Sorry for the long absence...

Been very busy with paying customers, which is nice. But, as you know, time marches on. Hey, yesterday I got one of those scam checks in the mail. It looked like a check from Black and Decker. They did a nice job on the check but they should have taken a second and run spell check on the accompanying letter. I can see how others, especially senior citizens, could be tricked.

Anyway, will wonders never cease? cio.com reports a researcher estimates that there are a 500,000 database servers on the net that do not have a firewall in front of them. And wait, that's no all: many of them are unpatched as well as unprotected. Morons.

http://www.cio.com/article/154701/Researcher_Half_a_Million_Database_Servers_Have_No_Firewall


SC Magazine has an interesting article on the hype surrounding PCI compliance. Many companies use PCI compliance as the lowest common denominator, while others use it as the rallying point to make their company secure as well as compliant.

http://www.scmagazineus.com/Avoid-the-PCI-hype-but-use-the-standard-as-a-rallying-point/article/58010/


Finally tonight, again from cio.com, comes an analysis of laptop value. The average value of a laptop with important information is over $500,000. Even laptops that contain just personal data have a value over $300,000. Yet most companies have no policy protecting data in transit on a laptop. Scary!

http://www.cio.com/article/153900/Lax_Laptop_Security_Can_Be_Dangerous...and_Expensive