Every Friday here on In The Personal Cloud we’ll be presenting a roundup of links highlighting popular and rising news stories from the world of the cloud and online security. Everything from news regarding hacking and how to be secure to advancements in the field of cloud computing. Stay tuned to In The Personal Cloudeach Friday to remain up to date on everything you need to know.
Some Reasons Behind Cloud Security Vulnerabilities – Security is very important when it comes to data both personal and company related. Organizations that look into cloud security have found that often some security vulnerabilities are overlooked when migrating to the cloud. Some of these reasons are: 1. unchanged hardcoded communication channels, 2. unsecured logging systems, and 3. adjusting encryption for virtualization. Read more for in depth explanation of these reasons. [CloudTweaks]
‘White hat’ hackers are vital to internet security – A “white hat” hackers is a hacker that attempts to break through internet security measure to help improve the system. These hackers expose vulnerabilities within a system acting like a immune system of the internet. This past week the a European Union Legislation was passed in favor to endorse a criminal law rules governing cyber-attacks. According to this article, what the legislative agreement fails to take into consideration is the different kinds of system breaches and hackers. In a time where hackers’ work is becoming more complex, white hat hackers are in need and vital to internet security. [PublicServiceEurope]
Will Cloud Computing Kill The Server Market? – A report from the Lawrence Berkeley Lab found that moving a business from a private server to the cloud is the greener choice. The energy savings would be tremendous, the energy required would drop by 87%. The energy savings from could help power the city of Los Angeles for a whole year. Read more to find out how this affects hardware vendors and server vendors. [Forbes]
There’s a lot of confusion out there when it comes to the Internet and cloud computing, but never fear, the Norton Interview Series is here to provide a little clarity. Follow along with us as we talk to some of the industry’s finest to sift through all the jargon and learn all you need to know about the cloud
When the average person hears the word “encryption” they usually think of spy movies or teams of hackers — in layman’s terms, what does “encryption” actually mean?
ABHAY KULKARNI: It just means a technical way a company keeps your files and their contents locked up tight so no one else can see them or access them. Imagine that there is a safe filled with lots and lots of money – cash, and you’re a thief and you want to get to the money. The first thing you’ll probably try to do is unlock the safe. Now, you could also steal the safe, but if you don’t have the key to open it, all you can do is pick the lock. If you try to pick the lock, you could eventually get the money, but it takes a long, long time and it isn’t easy. Then, if you decide to throw away the safe, you’ll destroy the money and not be able to use it.
In laymen’s terms, encryption means taking something, anything valuable, and transforming it into something that no longer has value. You do that by using something called an encryption key; the key is what will change that something back into its original status of value.
In this case, without the key (to unlock the encryption), the money (your data) has no value.
What’s the difference between that and say, government grade encryption?
AK: I’m going to let you in on a little secret… [click to continue…]
Every Friday here on In The Personal Cloud we’ll be presenting a roundup of links highlighting popular and rising news stories from the world of the cloud and online security. Everything from news regarding hacking and how to be secure to advancements in the field of cloud computing. Stay tuned to In The Personal Cloud each Friday to remain up to date on everything you need to know.
Encryption can make cloud computing safer – Many cloud users tend to believe that the cloud service provider cares for all our data, however despite what the provider says or does, it is the users’ responsibility to ensure their data is safe. Recently, Amazon cloud storage customers learned that during a security test, conducted by a third party firm, 126 billion data files were discovered to have been exposed because users were unclear about privacy settings. Encryption could have made these 126 billion data files valueless and safe from hackers and spammers in the digital space. Learn more about how to keep your data safe and private. [USAtoday]
Netflix customers suffer cloud outage – On Thursday, June 6, millions of Netflix users were unable to watch and their favorite movies and tv shows online because of a two hour service outage on its cloud. This is not the first time Netflix has suffered such outage. In December of 2012, Netflix experienced similar outage when Amazon web services, the infrastructure which they run on, had issues with its service. This outage goes to show that it is crucial for data centers to be backed up to, so that if one data center is experiencing problems it can failover to another so that service is not disrupted. [CloudPro]
Spam campaigns take to Tumblr – Recent Internet Security report released by Symantec showed that although the percentage of spam is decreasing, attacks on social sites is increasing. Facebook users have fallen victim for such phishing scams and now Tumblr users are too. Read more about the scam that spammers are using on Tumblr and how to avoid them. [TimesOfIndia]
Every Friday here on In The Personal Cloud we’ll be presenting a roundup of links highlighting popular and rising news stories from the world of the cloud and online security. Everything from news regarding hacking and how to be secure to advancements in the field of cloud computing. Stay tuned to In The Personal Cloud each Friday to remain up to date on everything you need to know.
Symantec warns of Chehrakitab, other Facebook scams – Two phishing scams have surfaced. The first scam is a Facebook login page spoof aimed towards Indian users. The second scam is a fake app that uses an image of a girl with the Facebook “like” button. This image sends users to a Netherlands based Facebook login page and requests users’ credentials to like the photo. Symantec advises users to avoid clicking on suspicious links in emails and social networks in addition to not providing personal information when answering emails and pop-up page windows. A way to determine if the site is clean or not is to check is the site is encrypted with an SSL certificate that can be found on the address bar in the form of a padlock. [BusinessToday]
Dropbox Widespread Service Outage – Yesterday Dropbox experience a widespread service outage. Several Dropbox expressed their concern about their files on twitter. Both web-based and connected apps experienced service outage. The last time Dropbox experience a widespread outage was in January, the site was down for 15 hours. [TechCrunch]
So How Exactly Is Cloud Computing Changing the VFX Industry? – Many visual effects firms are turning to the cloud. Rendering is vital to this industry and cloud computing is allow for VFX firms to focus on the creative rather than rendering related infrastructure. Cloud computing is also allowing for VFX firms of different sizes tackle a diverse array of projects, render in real time, and engage with flexible computing. [IndieWire]
