(ISC)² Blog

Data leakage in social media

Perhaps a good psychiatrist can explain why millions of people have this compulsive urge to put almost everything they do on a social networking site. Whatever is your motivation for using a social networking site, it must be clearly understood that you are giving a lot of yourself away, even to those who are not included in your list of friends. Take Sarah Palin. It is said that she made some very simple mistakes in handling her Facebook page. In the wealth of information she made available about herself, she included her wedding date as well. Her email account was... Read more →

Bullet-proofing messengers

OPINION: A troubling article in Forbes raises concerns about how society takes care of those who raise legitimate, well-founded concerns about their employers. Aside from the specific legal decision in this particular case, there is a wider issue about protecting whistleblowers from retribution. If a whistleblowing employee makes allegations of serious impropriety by his employer, and those allegations are upheld, is it reasonable for him/her to insist on remaining employed by the organization? A few enlightened managements might swallow their pride and allow the whistleblowing employee to carry on normally in employment but I strongly suspect that in most cases... Read more →

Dotted lines in shifting sands

An opinion piece regarding a possible US law change raises fascinating ethical questions about privacy rights. Whereas employers have some interest in what their employees are saying and doing in their personal/non-work time, employees also have reasonable expectations of privacy concerning their private lives: OPINION: On the battlefield of the Internet, the Privacy Platoon struck a clanging blow against the Transparency Brigade last week, when two members of Congress introduced the Social Networking Online Protection Act. The bill would bar employers from demanding job applicants' Facebook passwords - which recently has become an issue: The ACLU's Maryland branch championed the... Read more →

Security Provisions In Software Development Contracts - Who Pays?

In the last few years, there has been a rise in the number of security vulnerabilities in software and applications which has ultimately led to huge losses in terms of money, trust and morale of the people using the software. Software development companies are always on the edge of their seats to get the software out of production and onto store shelves to stay on top of the game and the market. Vendors aim to have their software developed fast, cheap and qualitatively excellent. But, software which is fast and cheap and won’t have desired quality; software which is qualitatively... Read more →

The Ethics of White Hat Hacking

From the early hacker culture that took its form and shape at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) during the late 50s and early 60s to the present day groups of hackers, a lot has changed in the world of hacking in terms of ethics, motives, objectives, goals and incentives. Hacking, from what was considered to be a philosophy, a new way of life and a dream has now taken of a more derogatory form which feasts upon the exploitation of known and unknown vulnerabilities for illegal, unlawful financial, moral or political gains (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers:_Heroes_of_the_Computer_Revolution). Lines have been drawn to differentiate... Read more →