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.

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.

You been certify!

Cyber security is a huge field, with a lot of people «pretending» to be hackers. In today’s world, anybody that has a computer and can crack something thinks he/she is a hacker and can break anything; when in reality we know that isn’t true. But not all the hackers out there are «fake», there are hundreds of people that are really good in security topics and have a vast knowledge about it. To all those people that are good and want more, there exists security certificates that can help them, make the next jump and get an excellent job.

Do you have this hat in white?

Hackers!!!

Those vicious guys that are trying to break in into your computer and get all your personal information and sale it in the black market…well that’s what most of the people think when they hear the word «hacker». But what if I tell you that the hacker isn’t the bad guy, and instead it is the hero that came to save the day. You may thing that I am talking nonsense; that ALL hacker are bad because that’s what you saw on tv or movies. But in reality not all hackers are bad (even tough there are bad hackers) and these hackers provide an HUGE amount of help to a company’s system. To those hackers that help companies check if there are threats in their systems or computers, we call them ethical hackers and to the action of doing this we call it ethical hacking.