Ben Rothke

For years, companies have been routinely shredding physical documents to ensure that confidential and sensitive information doesnt fall into the hands of competitors. This practice is partly due to the ease at which Dumpster diving can be carried out. Indeed, companies believed they were doing their due diligence when they created policies that stated, for […]

Congress is considering anti-spyware legislation, and while the intent of our legislators is laudable, it is doubtful that Congress can pass an effective, enforceable anti-spyware bill. First, spyware is difficult to define legally. Second, even if we can define spyware legally, legislation will not protect us against spyware from companies outside Congress jurisdiction. A more […]

Why cant the music industry get security right? Why cant the industry that whimpers about billions of dollars in losses via peer-to-peer services find an effective security mechanism to protect its intellectual property from piracy? With its deep pockets and the abundance of security products, the industry should be able to protect itself. The reason […]

In a new book, “Business Under Fire: How Israeli Companies are Succeeding in the Face of Terror—and What We Can Learn from Them,” author Dan Carrison interviewed consultant Danny Halpern, who said, “In Israel, I believe we invest more in the quality of our security people and less in the mechanics. In America, because of […]

In the days after the Nov. 2 presidential election, we were treated to headlines such as “E-voting passed the test” on Techweb.com and “Success claimed for US e-voting machines” on newscientist.com. It is hard to find a single piece of official material that details exactly what test e-voting passed. Since there were no catastrophic failures […]

In his book “Practical Unix and Internet Security,” Professor Gene Spafford of Purdue University spells out Spafs first principle of security administration: “If you have responsibility for security but have no authority to set rules or punish violators, your own role in the organization is to take the blame when something big goes wrong.” Spafs […]

Many of us in the information technology industry are waking up to the fact that the government wants to be a big part of our daily business lives. Other industries live and die within the framework of government regulations: The FAAs for aviation and the FDAs for pharmaceuticals and biotech are only two examples. From […]

Last month, Harris Miller, president of the Information Technology Association of America, reportedly stated that the open-source movement is using the issue of e-voting security to wage a “religious war” that pits open-source software against proprietary software. The only thing more absurd would be for Miller to blame the woes of e-voting on a vast […]

If privacy advocates have their way, RFID tags would be banned like meat from a mad cow. They envision the worst-case scenario: total loss of consumer privacy. But these advocates fail to see that most people are careless about privacy. The average consumer is apathetic about privacy and willing to sell his or her privacy […]

“Big Brother” is commonly understood to mean an omnipresent, seemingly benevolent figure representing the oppressive control over individual lives exerted by an authoritarian government. The phrase has its roots in George Orwells 1949 novel “1984.” In 2004, the term has been misappropriated to describe everything from legitimate crime fighting to surveillance cameras to corporate e-mail […]