7 Things You Should Read About Cybersecurity

The President is talking about it. Your tech friends are talking about it.  Seth Rogen and Sony joined Target, Home Depot and JP Morgan Chase on its list of victims.  But, you still only have a beginner’s sense of what cyber-security means.  We are living in a digital world, and all the same bad stuff that happens in the offline world is moving online.  That includes the threats we usually assign to our military or intelligence agencies. What’s it all mean? Below are some essential links to get you up to speed. But, to fully prepare, join us in person or by livestream when we host a Cybersecurity conference on Monday, February 23rd (You can RSVP here.), followed by a conference on the Future of War Tuesday and Wednesday. (RSVP for that here).

To prepare for the conference, here are 7 things you should read on cybersecurity.

An Exclusive Look Inside DARPA’s Plan to Visualize Cyberoperations by Sara Sorcher, The Christian Science Monitor
 The Pentagon’s advanced research wing plans to spend $125 million on Plan X, a virtual-reality system for US cyber warriors to see attacks coming over networks and more quickly fight against them.

How to Catch a Terrorist by Matthias Schwartz, The New Yorker
The N.S.A. claims it needs access to all our phone records. But is that the best way to catch a terrorist?

The future of war: Cyber is expanding the Clausewitzian spectrum of conflict by Tim Maurer, Foreign Policy
The development of more and more advanced cyber capabilities is expanding the way in which states carry out conflicts.

NATO Tries to Define Cyberwar by Rob Morgus, Real Clear World
As the number of cyber attacks increase, how are we able to define what is an act of cyber war, and what is not.

The Hackers of Oz by Anne Marie Slaughter and Shane Harris, The Weekly Wonk
How do we win a war that can’t be seen? Anne-Marie Slaughter goes behind the cyber curtain and investigates the insides of the NSA in this podcast with Shane Harris.

The State, the Internet, and Cybersecurity by Peter W. Singer and Emanuel Pastreich, The Brookings Institution
Peter Singer discusses the dynamics of cyberspace and how governments should best conceptualize cyber threats, and suggests that cybersecurity’s greatest challenges are in threat identification and attribution.

A Red Cross for Cyberspace by Tim Maurer, TIME
Let’s start a conversation about whether and how a global cyber federation could make cyberspace a more resilient and humanitarian human creation.

By Justin Lynch

 

And do you worry about your cloud data security?

If so, try Cloudifile - cloud encryption tool that adds a proven security level to Dropbox improving its simplicity and efficiency at the same time. 
Learn more at www.cloudifile.com!

How to decipher cloud computing jargon

As IT becomes an integral part of each business function, it’s increasingly important for non-IT professionals to gain a top-level understanding of technical terms, in order to better execute their own responsibilities. If your business is considering moving to the cloud, one of the biggest challenges that you will face is your ability to understand all the terms that cloud vendors and “techies” throw around.
Below are some of the most commonly used cloud terms, starting with Amazon’s most popular Compute, Storage and Database offerings in the Cloud, followed by some other generic, but seemingly confusing terms. For those of us who don’t have a technical background, this list should help to get you started and give you a clearer understanding of cloud computing, so you’ll be ready for your next chat with IT.

 

VPC

VPC (Virtual Private Cloud) is used to logically separate your infrastructure, platform and applications in a secure virtual network that you define. It is your virtual apartment block in the cloud, which houses all of the bits and pieces relevant to your business. This may include personalised applications for your business like sales and inventory management systems, security software, additional EC2 instances, email hosting services and online storage.

 

VPN Connection

A VPN (Virtual Private Network) is the secure connection between a VPC and another network, like a home network, mobile computer/tablet or another office for your business. It does this by connecting your VPC over another network, like the internet, to other devices/networks. It ensures that everything in your VPC is available to all staff or relevant parties, at any time and in a secure manner.

 

Load Balancing

Is a system used to distribute website traffic across multiple instances. Rather than relying on one server, incoming requests are balanced across a range of servers. That way, your business isn’t relying on a single server, improving the performance and ensuring high availability of your site. You can think of it as balancing the weights on a set of scales until they are even, that is, if you only have two servers – most businesses will have more.

