News Tagged "Businessweek"
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"We've Made Bad Security Tradeoffs"
Bruce Schneier is a rare creature in the computer-security world. Although he made his name as an alpha geek in cryptography and later, as chief technology officer of Net-security outfit Counterpane, Schneier can also speak to laypeople about the general security matters that increasingly touch all of our lives.
In the post September 11 era, he has emerged as one of the more cogent and quotable thinkers on the topic. In particular, he has asked hard questions about the effectiveness of some of the security measures passed after the terrorists’ massacre. Schneier’s latest book, Beyond Fear (Copernicus Books, 2003), is a highly readable compendium of his thoughts on the various aspects of real-world security. Designed for a general audience, it’s a great introduction to a complicated and confusing topic. I interviewed Schneier via e-mail over the week of Aug. 25. Here are edited excerpts of our exchange:…
The Secrets & Lies of Cyber-Security
In a readable new book, an expert tells managers how to keep the hackers at bay—almost
A computer virus shuts down your corporate e-mail for a day. Hackers deface your Web site with pornography. The need to share data with customers and vendors exposes critical corporate information to online theft. With your business ever more dependent on safe use of the Internet, security savvy has become as important as understanding marketing or finance.
Such savvy, however, has been hard for nontechie executives to acquire. Books and articles on security generally came in two equally useless varieties: incomprehensible or sensationalized. Remember all those books on how the Y2K bug would end civilization as we knew it? Now, Bruce Schneier, a highly respected security expert, has stepped into the breach with …
Words of Warning from a Cyber-Security Guru
Bruce Schneier of Counterpane Internet Security says computing today is unsafe at any speed. But we can minimize the dangers
Hardly a week goes by when corporate computing czars don’t have to absorb some rude piece of news from the security front. It may be a gaping hole somebody discovers in a browser or e-mail system, or a virulent new pest with a name like Melissa or Worm.ExploreZip. Against these mounting threats, the usual defensive arsenal of virus-scanning software, encryption, and firewalls seems flimsy indeed.
Brace yourself: The situation is going to get worse, according to Bruce Schneier, 36-year-old cryptography guru and author of Crypto-gram, an influential monthly newsletter. As new releases of common software grow more complex—and interact with one another in ways that nobody can predict—security products purchased off-the-rack will offer less and less protection from malicious viruses and hackers, Schneier warns. To be safe, companies may once again have to reengineer how they do business on the Net…
Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.