Looks like a slow day around the blogosphere (I hate that word). Could partially be due to the bad weather moving up the eastern US or simply because it’s a Monday. Anyway, here is the list…

Identity Management and You

Having multiple online identities for different types of web sites is a good idea. I’m afraid that it’s not a common practice among mom and pop though.

We Have to Make Mistakes

Security and IT are tough these days. While we keep getting an influx of people with their MCSE and A+ certs that can do fun things with desktop support, it is all those other more specific areas of IT that still are not getting the love they should be getting. Maybe it is because they’re a layer or two out of the eyes of most normal users (and managers). Too often, us techs can do a lot of good things, but sometimes don’t get a chance to try things out when we’re already swamped with an overload of work, not enough money, and too many fires to put out.

About the strategy I followed during my CISSP exam

In a previous CISSP exam post I promised to blog about the exam-taking strategy I followed.

Face-off: Certifications are not important for career enhancement

IT career advancement has become like a jigsaw puzzle. Certification is only one piece, giving way to clusters of critical attributes that define the modern IT role.

Update on Microsoft DNS vulnerability

We received a couple of e-mails over the weekend asking us why this vulnerability was significant. Most public DNS servers should not be listening on the RPC ports, after all. Indeed, networks obliging to basic secure perimeter design would only allow port 53 UDP/TCP to the authorative DNS servers, and definitely not the additional RPC ports required for exploitation.

Free Lunch :: OSSEC

OSSEC is an open source host based intrusion detection system. The website states, “It performs log analysis, integrity checking, Windows registry monitoring, rootkit detection, time-based alerting and active response.” That is a mouthful.

Nessus 3.2 BETA – IPv6 Scanning

More and more operating systems are shipping with IPv6 enabled by default. Both Vista and OS X ship with IPv6 stacks. The presence of IPv6 on your network may dramatically alter how computers communicate with each other and connect to the Internet. Communication that occurs over IPv6 may not be blocked by local or network firewalls, observed by network IDS or even correctly logged by your SIM.

Zombies infiltrate US military networks

Security researchers have traced spam-sending botnet clients back to networks run by the US military.

DHS No Longer Gets Failing Cybersecurity Grade

They got a D.

William Jackson | For virus detection, don’t write off signatures

So just because a vendor talks up the advanced heuristics capabilities of your latest antivirus tool, do not fall prey to the temptation to ignore the signature updates. They still are your first and best line of defense.