MIT

Cybersecurity 101

My first encounter of computer breach happened almost 40 years ago when I just started as a systems programmer after graduating from MIT. My computer terminal was mis-behaving at random intervals.  Sensing a potential intruder, I wrote a small system utility to monitor and trap the offender.  Once trapped, my utility would identify and lock the hacker’s computer, display a 5-second count down clock and promptly crash the computer when the clock ticked to 0.  It didn’t take long to identify and confront the culprit. I smacked his head with a rolled up newspaper!

Fast forward to now. With the proliferation of Internet, cyberhackings are much more frequent, complex and damaging nowadays.  We hear and remember high-profile ones like Equifax, Home Depot, Target, Sony…  But according to 2016 State of SMB Cybersecurity Report, almost 50% of small businesses got hacked.

“Most small-business owners don’t think they’re at risk. As a result, … they are indeed ill-prepared to safeguard against an attack,” said Bryan Seely, a network engineer famous for hacking into the FBI.

You, my business customers, are small businesses.  I have to care. I don’t want you to fail. Yes, I know about antivirus software, firewalls and encryption.  But that’s baby stuff and I know there’s so much that I don’t know. So,

In a moment of insanity, I signed up a course on Cybersecurity: Technology, Application and Poilicy from MIT xPro.  I instantly regretted my witless decision after looking at the ridiculous syllabus, plus there’s a test weekly for 6 weeks before the final exam. Arrrrgh.

It started this week….  and I’m happy to report that MIT professors haven’t changed.  It’s fire hose water boarding time.  I just took week 1 assessment test…. We’ll see.

Drop me a line if you are curious about information flow tracking, taint propagation, trusted computing base, fully homomorphic encryption or obliviuos random access memory.

Am I having fun yet?!