Friday, February 18, 2011

108 to 3

A few weeks ago, I heard a story in the news.  The story is not what bothered me, though.  It’s the response to the story – and to others like it in recent years.  A high school girls’ basketball team in Utah beat another team by the score of 108 to 3.  The response was outcry against the victorious team.  The victor should have quit trying, quit making baskets, avoided making the other team look bad.  At the risk of controversy, I’m going to say that’s the wrong message to send the next generation.

Monday, February 7, 2011

A home network security primer

I just gave a career-day talk on computer security to the 1st grade class at my kids' elementary school.  If you think public speaking in front of adults is hard, try talking to 75 six- and seven-year-olds!  While they seemed to love the various hacking and countermeasure stories, for some reason they latched on to the idea of hacking cars, and for the rest of the talk kept asking questions about air bags...

During my talk, one of the adults asked how I recommend securing a home network, and what I do at home.  The answer would have been over the heads of 1st-graders, and taken longer than the time I was alotted, so I thought I'd address it in the form of a blog. There are four things I see as the foundation to a secure home network: always installing the latest patches, a firewall to keep bad stuff from coming in, a web filter to keep you from accidentally getting to bad stuff, and an antivirus program to catch and remove the bad stuff that will inevitably fall through the cracks.