Wayne Rash

If you spend enough time here in Washington you begin to realize that you have to be careful what you ask for, because you might get it. Another thing you learn is that for every official action, there is an equal, opposite and unintended reaction. A corollary to that rule is that “no well-intended deed […]

Security in the world of machine-to-machine (M2M) communications is a mess, according to Tatu Ylönen, founder and CEO of SSH Communications Security in Helsinki, Finland. Ylönen told me as we met over breakfast near Washington, D.C., that few IT managers and even fewer C-level managers really have an inkling of the security risks posed by […]

The Federal Communications Commission will try again to establish regulations that uphold “network neutrality” with the legal grounding to withstand review by the federal courts. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said on Feb. 19 that he would use a recent ruling of a federal court as an invitation to use Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act […]

T-Mobile had to perform damage control and so announced Feb. 18 that it will offer an expanded selection of BlackBerry devices after users expressed outrage in tweets and phone calls about the carrier’s offer to accept BlackBerry trade-ins for new iPhones. This follows a series of tweets by T-Mobile CEO John Legere to outraged T-Mobile […]

When a big company such as HP needs to issue a clarification in response to customer outrage over a new policy, you can bet at least part of the outrage was due to a lack of thought somewhere in the process. Let’s face it, big companies don’t get big by infuriating their customers, and HP […]

Amtrak’s New Siemens Locomotive With Digital Controls Cruises Rails by Wayne Rash Amtrak’s Sprinter Arrives at Washington’s Union Station Amtrak and Siemens show off a shiny, new Cities Sprinter locomotive at Washington, D.C.’s Union Station right across the platform from Amtrak’s famed Acela high-speed train. The Sprinter is nearly as fast, cruising the Northeast Corridor […]

With all of the discussion about credit card fraud, and how cards with EMV chips might have prevented much of the Target credit card breach, it’s easy to assume that those chips solve all credit card fraud. But they aren’t a panacea. In fact, more secure credit cards could mean an increase in other types […]

I walked into my office on Sunday afternoon to pay some bills and look at real estate listings that I can’t afford, but when I sat down at my computer, I found a message on the screen telling me that I might be the victim of counterfeit software. Inside the dialog box, which had opened […]

One thing became clear during the Feb. 3 Senate hearings on credit card security, it is that the duty to protect card payment systems falls to everyone in the payment chain. This means that banks and credit card issuers need to provide for up to date security, merchant processors need to be able to handle […]

WASHINGTON—Target CFO John Mulligan told the Senate Judiciary Committee that his company, which was the target of a massive data breach in late 2013, has begun the process of implementing secure EMV cards at all of its stores. Mulligan said that about 300 Target stores in the United States (all in California) have already been […]

Mainz, Germany—The lever was cool to the touch as I grasped it, reaching head high with both hands. “Pull hard,” the man next to me advised, so I did, and kept pulling as the lever creaked. “That’s enough,” he said, “you can let go now.” I dropped my hands to my side and then helped […]

HANNOVER, Germany—How do you know when an industry is growing? When the trade show company putting on the industry’s biggest show has to line up more space. That’s the situation facing Deutsche Messe and the managers of the massive CeBIT trade show here. At CeBIT’s Preview Press conference here, Bitkom president Prof. Dieter Kempf presented […]