I missed including this in the Friday summary. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is challenging the legality of telecom’s being granted immunity in their participation of NSA’s warrant-less spying on US citizens, claiming the executive branch of the government has overstepped it’s authority. Indirectly they will open the entire program up for scrutiny as well.
What did you think of the new MacBook? I think they are nice, I don’t want a new one bad enough to upgrade. I bought my MacBook last month knowing full well that they were going to release the new models on the 14th of this month, but the advancements would not be enough for me to wait. Most of the articles & analysis I read were a little harsh, with much of the focus on the price drop, or lack of drop, when I was focused on usability. Maybe they are right, and with the economic slowdown…
On the surface endpoint encryption is pretty straightforward these days (WAY better than when I first covered it 8 years ago), but when you start matching all the options to your requirements it can be a tad confusing.
Rich is off to see Jimmy Buffet in southern California and get some R&R, so I have blog duties this week. It’s briefing season in the analyst community. I probably should not be surprised given we typically launched our PR tours with my previous employers this time of year, but even Rich has been a little surprised with the volume of discussions. We have been in full swing with a packed calendar during the last couple of weeks and it shows no sign of letting up through November. If I am a…
Yesterday, Adrian posted his take on a conversation we had last week. We were headed over to happy hour, talking about the usual dribble us analyst types get all hot and bothered about, when he dropped the bombshell that one of our favorite groups of products could be in serious trouble.
The Oracle Critical Patch Update for October 2008 was released today. On the database side there are a lot of the usual suspects; DMSYS.ODM_MODEL_UTIL seems to be patched in every CPU during the last few years. All in all the database modifications appear minor so patch the databases according to your normal deployment schedules.
Rich and I got into a conversation Friday about database security, and the fate of vendors in this subsegment, in light of recent financial developments. Is it possible that this entire database security sub-market could vanish? Somewhat startled by the thought, we started going down the list of names, guessing who would be acquired, who was profitable, and who will probably not make it through the current economic downturn without additional investment- it seems plausible that the majority of…
Thankfully most criminals are not that bright. Article in the Arizona Republic this morning about a group of three Mexican nationals who were on a little shopping spree in the Valley of the Sun. The trio was going to various electronic retailers and making purchased with fake credit cards. The cards appeared to be legitimate card stock from legitimate Mexican banks, but account numbers from valid U.S. accounts.
There was some great hype in the wireless security world this weekend thanks to an article that made it on to Slashdot, and some FUD pumping so-called security consultants. Elcomsoft issued a press release that they can now crack WPA keys WAY faster using the GPUs (Graphics Processing Units) on the latest video cards.
What a wild, wacky, crazy week. I have a funny suspicion a lot of stock brokers and investors are scraping together their spare change for some major liquid escapes this weekend. As a small business we haven’t felt the impact yet, but we are keeping a close eye on things and preparing to adjust our strategy as needed. Security deals are definitely slowing- we sense an impending rush of acquisitions, and a general feeling of nervousness. The need for security never goes away, but if you aren’t…