In his recent New York Times article, “That Daily Shower Can Be a Killer,” renowned geographer Jared Diamond observes how Americans tend to greatly exaggerate risks that are sensational and beyond our control—like plane crashes and nuclear radiation—yet underestimate the … Continue reading
Category Archives: Back To Basics
The Definitive Guide to Cryptographic Hash Functions (Part II)
Last time I talked about how cryptographic hash functions are used to scramble passwords. I also stressed why it is extremely important to not be able to take a hash value and work backwards to figure out the plain text … Continue reading
The Definitive Guide to Cryptographic Hash Functions (Part 1)
Give me any message and I will create a secret code to obscure it. Try it! Try another one. This is called hashing—a technique often used to secure passwords (among other things). Instead of keeping your secret, “dog”, in plain … Continue reading
The Difference Between Everyone and Authenticated Users
In order to maintain proper access controls, it’s crucial to understand what every entity on an access control list (ACL) represents, including the implicit identities that are built into a Windows environment. There are a lot of built-in accounts with … Continue reading
Who Is TRYING To Access Your Data?
In our previous post we discussed how over 80% of data breaches are considered “opportunistic.” The majority of them are regular employees who have excess permissions, who abuse their access to obtain sensitive information. When we take these two things … Continue reading