#TC2027 #TBT

The semester has come to an end, and with it, it comes to answer the ecoas and make public reviews about your classes during the semester…ok, I am just making a review about one class: «Seguridad Informática» aka #TC2027. This class was imparted by Ken Bauer and this is class is the reason way I made this blog. For me this class had its pros and cons, like many other classes (but most of my cons I think it was me instead of the class, but I am going to talk about that in a little bit).

So this class was a little different from other classes, because it involved a flipped learning methodology (which flipped many of my classmates and I include myself in this one) and an abolish grading policy kind of situation. So the good thing about this class was that Ken tried to take us out of our comfort zone of learning, which is both, good and bad depending of how you see it. At first, I was very disconcerted about this situation, because I am not very into writing blogs (or any kind of writing), so this was kind of a challenge for me. Then the abolish grading policy, I saw it as a good thing, because it either proves own well you know yourself or how well you trick yourself; and besides it was a new policy we never had before so there’s that.

For me the hardest part of this course was writing the blog post, because as I mentioned I am not use to write this type of things. So I was stress, because I didn’t wanted to make a blog that was very «school alike» and I wanted a blog that was more «»me»». At the end, the process of making the blogs was entertaining, but if we are being realistic, it wasn’t my thing. I know that with this, the purpose of Ken was for us to more proactive and be more self-taught people, but is hard to make blogs (and yes I know I am repeating that a lot). But again, If I am being completely honest…I kind got better during the semester at making blogs…I think.

From this class, I like that from time to time, Ken brought some very interesting people that were working in the security field, and also some others that weren’t in the field. So that was nice. Also another aspect that I found very enriching was the appointments with Ken. At first, I was skeptical about this, because I thought that it was going to be very awkward and that the conversation was going to be very forced, but it wasn’t AT ALL. They were nice conversations were, I could learned more about Ken and also I know that he is a person that I can count on if I need any advice in the laboral aspect of my life. Also I like that Ken wanted to push us to have a digital persona out there, because let’s face it, the internet can connected us and that’s what Ken wanted. I also like making collaborative blogs, because some how it make them easier.

I know that the blogging thing wasn’t for everyone, so I can recommend maybe changing that for making less blogs and having a balance between theory and practice. I know that I didn’t realize some of the practices we had, but they were very interesting (I know I am kind of contradicting myself here, but that’s right).

In general, I can say it was a good class, not my best but never the less a good. I personally would have like having a couple of lectures from time to time, but that’s my own personal opinion. I surely recommend to have a class with Ken, because he is an excellent teacher and mentor, and because he is a teacher that is always renewing his methodologies and that’s pretty good. So to future Ken’s students I recommend you to take advantage of Ken (in the good way) and try to learn the most you can from him.

Excuse me, who are you?

Each person in this planet has something that identifies him/her. It could be a physical characteristic, like nose shape, eye color, hair, a scar, etc., or it could be a non-physical thing like voice tone, name, the way you speak, and so on. We even have legal documents that verify who we are in a society. No matter in what part of the world we are, we are someone and we can probe that we are the person we say we are. But if the pass from the physical world into the digital one. In the digital world, we can be any one and there’s no one that is checking if we are really who we say we are, or maybe there is? The truth is it depends on how you see it. Because there are websites, like Tumblr that ask you for a user and a password, so there is really someone checking that the user and password match, but once inside Tumblr is another story. If you came to realize, there are many places in the digital environment that ask for a user and password, and that is important matter in the security aspect.

The network is down

Do you remember you life before the internet? where you had to go outside to socialize with people, and laugh to your uncle’s bad jokes instead of memes. Yeah a pretty scary scenario that is in the past. Luckily we live in an era where the internet has become a major part of our lives, but how does the internet can reach SO many people? Well, that’s because the internet is just a HUGE network, where everybody is connected to. That network is a network that is formed out of other networks, and those other networks are formed out of OTHER networks and so on and so on. This networks are made of various components, like: computers, servers, routers, hubs, switches, cables, and other items. All this components are key elements so a network can function properly, along with the right configuration in each item that need it. So this are VERY important and need to be secure from any type of attack or incident that might happen, or else the network can have some problems. That why network security is essential.

