2009 October 22 | Security Active Blog

Dissecting The Hack Community

I wanted to put a quick post out to invite you guys to check out a new community that has been set up by excellent buddy Jayson Street called Dissecting The Hack.

I dont want to get into the discussion of what happened with regards to The F0rb1dd3n Network, you can read about that elsewhere and on the site. I do want to focus on the positive message that the book was getting accross through a great story.

So to keep upto date with what happening, and contribute to this new community, share thoughts and opinions then please check out the site.

The Obligatory Windows 7 has been released post :)

As I am sure everyone is aware today the 22nd October 2009 was the day of release for Windows 7. So here we are, and should everyone be rushing to purchase their copy of W7, or should they be sticking with the old stuff?

Well I personally I have been running W7 for a while, thanks to the good old MSDN and I have to say I like it. Like many have said its not super amazing, or a leap in technology as such but its what Vista should have been. W7 certainly seems to operate in a more solid and speedier fashion for me than Vista, it has some reasonable security implementations, but its toned down so its not screaming at you every time you touch the keyboard courtesy of User Access Control.

I have the Ultimate version so I have Bitlocker to go which is pretty good, and I have blogged about in the past. It really does seem to be an improvement over XP, as thats really what people and most certainly organisations are going to be having to consider, and I have not had any issues to mention, so its a positive review from me.

So if your getting a new machine and its coming with Windows 7, I dont think you need to be crying and kicking and screaming for XP. Obviously as with all upgrade paths, you may have peripheral driver issues, but thats all part of upgrade fun

Organisations may also look to seriously consider trialing W7 in the environment to see what benefits it can bring, especially if your still running Windows 2000, or maybe NT and 98

If all else fails you can probably look forward to the next Windows offering in a couple of years , unless we are all operating from Cloud 9. Also dont forget there is always some open source goodness to keep your machine up and running. I have multiple machines running different Windows and Linux flavours, so people have lots to choose from.

Happy upgrading, and dont forget to back up your important files. Oh and dont forget your bookmarks / favorites

RSA Security Bloggers Meet Up 2009 London – A Success – Thanks to All

Tuesday night in the Fountains Abbey in London at 7:30PM the first official RSA Security Bloggers Meet Up in the UK kicked off, and it was a great success.

The event was sponsored by Qualys, IronKey and ISACA, and it was thanks to them that we were able to provide an excellent buffet, an open bar, T-Shirt and USB key for every registered attendee. Over 30 people attended the event, everyone comment to me on what a success they thought the event was, the great opportunity to meet with new people and those they had only spoken to online. They also appreciated the relaxed atmosphere, and good discussions.

I am really pleased how the event panned out, and we had people there until 11PM when we had to pack up and head off.
I would like to thanks Kevin Riggins, Mel Johnson and I think it was Tomasz Miklas (sorry I am rubbish with new names) for helping to get everything setup before the official kick off.

I also want to thank Mel again from eclat marketing and Neil Stinchcombe from Eskenzi for all their help with organising sponsorship for the event.

I like others had a really great time, and will be more than happy to set this type of event up again in the future, so watch this space. A quick pointless stat, Stella and Guinness where the most drunk beverages of the evening

Security Bloggers Meet Up 2009