital Certificate

One of the foundational elements of ecommerce is the web of trust enabled by digital certificates. When you go to a web site, you can feel confident that it's legitimate because it has a certificate from a recognized certificate authority that validates it. But the certificates themselves can be vulnerable. Case in point: Security firm Malwarebytes recently discovered some malware in the wild with a valid, signed digital certificate.

Thor Olavsrud | 05 Feb | Read more

EMC Offers Online File Sharing With On-Premise Storage Product

EMC is building on its acquisition of the Syncplicity file-sharing and collaboration service by combining it with its Isilon scale-out NAS to provide the enterprise what the storage giant claims provides the convenience of a cloud-based file-sharing service with the administrative and governance capabilities of an on-premise solution.

Thor Olavsrud | 15 Jan | Read more

Are BYOD Employees Decommissioning Mobile Devices Properly?

Sales of mobile devices are expected to surge this holiday season. Whether your firm has embraced bring-your-own-device (BYOD) or elected to look the other way that means many of your employees can be expected to upgrade their tablets and smartphones. But what about their old devices? Will they be decommissioned properly?

Thor Olavsrud | 13 Dec | Read more

5 Ways to Stay Safe Online on Black Friday, Cyber Monday

Thanksgiving is just around the corner in the U.S., and so are Black Friday and Cyber Monday, two of the busiest shopping days of the year. It's also a peak period for malware, phishing and spam. Since employees are increasingly using their own devices to access corporate resources (or simply using a work PC to sneak in a little shopping on Cyber Monday), it's a good idea to share some best practices with your users to help protect them and your network from threats.

Thor Olavsrud | 21 Nov | Read more

How to Secure Big Data in Hadoop

The promise of big data is enormous, but it can also become an albatross around your neck if you don't make security of both your data and your infrastructure a key part of your big data project from the beginning. Here are some steps you can take to avoid big data pitfalls.

Thor Olavsrud | 08 Nov | Read more

How IT Leaders Can Best Plan for Disaster

Hurricane Sandy left devastation in its wake, first pounding the Caribbean and then pummeling the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast regions of the U.S. People and businesses are now struggling to get back on their feet. As a CIO or IT leader, you need to ask yourself: Will your organization be prepared for the next disaster?

Thor Olavsrud | 06 Nov | Read more

How to defend against malnets

Since 2011, security firm Blue Coat Systems has been tracking malnets: extensive distributed network infrastructures embedded in the Internet and designed to deliver mass-market attacks on a continuous basis. These malnet infrastructures are like the proverbial Lernaean Hydra--chop off one head, like a botnet it has produced, and two more spring up to take its place.

Thor Olavsrud | 05 Oct | Read more

Security arms race heats up, but IT battles back against attacks

Attackers are increasingly exploiting a combination of connected systems, poor policy enforcement and human error to cause data breaches, but there have been some information security successes: Spam and phishing attacks are down, reported SQL injection vulnerabilities are on the decline and sandboxing technology is making it safer to open documents like PDFs again.

Thor Olavsrud | 20 Sep | Read more