Musings on personal and enterprise technology (of potential interest to professional technoids and others)

Thursday, March 27, 2008

Scalpel? Check. Google Book Search? Check.

The criticality of search capabilities in all computing environments is nothing new.... Here however, is a nicely presented YouTube clip of a physician explaining how efficient and effective search such as Google Book Search can directly save lives:

Inside Google Book Search: Scalpel? Check. Google Book Search? Check.: "...we were intrigued to read that Dr. Schwimmer had turned to Book Search as a teaching aid while in the emergency department with a group of students and residents.

We recently invited Dr. Schwimmer to share all the ways he’s found Google Book Search useful as a physician, and here’s what he had to say."

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

BlackBerry security suggestions

Seems a bit severe... e.g. if you don't allow bluetooth, then how are you supposed to have a safe hands-free blackberry phonecall while driving, without messing around with wired headsets? ;-)

But definitely some worthwhile food for thought here about best practices for BES lockdowns:

Demilitarised Zone most secure option for BlackBerry device: "...NTA recommends the following security checklist for BlackBerry users and organisations:

  • Enable content protection - This encrypts the hand held data. The device should be set at 0 (which is a 16-bit elliptic curve key).
  • Password policy - The forbidden password option should be set, disallowing users to choose a simple key pattern. The minimum password length setting should be used to enforce a key of nine characters and a maximum password attempt should be set at a recommended five times.
  • Application control - disallows third party application downloads and should only allow approved software.
  • Other messaging services - functions other than those necessary should be disabled which prevents the use of peer-to-peer messaging such as ICQ and Google Talk.
  • Do not use Bluetooth - this function should be disabled due to its inherent security vulnerabilities..."

Monday, March 17, 2008

VoIP gets handle on protection - Financial Post 13-Mar-2008

An interesting taxonomy of VOIP security threats (standard view; print-formatted: VoIP gets handle on protection ):

"...VoIPshield Systems Inc., an Ottawa-based software firm that develops products to secure voice communications on IP networks, warns that attacks on VoIP systems can fall into one or more of five categories.


These include privacy intrusion (call eavesdropping, call recording and voice mail tampering); availability (denial of service attacks, buffer overflow attacks and malware); authenticity (registration hijacking, caller ID spoofing and sound insertion; theft (toll fraud/service theft) and data theft through masquerading data as voice and data network crossover attacks; and voice spam, known as SPIT, which includes unsolicited calling, voice mailbox stuffing, and something called vishing (voice phishing)..."