12 Things You (Probably) Didn’t Know About Online Security

At the RSA Conference in San Francisco last week, I got the chance to sit down with Stephen Cobb, a distinguished security researcher for the IT security company ESET. We talked about a lot of things, including Android security issues and how walled gardens have their uses.It was a great conversation, touching on a wide variety of fascinating aspects of online and mobile security, and I wanted to share as many of them as possible.This list seemed like the best way to do that. And while not every one of the dirty-dozen points presented here may surprise you, I can pretty much guarantee that few people will already know – or agree with - everything on the list:1. Big Data is not new to the anti-virus industry. Turns out the anti-virus companies have been doing traffic analysis, incident sharing and code sharing for decades, Cobb claims. They just didn’t call it Big Data until the term become fashionable.2. Anti-virus companies have been practicing co-opetition since the 1980s, when they realized there was no percentage in one company being able to stop one virus while you needed another company to stop a different virus. They quietly began sharing virus signatures and other information, Cobb says.3. All the major Web browsers share information on malware sites and other threats. Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox and the others all share which URLs to flag, for example. That’s why when NBC.com was hacked recently and started spewing malware, everybody was able to block it almost immediately.
4. One of the hardest parts of securing Big Data is knowing where the data is actually stored. In the old days, when data was collected and stored, it didn’t really move much. Now, in the cloud, Cobbs says we don’t really know where data is stored. Malware creators are intent on exploiting that, but what form that will take remains to be seen.

5. One reason more high-value targets haven’t been hacked is that there is still so much low-hanging fruit for the bad guys to go after. According to Cobb, so far, there hasn’t been much need to try and crack the hardest targets.

6. Most attacks take the form of malware or hacking. Of the hacking attacks, Cobb says, 80% go after passwords that are either non-existent, guessed or stolen.

7. Anti-virus hasn’t been about matching virus signatures for years. Some people say the anti-virus model doesn’t work because so much new malware is coming out all the time that anti-virus solutions can’t possibly keep up. But Cobb protests that most anti-virus software is continually detecting previously unseen malware.

8. People who know what they’re doing on the Internet might be able to get by with no anti-virus software. But Cobb says people are fooling themselves when they claim: “I don’t run anti-virus software and I’ve never been hacked.” “Are you really OK telling everyone you know – your mom, for instance – not to run anti-virus software?” he asks.

9. There’s still an incredible amount of spam out there. You don’t see it, but it’s still there. It’s using a a huge amount of datacenter power to block it, but it’s built into the network security appliance and you don’t have to deal with it.

10. The overall trend is for increasing levels of security to be compressed into the core, to become part of a standard install. That’s happened to anti-spam, to firewalls and it’s happening to anti-virus, too.

11. It’s a lot harder to write 64-bit malware than it is to write 32-bit malware. And that could help lower the number of attacks on 64-bit systems.

12. In many ways, hacking behavior seems to have gotten better over the years – at least in the United States, Cobb says. But we are now increasingly exposed to other, more dangerous places. The globalization of the Net has caught up with us even as the value of hacking has one way up. Today, hackers aren’t just messing with us, Cobb notes, they’re stealing from us. And that’s a big new incentive.

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Kids Code the Darndest Things: 10 Amazing Youth Innovators

Kids deserve more credit than they get. They’re observant, incredibly intuitive and can sometimes figure out what the world needs faster than adults can. Here are 10 youth innovators, from ages seven to 15, particularly worth noting and working on projects ranging from games to anti-bullying apps.

With rapid advancements in technology, and coding education geared toward youth, it comes as no surprise that there are kids pushing innovation out there, and creating apps and programs at astonishingly young ages. Here are 10 youth innovators, from ages seven to 15, particularly worth noting and working on projects ranging from games to anti-bullying apps.

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Office 365 For Business Is Here. Good Luck Figuring Out What It’ll Cost You

Office 365, Microsoft’s cloud-based office suite, is moving the turf war against Google Docs to the business world with today’s announcement of business-ready subscriptions. But you’ll need a spreadsheet to figure out which of six different options you’ll need – not to mention what it’ll cost.It’s easier to first explain what the different subscription options have in common. All but two – Office 365 Small Business and Enterprise E1 – include desktop versions of Access, Excel, InfoPath, Lync, OneNote, Outlook, PowerPoint, Publisher, SkyDrivePro and Word. Similarly, each user has the capability to use the service on a total of five PCs or Macs, except for – again – Office 365 Small Business and Enterprise E1.
The differentiator, it seems, lies in the number of users you’d like to authorize. According to Microsoft’s pricing page, here are the maximum number of users you can sign up for various Office 365 for Business options:

Office 365 Small Business and Small Business Premium: 25 users
Office 365 MidSize Business: 300 users
Office 365 Enterprise E1 and E3: Unlimited users
The Small Business option offers no desktop applications to install and no mobile app options. Nor does the Enterprise E1 option, though it serves an unlimited number of users, while the Small Business plan is limited to just 25.

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Apple Remains the Top U.S. Smartphone Maker, Report Says

Apple has extended its lead as the top U.S. smartphone-maker, by grabbing another 3.5% of total market, according to ComScore‘s latest data.
The Cupertino, Calif. giant captured a formidable 37.8% of the U.S. market during the three-month average period ending January 2013, leaving its competitors in the dust. (ComScore compares stats from this period to the three-month average period ending October 2012.)

Rival Samsung clocked in at 21.4%, followed by HTC, Motorola and LG with 9.7%, 8.6% and 7%, respectively.

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Tablets vs. TV: Which Screen Time Is Better For Your Kids?

If your kid asked if he could watch TV or play on the iPad for an hour, which would you let him do? Naturally, it depends on what your child is doing on the iPad, but does your instinct prompt you to answer any particular way? That question gets asked of me all the time by my son and my first thought is always the TV.

Yes, I know there are tons of amazing educational apps out there. I’m not against iPad usage for kids by any means, but with my own, I tend to take a slightly different stance. It has really only been in the past year that the iPad has become such a treasured pastime for my son, thanks to his discovery of the FIFA Soccer and Madden Football apps. If left to his own devices, he would likely tap and swipe for four hours straight without breaking to eat, use the bathroom or straighten the inevitable c-curve his back would form into.

While there’s no time to play on the iPad during the week, we started getting lax with monitoring his usage on weekends, sometimes coming downstairs to find him sitting in the exact same place (and exact same position), without us realizing how much time had elapsed. Whenever I would mention how entrenched he’d be in his iPad, he’d respond with something like, “I watch movies and those are two hours. At least with the iPad, I’m doing something and not just sitting there.” Valid point.

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Meet Maddie, the Acrobatic Dog Who Launched a Dream

Typically, we think of dogs as sidekicks, best friends, perhaps even confidantes. But rarely do we discover a dog who is a also a lucrative business partner.Maddie the Coonhound is already famous in the Instagram community, where her owner and photographer Theron Humphrey posts photos of Maddie to over 180,000 eager followers. She even has her own website, Maddie on Things, as well as a forthcoming book, wherein she smiles with squinty eyes and obliging patience.
It’s precisely her calm composure that makes 2.5-year-old Maddie so famous. Well, that and some mad acrobatic skills.

One day on the road, Humphrey decided to pose Maddie atop his truck, hoping she would oblige long enough to capture a quick photograph. He quickly realized he had underestimated his dog.

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