Wayne Rash

In their 2015 novel “Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War,” authors P.W. Singer and August Cole postulate a future conflict between the U.S. and China that’s enabled by supply chain hacking. But rather than suggesting that Chinese agents somehow inserted a secret chip into a few servers, they take the far more […]

AUSTIN, Texas—A set of new polls conducted within the IT industry shows that spending on IT security is slightly up, but that plans for future spending are for initiatives that are actually symptoms of a larger problem. Another survey of chief information security officers shows that spending is unfocused due to a lack of leadership […]

AUSTIN, Texas—When a fighter pilot is in a dogfight, a specific set of skills plays a role in whether the pilot survives the encounter. One set of those skills is a particular way of reacting to what’s going on during the aerial competition. Those same skills can also help you deal with security threats. According […]

The story in Bloomberg Businessweek was lurid in the extreme. It read like an Ian Fleming novel, included stylized images of computer circuit boards and had pictures of a tiny chip. What happened, according to the story, was that Chinese hackers working for that nation’s military had found a way to insert a tiny surveillance […]

The first word that comes to mind when considering last week’s breach of Facebook is “damn.” Meaning, in this case, that you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Facebook has become a valuable tool for customer engagement, but as last week’s breach makes clear, the social network is also fraught with risk. […]

The U.S. Department of Justice is about to take on the state of California in a battle that is sure to muddy the already murky waters surrounding net neutrality. At stake is both the definition of that neutrality and the limits of a state’s ability to regulate the internet. The basis of the questions involved […]

Researchers at security company ESET say that they have found a new type of malware that embeds itself into a computer’s firmware, where it eludes discovery and from where removal is very difficult. The firmware can withstand all normal methods of discovery, it can’t be removed by anti-malware products, and it will survive the reinstallation […]

Local governments are no longer allowed to restrict the deployment of small-cell wireless infrastructure sites in ways that the FCC considers unreasonable. To accomplish this, the Federal Communications Commission on Sept. 26 placed limits on restrictions localities can place on cell infrastructure, and strict shot clocks of 60 and 90 days for consideration of applications […]

UPDATE: Four days after this review was published, the Apple Watch used in the review stopped working, and there was no remedy readily available. T-Mobile, from whom we purchased the Apple Watch, declined to replace it, so the now non-functional device is being returned. When cartoonist Chester Gould outfitted his legendary detective, Dick Tracy, with a […]

While the new iPhone XS looks just like the iPhone X it replaced, there’s a lot inside that’s new, including better wireless technology. When you take the iPhone XS out of the box, it’s a disappointment. The shiny new iPhone that you just spent all that money on looks just like the iPhone X that […]

Your buying experience with Puget Systems will likely start with an interview. A Puget specialist will want to know exactly how you will want to use your workstation, and the questions will be detailed. When I called them, the questions focused on not only the general types of task, but the specifics. What software was […]

As you would expect with an update to Apple’s iOS, there are some cool new features to try out on your iPhone or iPad. But the big news about iOS 12 is elsewhere. Unlike previous releases where older products bogged down and instability rose, the new version of Apple’s mobile operating system is intended to […]