 

Auto Scaling

This is a process that configures your compute capacity (like the size, configuration or architecture) up or down, according to the conditions that have been defined. It can launch and terminate instances without manual intervention. Using this process, you can be sure that the number of EC2 instances that are being used will increase seamlessly in high traffic periods such as when your marketing team is running a busy marketing campaign. It will automatically decrease the required capacity again afterwards, ultimately ensuring there is no spend wastage.

 

CDN

A Content Delivery Network or Content Distribution Network is a large network of caching servers that are distributed across different geographies (in the same country or across multiple countries), taking your web content closer to the eyeballs that are digesting it. As the demand for uploading and downloading content to servers is increasing, cloud providers are now making your cloud available from a number of different servers in different locations, so that you and your content consumers experience increased performance and decreased latency.

 

Self-healing

Like the name suggests, a self-healing device or system is one that has the ability to notice that it is not operating correctly and, without the need for human involvement, make the necessary changes to restore normal operating function. These intuitive systems have made IT servicing and maintenance increasingly cost-effective and reduces service downtime for users.

 

Utility Computing/Billing

Cloud uses a pay-per-use model that allows cloud users to pick and choose what technologies, services, infrastructure and capacity they need, and pay for these on a needs basis. This improves on traditional IT models where you have to permanently maintain enough infrastructure to cope with occasional spikes in traffic. As a result of utility billing and the commoditisation of infrastructure in the cloud, smaller players are gaining greater access to computing power, online storage systems, and website hosting – services that were previously accessible only by industry goliaths.

I hope that helps! Are there any cloud terms out there that you still don’t understand?

By Mark Randall, chief customer officer of listed cloud services provider, Bulletproof.

Learn more at www.brw.com.au! 

 

Protect your private pics with Cloudifile! It's easy and FREE!

Simply select the folder with your pics, right click it, and choose "Clouidify". All the pics in the folder will be securely encrypted and automatically sent to cloud. In addition, newly created or copied pics will be automatically cloudified.

Learn more at www.cloudifile.com! 

Hurry up! Download Cloudifile now - and get it for free for ever!

Cloudifile is a powerful cloud encryption tool that adds a proven security level to Dropbox improving its simplicity and efficiency at the same time. 

How it Works?

Cloudifile encrypts your data in all Dropbox-associated locations and organizes easy and transparent sharing of this data with other users.

All you have to do is to select data to protect, right click it, and select Cloudify. The rest of the work Cloudifile performs for you:

1.  Encrypts selected data locally.
2.  Automatically synchronizes encrypted data with Dropbox.
3.  Puts virtual decrypted copy of data in its original location.
4.  Puts virtual decrypted copy of data on the virtual Cloudifile disk.

Learn more details at www.cloudifile.com!

 

 UK companies struggle to control data in the cloud, survey says

 

British businesses are struggling to establish control over employees' use of public cloud services, potentially putting their information at risk of loss or compromise.
This is according to Connected Data, which published the results of a survey of 100 UK companies today (March 2nd).
It found that while nine out of ten IT decision-makers (90 per cent) feel that the unsanctioned sharing of sensitive information via the cloud represents a serious security risk for their organisation, fewer than two-thirds (64 per cent) have systems in place to track and control this phenomenon.
Moreover, while one in three respondents (33 per cent) had banned their staff from using public cloud services like Dropbox and Box, the majority (58 per cent) of those admitted to not knowing whether or not this rule was actually obeyed.
Commenting on the results of the survey, Connected Data noted that IT decision-makers in the UK are savvy to the risks involved in the use of public cloud services. However, it described their efforts to reverse the trend to date as a "losing battle".
According to the survey, more than one in ten businesses (13 per cent) have lost sensitive information as a result of cloud use. In addition, almost one in five (19 per cent) cannot be sure whether this has happened or not.

Don't let Cloud Computing become a barrier for you!

With Cloudifile, Cloud will be your best friend ever!

Encrypt your data, automatically move it to cloud, and virtualize traditional access! Learn more at www.cloudifile.com.