Cameron Sturdevant

Manual audits to check for Sarbanes-Oxley Act and internal control compliance of Idaho Power’s servers was eating up too much time. One solution was to test a small percentage of representative servers, but Idaho Power wanted more complete information and in August 2006 started looking at compliance solutions. The result was the February rollout of […]

In my upcoming review of nCircle’s Device Profiler 3000 (DP3000), I was reminded of how much overlap there is between compliance regulations. In a nutshell, the DP3000 is a scanning engine (it uses Nmap, for example) that collects configuration data from servers, network devices and applications and then forwards that information back to the central […]

I attended a Symantec endpoint security reviewer workshop in San Francisco Dec. 11. These workshops are always an interesting mix of “head fixing” on the part of the workshop sponsor (Symantec is far from the only company that holds such events) combined with often feisty reviewers on the other side. Our wrangles yesterday ranged from […]

For most small and midsize organizations, use the following formula to find a Web host provider: Price (where low is good and high is bad) divided by services (where more is better) equals “our decision.” There are some nonintuitive factors that must now be brought into play to get the best hosting provider for your […]

At a recent speaking engagement about PCI and SOX compliance, I asked the audience to get out their wallets and pull out their credit cards. Then I asked them to hand the card to the person on their right. Everyone got out their wallet. Nobody would hand over the card. The point of the exercise […]

10 Things You Should Know About Spam Between marketers and malware, spam has some powerful perpetrators. Technologies such as fast-flux DNS, which uses a large number of servers and quick-changing domain records, have created botnets with spamming zombies that are hard to take down. In fact, 10 Things You Should Know About Spam – 1. […]

If you are thinking of replacing your organization’s Domain Name System)or if you have a DNS solution that you want me and the good folks at WiscNet to consider, then read on. Below, I’ve published the invitation I sent today to three DNS vendors. We have room for one more company or open-source project to […]

Upcoming federal deadlines for IPv6 implementation mean that core IP services including DNS will come under some scrutiny. In January, eWEEK Labs will go on-site at WiscNet to evaluate a DNS replacement project. DNS, the service that translates names into IP addresses, so you can type in www.eweek.com instead of 192.168.22.35, is a relatively distant […]

I got DNS in my anti-spam product. And I’ve got anti-spam in my DNS management. This all happened while working on my “Top 10 things you should know about spam” while also putting together an RFP (Request for Proposal) for a review on DNS service tools. DNS plays a big role in identification and verification […]

I was asked this morning if I would buy another Treo if I had the chance to pick a smart phone today. Here’s most of what I said: I love my Treo 650. The phone has to be charged nightly, but it never runs out of power. My 650 has more scars from being dropped […]

I spent four days attending the technical sessions at Oracle OpenWorld. Similarly, I spent two days at Salesforce.com’s Dreamforce conference held last month attending a variety of technical and application sessions. The bottom line from attending these sessions at both events is that while the executive level message is “faster, more flexible, more manageable,” someone […]

After three days at Oracle’s OpenWorld in San Francisco, (I’ve been at the show since Monday, Nov. 12) here are my key take aways: 1. “Virtual” and “open” are the key concepts for how the resources and riches of the IT world are being divided and re-divided and have passed from “emerging technology” to business […]