Sue Poremba

How Heartbleed Is Changing Security It’s hard to believe that 2014 is one-third complete, and that we are now into May. With this past never-ending winter, it feels like we have just finally hit March 1. That must be why I felt surprised to see the first-quarter security updates arriving in my inbox – we […]

Few cybersecurity issues have people talking, and worried, like the Heartbleed bug. As Chester Wisniewski explained in a CNN article: The bug itself is a simple, honest mistake in the computer code that was intended to reduce the computing resources encryption consumes. The problem is that this bug made it past the quality assurance tests […]

Browser Security: Most Effective Browsers Against Socially Engineered Malware Verizon’s 2014 Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) is filled with some interesting and very important information about data breaches and where security threats are happening most often. When I talked about the DBIR last week, I focused on the nine basic patterns of data breaches. Today, […]

Final Patch Tuesday Quietly Ushers Out XP and 2003 My original plan for today was to focus on some of the more interesting tidbits to come from Verizon’s 2014 Data Breach Investigations Report, but you know the old saying about making plans. The security writer’s modification of that saying is “plan to write about last […]

Five Digitally Vulnerable Areas Your Business May be Overlooking As a college student, I took a number of literature classes, as well as a couple of courses on writing fiction. One of the points that was repeated frequently in those classes is that there are only about 20 plot lines, and the trick for writers […]

Heartbleed: Eight Tips and Strategies for Keeping Safe Last week, news about yet another data breach at major retail outlets surfaced. As Krebs on Security reported, Michaels Stores Inc., which includes Michaels Arts and Crafts and Aaron Brothers stores, admitted that its stores suffered two different eight-month-long breaches over the past year. Approximately three million […]

Five Considerations for Building an Effective Incident Response Framework A lot of cybersecurity requires looking backwards. Often, when a vulnerability is discovered, we find that it has been out there for a while. Breaches take months to be revealed to consumers even after they are found, and sometimes they are found long after they occur. […]

Top Cyber Scams Expected for 2014 Phishing remains a surprisingly effective method at spreading malware. That’s despite our collective awareness of what constitutes a phishing scam and having learned not to click on links or open attachments without verifying their legitimacy first. But we also know that the scammers have gotten very good at their […]

Five Important Lessons from Recent Data Breaches “We don’t need no education . . .” I couldn’t help but think of that line from a Pink Floyd song when I saw the headline on an eSecurity Planet article, “Majority of Employees Don’t Receive Security Awareness Training.” The article goes on to report on a study […]

Browser Security: Most Effective Browsers Against Socially Engineered Malware I don’t think I’ve ever seen the reaction to an Internet security problem like the reaction I’m seeing with the Heartbleed bug. I expected to get email messages from security experts, but not the volume that has been coming in. Then I logged on to Facebook, […]

Five Steps to Mitigate Risks After Windows XP Security Updates End I admit that I have never understood the love affair many of my friends and colleagues (and millions of other users) have with Windows XP. Sure, I get that people get adjusted to a particular operating system (OS) and they don’t like change. But […]

Analysis of Cyber Black Market Reveals Unprecedented Global Maturity Do you think your anti-virus software is doing an adequate job in detecting malware and keeping your computers and network safe? Unfortunately, you may need to re-think your attitudes toward AV software. According to a new report from Solutionary and the NTT Group, AV fails to […]