Cybersecurity Becoming No. 1 Concern for GCs and Directors

Here is an interesting piece of information.

63% of the individuals surveyed by Law.com ‘s Corporate Counsel believe that the General Counsel needs to take charge of cybersecurity and not their IT departments.

Link: http://urtak.is/NJFOu1 

Now this is going to come about through the Corporate Governance or Corporate Compliance areas of the corporate legal department. The skill sets that currently are located in the Information Technology departments will be absorbed by the GC. One group will be putting together the standards (governance) while the other (compliance) will be testing and checking.

Born from this will be additional national standards much like the ISO 9000 movement in the early ‘90s..

Cybersecurity Becoming No. 1 Concern for GCs and Directors

ColdFusion - List Functions

I thought I would pass on a little trick to those programmers who also have to design the data structures behind their applications.

If you plan on using table primary keys (usually a sequential number) as something to use in sub-queries or list structures consider starting you numbers at 1000 instead of 1.

Typically when creating a table I start the primary key with 1:

CREATE TABLE SomeTable (
     TableID int NOT NULL PrimaryKey IDENTITY(1,1)
     )

This works great except when you want to put the result set of returned values from a SQL statement in a string:

<CFSET SomeString = #ValueList(QueryName.TableID)#>

And then search that string for matching records:

#ListFind(SomeString, ‘3’, ‘,’)#

Sometimes you run into a situation where the first three (3) that is found is actually in a value like 103 or 33. The Find functions consider everything an alphanumeric and cannot restrict itself to numeric value only.

OK… here is the trick.

Start your numeric value in the primary key field with “1000” instead of “1”.

IDENTITY(1000,1)

If your data table is going to have thousands or hundreds of thousands then consider using an initial number even higher than 1000.

This will truly make your FIND operations run more smoothly and take the opportunity to mix up numbers every once a while.

Adobe ColdFusion 9 * Functions by category

URL for Sale

I'll be listing one of my URL's on Flippa.com for bidding next month; the web address CONSULTANTMONTHLY.COM is for sale.

Apple Warms Up to Hackers, Plans Presentation at Black Hat

Tables are turning.

For years users of Apple computer products felt themselves protected against hackers and computer viruses. Seriously looking down their noses at PC users flaunting the bullet proof boxes as exhibit number one.

Yet, programmers then, and now, use the PC platform to be productive with. Windows based machines still dominate internet servers, programming platforms, database farms, individual productivity machines and more.

Why?

Because with Windows based machines we know what we have. We are aware of the obstacles that we have before us that we need to either over come outright or at the very least be aware of as we move along.

Now the age of hand held and tablet sized devices are ruling the end-user world. Heck, I have an iPhone, iPad and all those modern things too.  But when it comes to being productive, writing applications for corporate America I still choose the Windows platform with keyboards I can bang away on and mice to point and double click with.  We still need those things to be productive.

We opt for modern hybrid cars, but tolerate (understandably) eighteen wheelers to get the products we make and buy to market.

Anyway, back to Apple finally feeling the wrath of the rest of the world. Every PC professional on the planet knew this day was going to arrive. Apple, now that they are bigger than Microsoft and have more devices world-wide will become more and more of a target of those who need to prove their ability to bring others to their knees.

Yup, the tables are turning – targets are changing – and Apple users are now looking at us for assistance rather than distain.

Apple Warms Up to Hackers, Plans Presentation at Black Hat - Bloomberg

Examples of Good Passwords

Ever wonder what would make a good password? Take a simple word and fine-tune it with just a change or two and poof – a really hard to guess password.  Check it out at http://www.cf-toolbox.com

How Much Data Do You Have?

This should be fun. I published this for the individuals who use our Lawtrac application for pre-Discovery work and manage large blocks of data in document banks, but the numbers can apply to everyone.

HOW MUCH DATA DO YOU HAVE?

CD = 650 MB = 50,000 pages.

DVD = 4.7 GB = 350,000 pages.
DLT Tape = 40/80 GB = 3 to 6 Million pages.
Super DLT Tape = 60/120 GB = 4 to 9 Million pages.
***************************
Page Estimates:
1 MB is about 75 pages;
1 GB is about 75,000 pages (pick-up truck full of documents).
Aver. pgs. per email: 1.5 (100,099 pages per GB).
Aver. pgs. per word document: 8 (64,782 pages per GB).
Aver. pgs. per spreadsheet: 50 (165,791 pages per GB).
Aver. pgs. per power point: 14 (17,552 pages per GB).
***************************
For the average .PST or .NSF Email File:
100 MB .PST file is 900 emails and 300 attachments.
400 MB .PST file is 3,500 emails and 1,200 attachments.
600 MB .PST file is 5,500 emails and 1,600 attachments.
A 1.00 GB .NSF file is 9,000 emails and 3,000 attachments.
A 1.5 GB .NSF file is 13,500 emails and 4,500 attachments.
***************************
Note: Many variables will affect ALL of the actual numbers above, including especially large image and video files, and recursive files.
***************************
Bits and Bytes Sizes:
•8 bits are equal to 1 byte (one or two words),
•1,024 bytes are equal to 1 kilobyte (KB).
•1,024 kilobytes (KB) are equal to 1 megabyte (MB or Meg).
•1,024 megabytes are equal to 1 gigabyte (GB or Gig) (truck full of paper).
•1,024 gigabytes are equal to 1 terabyte (TB) (50,000 trees of paper).
•1,024 terabytes are equal to 1 petabyte (PB) (250 Billion Pgs. of Text).
•1,024 petabytes are equal to 1 exabytes (EB) (1 000 000 000 000 000 000 bytes).

Go Daddy identified as spammer

I never really did care for Go Daddy’s service and my research into the ton of email getting through our spam filter has got me upset with them even more.

The first thing that I hold against Go Daddy is the way they dupe people into registering a URL (web address). They will do it for you for a couple of bucks, but then THEY own it. It is your idea and your website, but they own the web address. Once they have it you can’t move it to a more secure environment or use one of the more dynamic programming languages because they own your ass.

Now they are allowing these spam pushers to register a quick URL and use their SMTP servers (send mail server) to process thousands (perhaps even hundreds of thousands) of spam emails.  The spammers are doing this for only a couple of bucks.

Even their own Forums board (link below) is pleading with them to stop this practice of allowing so many spam email mills to use their servers to push JUNK.

Go Daddy identified as spammer | Forums | Groups | Go Daddy Support