Beyond Bias provides an excellent overview of the five different categories of biases, similarity, expedience, experience, distance, and safety. As someone who has worked in the software development field for a number of years, I have witnessed accounts of poor decision making and its ramifications within the organizations I have worked for. Specifically within software development I have...
So you are an individual with a passion for doing something big or someone who wants to share his ideas with the world. For both reasons the best way to make your name would be building a website. Perhaps, there could be many reasons you want a site. Maybe for your small business, an art website to lighten up the world with a fire inside your soul, create amazing ideas or just to spread...
This post contains affiliate links. If you click through and make a purchase, I may receive a commission (at no additional cost to you). As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. This helps support the blog and allows me to continue to make free content. Thank you for your support! One of the benefits of working at a large organization is the opportunity to work with a considerable...
PHP is a scripting language that powers over some of the busiest websites on the web. Several languages have been introduced since 2005. None of them have affected the popularity of PHP. Before IDEs were launched, seasoned developers and beginners used vi or notepad to write PHP code. Once the code was ready, developers moved the PHP file to the webapps folder of the web server to check whether...
The AI domain extension was launched in 1994/1995 for the use of companies and individuals based in a Carribean country Anguilla. Google, the world’s largest search engine doesn’t display the information of Anguilla when you enter the search phrase as “AI”. Even Bing displays Artificial Intelligence search results for the search phrase “AI”. In computer...
A project I was recently working on had in place a cloud-based infrastructure that was designed to support a single installation of the Drupal CMS running in Amazon Web Services (AWS). This infrastructure included an auto-scaling setup with load balancers hosting a ‘cache’ layer and an ‘application’ layer that hosted the Drupal CMS. On the backend tier, an AWS Relational...
In the United States, a sizable amount of the overall federal budget is allocated to defense spending. The 2018 Defense Budget was signed into law on December 12, 2017, by President Trump, which authorized just under $700 billion in defense spending (Blankenstein, 2017). In contrast to just a few years ago where the fiscal year defense spending was set at $593 billion, the amount of money set...
I was recently notified that one of the sites I support was getting a ‘C’ rating on SSL Labs. It turned out that there were three main issues that needed to be resolved. Two out of the three were relatively easy to find via the SSL Labs documentation, which required simple fixes to the ssl.conf file. This server is vulnerable to the POODLE attack. If possible, disable SSL 3 to...
Prior to any cyber attack, an organization should already have a solid crisis management plan and set of disaster recovery precautions in place. In addition to this, a risk analysis should be carried out involving a holistic approach and careful investigation of information systems and the overall environment. The purpose of such an analysis is to evaluate all endpoints that could potentially...
Because of erroneous PHP and Java extensions, I’ve switched from Atom to Microsoft’s VSCode aka Visual Code Editor for writing applications. VSCode is a powerful editor. With the help of some extensions, you can use VSCode as a replacement for RAM hogging Integrated Development Environments. If you’ve just installed VScode and you’re searching for extensions that will...
Organizations continue to struggle with policies and processes to effectively secure their infrastructure to protect their information assets and intellectual property. In recent years, we have seen the increase of cyber-attacks and breaches to the point that they have become common news worldwide. As systems have grown in complexity with increased capacity to store large amounts of data, so to...
The nature of the Internet and worldwide connectivity has changed the traditional centuries old paradigm regarding proximity. We now see threats from all parts of the global. What are three cybersecurity policies for a firm that would mitigate risks for cybersecurity attacks at the global level? Cybersecurity threats continue to rise year after year and the problem continues grow due to the...
Vulnerability assessments can be a very effective way of gathering information on an organizations internal security posture. The purpose is to accumulate data on any weaknesses revealed that should be proactively mitigated to prevent exploitation. There are a number of tools that can be used to carry out vulnerability assessments. Typically, a software-based tools are used to scan a selected...
Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) are security threats that use advanced techniques to hide their attack from their target. They are commonly used to target specific information in high-profile companies and governments. APTs usually follow a long-term strategy of attack in order to gather information from the breached system. There have been many examples of APTs over the years targeting well...
As a developer, knowledge of web application security vulnerabilities is essential in order to build software that is both resilient to attacks and protected through a layered approach of defense. The cybersecurity landscape is constantly shifting, however a good understanding of the most common vulnerabilities is a great place to get started with security. Before reviewing the articles below, be...
The word Cybersecurity is thrown around so much these days it has almost become overused in many conversations. This is due to the vast number of topics associated with its meaning. So how can we define it better? Traditionally Cybersecurity has described as a process for securing information or assets owned by governments, organizations, and individual people. The term itself can be considered a...
The term asymmetric refers to an unequal balance or when thinking about threats, an unfair advantage to the perpetrator. Phillips, A (2012) provided an excellent overview of what an asymmetric threat is. He described attacks of this nature to be undetectable, and once occurred, impossible to determine its origin. Rubin (2007) further elaborates on this concept by defining the term asymmetry as...
You’ve decided it’s time to start solidifying ideas for your ideal website. You have no doubt spent countless hours in the planning phase identifying your target audience, design considerations, and of course you have a solid idea of your overall content strategy. If you haven’t, then do yourself a favor and take a look at The Complete Guide to Building Your Personal Brand, What...
Fundamental to all modern web development is a strong foundational knowledge of version control. In recent years Git has emerged as the go-to choice for many developers and continues to gain popularity. Github is a platform that uses Git for source control. It provides an environment that encourages and fosters community open source development. It is a great platform to publish and use for...
I am a software developer and online educator who likes to keep up with all the latest in technology. I also manage cloud infrastructure, continuous monitoring, DevOps processes, security, and continuous integration and deployment.