IT

Posts related to the wider topic of IT.

Getting value from threat intelligence

Whether you run a security function, manage systems, or perhaps run a organisation in its entirety, a key responsibility is being aware of threats to your organisation. If your company uses IT, then information security risks should be considered as one of the most critical to your organisation. Dealing with these risks requires you to know they exist, and this is where threat intelligence is used. However, if you’re not careful, you’ll be staring at a mountain of technical, potentially conflicting, and useless information that will do nothing to make your organisation more secure. Larger organisations that have IT departments,…
Read more

Share

An introduction to risk

I started this as a brief introduction, but in making sure I explained the fundamentals, I ended up writing pretty much a chapter of a book on Information Security. If you read this and you are saying “but you’re telling my stuff I already know”, lucky you! Risk management is one of the very first things I teach my junior analysts at the start of their careers; and it’s something you should ensure your stakeholders understand. By giving them an appreciation of risk and its management, you’re much more likely to be able to deliver your security messages effectively. You…
Read more

Share

Why everybody should be using HTTPS

Using HTTPS on a website has historically been a pain, and therefore reserved only for e-commerce sites. In order to use HTTPS you would need to first purchase certificates which had a cost associated; then you would need them installing, which your hosting provider would need to support. As a result adoption of HTTPS for ‘regular websites’ was low. Last week, I took the opportunity to secure this website. The best part was doing so cost nothing, and it took just 10 minutes! This led to the conclusion – there’s no excuse not to use HTTPS. What is HTTPS? When using…
Read more

Share

The Cheapest PC: July 2016

To date, the trend has been for the cost of the cheapest PC to fall. However, following the vote to leave the European Union, what has the adjustment in the value of the dollar done to the price of your computer in July? Using scan.co.uk, who are my goto place for computer supplies, I decided to find out.  As we did back in May, we’ll look at what the cheapest PC you can build is, then look at what you can get from eBay on the used market. Case and Power Supply The CiT1021 is no longer on sale, so instead…
Read more

Share

The Cheapest PC: May 2016

In March I wrote about the cheapest PC I could build, it came to just under £195. Now it’s the end of May, another two months have passed, new products come onto the market, and older ones are discontinued and retired. Surely though, not much can have changed since March? Using scan.co.uk, who are my goto place for computer supplies, I decided to find out. Last time I specified two machines – the first being the very cheapest thing you could build, the next being something that you could possibly live with. What we’ll do this time is attempt to duplicate these setups,…
Read more

Share

WordPress Security: Some useful tools

Look to the right of the page and you’ll see the effect various personal issues have had on my free time. Couple that with needing to do a load of work on the house, and my capacity for looking after this website has become near zero. The problem is that administrative overhead didn’t go away – comments still needed to be moderated, and the number of failed login attempts was starting to become a worry. So one lunchtime at work I decided to look at some WordPress security tools. Ultimately I came up with two plugins and a useful website…
Read more

Share

The PC Builder Series

  What is the absolute minimum you can build a new PC for, and should you? This is a regular series that looks at the market for new PC parts. From May 2016, we’ll also look at what’s on the used market for the same price.July 2016May 2016March 2016January 2016 These are a series of one-off articles that look at different things to consider about the PCs and the PC market.Another way to do it: Buying 2nd hand PCs

Share

The cheapest PC – Another way

In the previous articles on building the cheapest PC, the premise has always been that it’d be nice to have an Intel machine, but they’re too expensive, so lets go for AMD instead. While it’s not a bad argument, the result is always going to be disappointing or underwhelming. Fortunately there is another way, and I actually put my money where my mouth is on this one. That is to buy a used PC from a site like eBay. Here we’ll talk about what to look for, how that fits into the wider scheme of building a new computer, and…
Read more

Share

The cheapest PC revisited – March 2016

Early in January, I wrote about the cheapest PC I could build. It came to just under £200. Since then, time moves on, new products come onto the market, and older ones are discontinued and retired. Surely though, not much can have changed in 10 weeks? Using scan.co.uk, who are my goto place for computer supplies, I decided to find out. Last time I specified two machines – the first being the very cheapest thing you could build, the next being something that you could possibly live with. What we’ll do this time is attempt to duplicate these setups, making substitutions where…
Read more

Share

Why you can’t rely on redundant

Some months back I spoke about setting my friend and partner in crime up on a pfSense router. Part of the reason for doing this was that he had dual WAN links and we could put them into a redundant configuration. I stress now, this wasn’t the primary reason, more of an added bonus. It was therefore with some surprise that I got the following text message on Tuesday: And my internet is down My first thoughts were that there had either been a power cut or some muppet had put a digger through the BT wiring. So, away from…
Read more

Share