Please, not Windows again!

#CParravirgen

As part of the collective knowledge, I parter up with my friend Alex Carrillo, please give it a check at his blog too!

This time, we decided to work together on a blog about OS security. Here is what we came up with:

An OS can face many types of threats, and it needs to be able to protect itself. Here we will list some features or actions, that an OS needs to have or be done.

• User Authentication
  • User authentication is a very important aspect to have, because with this, the OS can give access only to does people that have a user and a password. if an external person tries to access the computer by trying an invalid user and password, this will immediately reject them. Also by creating users, the OS can gave special privileges to some users. Of course, to be able to do that…

Ver la entrada original 734 palabras más

Security Countermeasures

We live in an era, where everybody has some kind of digital device. Most of us have at least 2 of this devices, if not more. We interact with them in a daily basis; in our work, in our home, at the school, at entertainment centers, etc. This gadgets are taking over the world, but most importantly our lives. And if this devices are being an essential part of our lives, well… we are very likely to have some security threats on our way. In our lives, we are always expose to some kind of threat, even if we like it or not, and if we have a digital device, we are expose to a different new kind of threat, that it didn’t exist before.

Security on the web

OOOH the internet such a beautiful and harmonic place yet so full of stranger dangers and mischievous things. People must of the time are very naive when they are on the internet. They are not well aware of the dangers that the internet has. Even though this seems like I am giving a bad reputation to the Internet, I am only saying the truth. Yes, the internet is one of the most amazing inventions there is. It has help people from all over the world communicate in a way it seems impossible before and has brought us many other wonderful things. But sometimes there are people that take advantage of this great invention and try to use it for malicious purposes. Every time we navigate in the internet we are expose to some kind of danger, but if we are smart enough we will be able to not fall into the tramps.

The Law and Values: CyberSecurity

In our daily, we face a lot of decision we need to make. Some of them are very simple and do not need much thinking; and in the other hand, sometimes we need to make very hard decision that not only may affect us, but also it might affect others. I am sure that in more than one time we have face a situation where ethics are involve. There are going to be moments in our life where ethics and even legal matters are going to be involve and we need to be prepare to be able of making the «right» choice. The information security area is fill with ethical and legal situations that we need to be aware of.

I can’t read you message

In 2014, a movie called «The Imitation Game» was released. This movie is about Alan Turing, one of the fathers of computer science. He build a machine capable of figuring out the secret message the Germans where transmitting to each other, back in the WWII era. The messages the germans were sending and receiving, were encrypted messages that only they know how to decrypted them. Turing was clever enough to build a machine that could decrypt those message, and thanks to that the Allies gained a great advantage against the Axis. Of course, it took a lot of Turing’s patience and time, to be able to build this machine. I bring this movie, because in it is about cryptography.

Classic Security Architecture Models

In a past post , I talked about security policies and how are they made; but I didn’t said how they are put in action. The policies only tells you how things need to be organize and how are they suppose to function. They are the sets of rules in the system. There are some security policies that are behaviors that people need to have inside a company, and there are other policies that specify the behavior of the system. If the security policies only say how things are suppose to be, then how can we make sure they are being follow correctly? For that reason there exist security models.

The Evil Within my Computer

I remember when I was a kid entering to these websites were you can play free games. Sometimes I entered to webpages that were legit, but other times I didn’t. And I entered those unlegit websites because I didn’t knew of the harm that those websites could cause. So by now you probably figure out that my computer was FULL of malware, by that time. The concept of malware is not knew in the computer science community, but many people do not know what is malware and the various types of malware it exists in the world. In this post I will talk about some of the most common malware there are and how can we prevent them.