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Showing posts from 2014

Citrix Mobility London 2014

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Citrix Mobility 2014 At the start of the event there was a look back over the last 25 years of Citrix systems.   Lots of nostalgic images of previous versions of software including Client Access Suite.   It was an interesting introduction which reminded us all how far Citrix has come over the years. Jason Tooley, Country Manager for Citrix in the UK was the host for the event.   He didn’t cover too much himself, but acted as the glue between other presenters. Philip Redman, VP of Mobile Solutions & Strategy at Citrix, was the first main speaker on stage covering “enabling the mobile enterprise”.   His initial point was some things never change and included a quick dig at England’s poor performance at the World Cup in the summer, but then continued to say that the Enterprise Mobility spectrum is always changing.     Initially I wasn’t too impressed with the slide deck.   It seemed a bit slapdash with old icons for Twitter and the images had been crudely cut and pasted

Password Security

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    Password security Over the last couple of years there have been quite a few instances of sophisticated hacking attempts on major companies. These include (but not limited to) Playstation Gawker LinkedIn Adobe When these events occur, it can raise any questions, such as How does this kind of thing happen?   What can people do with this information?   What can you do to protect yourself? Let’s try and answer these questions! How does this kind of thing happen? There are lots of different ways hackers use to access information they are not supposed to have access to.   The majority of these hacks are a result of Malware or a Virus being installed on a PC in the companies’ network.   This can be used to get access to company resources from the inside rather than directly from the Internet.    If the Malware can send information back its author, then this can be very successful for a hacker.   To get Malware onto a company PC it is usually attached via ema

My first Uber

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There has been a lot in the news recently about the new taxi offering in London called Uber.  The concept is that Uber have a community of vetted drivers who are hailed using a smartphone app.  The app is used as a meter to calculate the charge of the journey.  This unique offering is a slight loophole between 1. Having a physical office taking bookings aka Minicabs 2.  Having a physical meter in the car rather than a prebooked far aka Black Cabs. Personally I loved the sound of the idea and was keen to try it out. So how did it go? I was in Shoreditch on Saturday night and instead of struggling for the last train back we decided to use Uber for the 9 mile journey. The Good Booking was extremely simple!  Click and done.  The driver arrived in about 3 minutes.  His car was immaculate and very comfortable.  The journey was super smooth and not having to have money on my person was much better than having the struggle under the interior car light looking for those pound coins

Pre-Approve ActiveSync devices

Hi Recently we have enabled ActiveSync quaratine rules in our organisation.  This was to stop a member of staff using their own device to access corporate data. We have only enabled AS for users with corporate devices, but some people have worked out that this allows you to use AS on your own device.  This is far from ideal, especially considering that our IT department now have full wipe access on their personal device!  Enabling this quaratine rule will stop people from taking advantage of this setting, unless someone from IT approves their device. On the whole this works pretty well.  The difficulty is that it slows down the process of provisioning multiple devices, especially when you are attempting to complete workshops with users during a handover period. I found a way to pre-approve devices using powershell.  First of all you need to find the deviceID.  On an Apple device you go to Settings > About > Serial Number.  The deviceID is appl serialnumber The difficu

InfoSecurity Europe 2014

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InfoSecurity Europe 2014 was held this week in London.  This 3 day event was designed for security professionals to network and for companies to display their security wares. Unfortunately the first 2 days were marred by a tube strike in London.  I believe this put many people off visiting Earl's Court for the event until the last day, it certainly did for me! So what did I see? Eric Cole I watched a keynote seminar inducting Dr Eric Cole into the InfoSecurity Europe hall of fame.  He had some wonderful insight into security issues of the day and what areas security professionals should focus on.  He discussed the switch of security from inbound threats to outbound threats.  Many attacks require an outbound connection to allow data to be sent externally and this is an area to focus monitoring on.  Among many things he shared with the audience he issued the Eric Cole challenge. Get a usage report of outbound internet connectivity by host IP. Check the top 10 lar