Nothing Like that Fresh Password Feeling

Simply amazing how basic domain squatting is still prevalent within marketing companies who set up your website.  Small business owners are prime victims making rookie mistakes that they end up paying for in emotional and economic terms.

Are you vulnerable? Test yourself, change your admin passwords….oh whoops you don’t actually have admin rights.

ABC of which Administrator rights you should NEVER give up

1. Domain access
2. Hosting access
3. WordPress access

Week 4 – PS4 zero hours gameplay

These extra 10-20 hours I’ve gained from no gameplay have been used for creative thinking and strategizing as well as considering the look and feel of my new infrastructure.  Tactically, I feel ready for the grind I’ve set-up for myself and settled on aiming pretty high this year.

I’ll be investing in 2-3 streamers this year on Twitch and a couple of them have already caught my eye since actually listening to their background story.

Streamers have plenty of real-world challenges, the issue for me is to identify the fakers and actually talent hunt the folk who have a good balance of high-quality gameplay, personality and authenticity.

Considering Pro-AM game streaming?  Think about

Promoting the stream - schedule 
Staffing the stream - moderators, tech support
Career dev – what are the channel goals
Real world Events
Money management – game budgets, giveaways, sponsors.

I watched enough broadcasters and streams to see clearly why some fail dismally and some gain massive viewers and sponsors.  I’ve recently taken to hosting channels with tiny viewer levels just to boast their confidence and getting abit more involved with chat although I typically lurk (stay in chat without interacting).

Coming up to 2 year anniversary – no one streams this anymore

 

Upgrade it, Patch it, Break it

The classic dilemma for patch management is when to do it and what will it break.  Especially, when dealing with Operating systems you run the risk of the application you’ve been using for decades suddenly not working (not supported).

This issue is bad enough when doing the upgrade for yourself but when you do it on behalf of a client you run the risk of being the root cause of the problem.

The latest MacOs upgrade is not compatible the Outlook for Mac 2013 (version 15.3), which was released October 2014….WTF.  So now you have to spend time and money on an upgrade.

Always plan your Technical upgrades

The best practice is to run a compatibility test on all applications especially business-critical ones. But why haven’t two of the biggest software vendors in the world built that into the OS upgrade process to at least notify the user?

Money talks louder, so shut up and buy the Office365 upgrade


Meanwhile, I try to keep my head straight and get totally distracted by just looking out the window.  Austria is a great place to avoid mass marketing but dammit this has just pushed me back into my one-track mind.

Everywhere I look….

What was the approval process for a company to register and pay for this domain and then actively market it?

So much for Global Thinking

How you got Hacked…..and why

In the past,  I’ve spent hours on the phone trying to show someone how to configure an email client.

Small business put up little fight hackers and snoopers.

Normally intelligent individuals suddenly become dummies when faced with anything “technical”.

Individuals are routinely breached because they are either

Too busy to care about basic hygiene (tech bits)

Have no password management skills

Have no trusted technical support partner

Do not monitor their set-up

…or most importantly, not bothered.

These same individuals take extreme cause with their daily online banking.

InfoSec skills – Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT)

As a Small Business or individual, If you were going to hire a Private IT Security Professional here’s what you should be looking for.

Trust me I’m a Professional – Until Dawn™

Loving this 2016 IT Security Job Description

Experience as part of an incident response team (either in-house or as a consultant).

An ability to provide technical analysis and direction for investigations.

An understanding of networking protocols and infrastructure designs; including, firewall functionality, routing, encryption, host and network intrusion detection systems, load balancing, and other network protocols.

An understanding of the current vulnerabilities, response, and mitigation strategies used in cyber security.

Willing to work out of hours and public holidays as part of a shift Rota and when on call as needed.

Inherent passion for information security and service excellence.

An ability to analyse and reverse engineer various file types including providing dynamic and static analysis of malware artefacts and binaries as well as other malicious attack files.

Be able to complete post-mortem analysis of network logs, traffic flows and other activities to identify malicious activity on a network.


Keep it Clean

I cannot be bothered to delete Exchangeable Image File (EXIF) data recently so if you dig deep enough you’ll know when and where I took this image and on what device.

Cyber Crime, Cyber Bullies, Cyber Idiots…….and now Cyber Clean.

I saw this on a friend’s shelf and was sniggering for ages, marketing people enjoying the Cyber-hype.

Stick the word “Cyber” on everything

The product itself is pretty cool and basically a keyboard and device cleaner that works.

We are safe and clean

….….for now.

Available from JOKER in Hong Hong…honest I’m not making this stuff up.