encryption

There is a logical argument to be made that tooling for infrastructure and application management is where most of the money will be made when it comes to cloud computing. It's not that cloud providers won't make money, but that the cost of entry to the market is so high that there will be many more consumers than providers, making high-quality tooling a necessity.

I spoke to EnStratus co-founder and CTO George Reese about what customers are looking for. EnStratus provides a suite of tools for managing cloud infrastructure. This includes support for the provisioning, management, and monitoring of applications in multiple public and private clouds.

Reese told me the company is seeing medium to large companies examining the public cloud as a deployment possibility for some apps and they want to do it in a way that they can use their beta code in future applications. But their main concerns come down to security and control.

The public cloud is a trade-off, requiring users to decide what they want to give up in order to take advantage of the computing capabilities. The thing people don't want to lose control over is the data.

According to Reese, there are three control areas that users should look for when considering cloud deployments. … Read more

PDF files hold so much information these days that it's inevitable that some of it will be worth protecting from prying eyes. A PDF encryption utility, like GetPDF's Encryptor Decryptor 3.0, can help you keep your files secure. It will not only protect your PDFs with passwords but will also allow or disallow a wide range of access options and changes, such as printing, copying, signing, merging, assembling, filling, or extracting files. It also decrypts PDFs, with the right password, and verifies the passwords of protected files.

This tool's interface is well-laid-out, with clear field descriptors … Read more

Quite a bit of hype surrounds Square, the mobile payment processing service founded by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. But mobile payment processing is hardly a new concept, as companies like Symbol (now owned by Motorola) have long offering a wide array of devices.

The big deal is not the concept, but the fact that you can turn your iPhone or other mobile device into an on-demand payment processing service.

I spoke to Tom Patterson, chief security officer of MagTek, a provider of electronic devices for the secure transfer of payment data, to understand the implications of this new wave of … Read more

If you've had an iPhone for a long time and you have grown to depend on it then you should know that iPhone backups are important. This week I'll focus on some good tips about the automatic backups created in iTunes each time you sync your iPhone or iPod Touch. All of the tips apply, whether you are using Mac OS X or Windows.

Speed up your backups

If you own an iPhone, you probably enjoy the convenience of using the built-in camera for both still and video photography. I know I do, but my over enthusiastic use … Read more

If you use Gmail, but worry about your privacy--especially in the wake of Google's attack by sophisticated hackers--CNET reporter Stephen Shankland shows you how to have your cake and eat it, too.

What are the secret ingredients to a secure Gmail? A triumvirate of freeware comprised of Gnu Privacy Guard encryption, Mozilla's Thunderbird e-mail application (Windows|Mac), and an e-mail encryption plug-in called Enigmail (Windows and Mac).

Switching from open to encrypted e-mail isn't a light undertaking, and as Stephen points out, there are plenty of drawbacks and trade-offs when you swap ease-of-use for near-total privacy. Still, … Read more

Perhaps Google's announcement that Chinese cyber attackers went after human rights activists' Gmail accounts has made you skittish about just how private your own messages are on the Google e-mail service.

Well, if you want to take a significant step in keeping prying eyes away from your electronic correspondence, one good encryption technology that predates Google altogether is worth looking at. It's called public key encryption, and I'm sharing some instructions on how to get it working if you want try it.

Unfortunately, better security typically goes hand in hand with increased inconvenience. But some human rights … Read more

Shortly after Google announced the partially successful cyberattack on Gmail, the company said it will activate by default a secure network technology for its e-mail service.

Google has long offered the option to access its Web-based Gmail service by using HTTPS--a secure version of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol that Web browsers use to retrieve information from Web sites. Now it will become the norm.

"Using HTTPS helps protect data from being snooped by third parties, such as in public Wi-Fi hotspots," Gmail Engineering Director Sam Schillace, said in a Gmail blog post on Tuesday. "We initially … Read more

I know this is TLDR fodder of the highest order, but I'd like to read to you from a press release--for a security product, even. Here it goes:

The entire line of Spyrus Hydra PC USB encryption drives are invulnerable to such attacks because no password authentication values or keys are ever stored on Hydra PC devices after logoff or removal. Unlike any competing USB encryption drive, the Hydra PC reconstitutes a Master Key Encryption Key at logon using a FIPS-approved Key Derivation Function which utilizes, at a minimum, an Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman (ECDH) public/private key pair … Read more

Chances are, right now you have something on your computer that you would rather other people not see. Financial information, a diary, photographic evidence of a night of debauchery--you know what we're talking about. Fortunately for you, SafeHouse Explorer USB Flash Drive Encryption makes it easy to keep your private stuff private, on a flash drive or on your computer.

In our adventures as software reviewers, we see a lot of amateurish software, so it was a breath of fresh air when we opened SafeHouse Explorer and found a well-designed and well-explained program. The application walks first-time users through … Read more