Alice Hill
C.S. Magor
Cat Miller
David Brumbaugh
David Chie
Dawn Kawamoto
Don Willmott
Elisabeth Greenbaum Kasson
Gayle Laakmann McDowell
Lekan Oguntoyinbo
Leslie Stevens-Huffman
M Noivad
Mark Feffer
nick kolakowski
Stephen Lahanas
Susan Hall
Vincent Chow
Symantec Admits to Being Hacked
Symantec, one of the premier Sillicon Valley computer security companies and makers of the Norton computer security and utility products, admitted in a Jan. 17 ComputerWorld article, that not only was their network hacked but source code for Symantec Endpoint Protection 11.0, Symantec Antivirus 10.2, Norton Antivirus Corporate Edition, Norton Internet Security, Norton Utilities, Norton GoBack and pcAnywhere, had been stolen. Norton Antivirus, Norton Internet Security and Norton Utilities are among Symantec’s most prominent consumer-grade products. pcAnywhere is a multi-platform remote access… continue…
Internships: Start Applying Now
I had the opportunity to meet with one of my college mentees not long ago. For the sake of this article, we’ll call her Zoe. Zoe was back for winter break from one of the UC campuses in Southern California, having just completed the Fall term of her second year of a Computer Science and Communications double major. Here in Silicon Valley, when I meet my mentees in person, I usually like going to breakfast at little restaurant in Menlo… continue…
More Free Online University Training for High-Tech Workers
What many of us in Silicon Valley once thought was just an aberration could be the start of a new trend: free online university training. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is the latest to follow Stanford and Princeton in offering free online education, according to Forbes. MIT’s online learning initiative, called M.I.T.x, will offer the online teaching of MIT courses free of charge to anyone in the world. More universities have jumped on the free online university training trend. The website Academic Earth is a clearing… continue…
Android: Is it Safe? I’m Not So Sure…
Not long ago, the viaForensics blog demonstrated and Android app which requires no permissions and yet is able to give an attacker a remote shell and allow them to execute commands on the device remotely from anywhere in the world. Wait, aren’t Android-based handheld devices starting to be used throughout the Federal government? While I think that it’s great there are so many apps now on Android, many of us in Silicon Valley and other tech centers who deal with… continue…
2012: The Future, Not the End of the World
A friend and colleague from NASA’s Ames Research Center sent me an interesting email about a webpage they maintain at NASA dedicated to 2012: Beginning of the End or Why the World Won’t End? At first I had to scoff and thought to myself, “oh great, our tax dollars at work!” Thinking back at the “End of the World Scare” from last May (then October), and some of the hysteria it caused, I decided, “OK, this makes great sense for NASA… continue…
One Way of Setting Goals for the New Year
Every since I left college, I have used the time at the end of each year to reflect on what I have done to achieve my goals, and then set new ones for the next 12 months. Yes, it sounds rather corny but for me it helps me measure my own personal and professional growth. In other words, I do this for ME, not my employer. Let me share a couple of secrets as background: I tend to be rather… continue…
Choosing What Training You Need
Recently at a meeting of a Coffee Club in Menlo Park and then at a virtual Skype mentoring session with a student I mentor from a university in New York, I heard the same question: “What high-tech training and skills do I need to learn now so that I can be competitive in the job market today and into the future?” Everything depends on the individual. It depends on your background, skills, capabilities, interests, and where your strengths and weaknesses… continue…
New Year’s Resolution: Take Charge of Your Training
Many high-tech workers believe that if they work hard and do a great job, their companies will make sure that the employees have jobs and are rewarded for their loyalty. Part of that prize: the latest in training. It makes sense for the company to keep up-to-date with the latest and greatest in order to be able to compete, right? Wrong! What may have been the case as recently as the 1990s hasn’t been true for a while. While it… continue…
How the Grinch Hacked Christmas
Here in Silicon Valley, we tend to share information and the latest developments with each other at lightning speed via IM, Twitter, Facebook, email, SMS, etc. The grape vine here is probably faster than most government communications systems when it comes to getting information out. Last Friday, an extremely agitated colleague from a local Internet security company texted me. He said that “the worst data breach since WikiLeaks has happened.” He proceeded. According to the link he sent, Santa got… continue…
Hospital Turns Away Patients Because of Computer Virus
It’s long been feared that computer viruses or malware would someday disrupt critical infrastructure like hospitals. And it looks like it’s finally happened. According to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution article on Dec. 9, the Gwinnett Medical Center in Gwinnett County, Ga., had to divert patients to other hospitals after a system-wide virus shut down patient registration at its campuses in Lawrenceville and Duluth. The effects were felt throughout the system for all of last weekend. According to the article, “the infection,… continue…
