William McBorrough

On Saturday, April 28, the FCC released the full un-redacted report on Google’s Street View project. The report is only 25 pages long and can be found at the bottom of this post.  I find the following tidbits particularly interesting: " …Engineer Doe developed Wi-Fi data collection software code that, in addition to collecting Wi-Fi network data for Google’s location-based services, would collect payload  that Engineer Doe thought might be useful for other Google services. …Google made clear for the first time that Engineer Doe’s software was written specifically to capture payload data.“ Despite all of Google's previous assertions to the contraire, this quoted section indicates that Google engineer[s] intended for payload data to be captured and stored. Google insists that this was done without the knowledge or approval of project leader and was not a necessary re... (more)

Cloud Control Does Not Necessarily Imply Cloud Security

Most of the commentary written about companies moving to the Cloud  focuses on  the loss of control over company data as a consequence of giving up self-hosted infrastructure. There is usually an implication that this is bad. I believe that is not necessarily a given. How may stories do you read daily about data breaches unrelated to the cloud? It’s almost cliche now. The critical question that must be asked is “Can cloud provider X protect your company’s  data better than you can?”. In many cases, the answer is yes. Basically [ in most cases] they do security better than you do.... (more)

CyberWatch Presentation on Cloud Assurance

Related posts: New Best Practices for Security Assurance in the Cloud The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) produced version 2 of its... ... (more)

Will Your Cloud Provider Be Around in Two Years?

I just read that my hosting company, GoDaddy, is on the auction block to be sold to the highest bidder. Naturally, I’m thinking of how this change of ownership could adversely affect the service of my web sites, blogs, and virtual servers.  One never really knows until the new owners take over. Maybe they clean house and things change for the better. Or they may look to cut costs and things could take a downward turn. Migrating to a another service would a pain but I could do it if needed. This brings to mind the current state of the cloud computing market. The mad gold rush of ... (more)

Cyber Security Alliance Helps Small Businesses Address Security Risks

Across all industries, small businesses are increasingly facing new threats related to cyber security. Whereas some have taken minimum steps to address these threats but most have not. New security threats and incidents are reported every day in news reports and a many remain unreported. This underscores the need for cyber security education of small business owners and managers. These threats have potentially serious consequences and could lead to unrecoverable damage to small businesses. What are some consequences of the lack of basic cyber security controls? Loss or stolen cus... (more)