Tag Archives: data
Is your website hackable? Why you need to worry (Page 1 of 3)
Apocalypse Now
Just because you think your data is safe does not mean your database of sensitive organization information has not already been cloned and is resident elsewhere ready to be sold to the highest bidder. To make matters worse, only recently, it has been discovered that hackers are not simply selling your; theyre also selling the fact that you have vulnerabilities to others be they hackers, industrial spies or terrorists.
It all sounds apocalyptic, doesnt it? Well, rather than being an angel of doom, Ill let the stats speak for themselves.
TJX Companies Inc.,
TJX Companies, owners of T.J. Maxx, Marshalls, Winners, HomeGoods, A.J. Wright, and Bobs stores, on the 17th January this year, disclosed that 40 million of their customers credit and debit card details were stolen. In parallel, federal credit union SEFCU published a similar warning that the personal details of 10,000 of its customers were compromised in the hack attack.
Another 60 banks including Citizen Union Savings Bank and Bank of America seem to have customers whose credit and debit cards have been breached in this attack.
Ben Cammarata, Chairman and Acting Chief Executive Officer of TJX Companies, stated that the nature of the hack is not known and two computer security experts are at hand examining the problem. The warning issued by SEFCU sheds greater light and states A fraudster may have gained access to
card information through one of those entities in the payment network, including the merchant.
SC Magazine reports that hackers used data from the breach to purchase goods in a number of states in the US, in Hong Kong and in Sweden.
A digest of the latest developments follows:
* According to 3WCAX-TV Website, the attack is expected to cost consumers one-point-five (M) million dollars. This article was published before law suits started sprouting. * Brian Fraga, Standard-Times, reports that a class action lawsuit filed this week in U.S. District Court (Boston) against TJX. The amount of damages sought is undisclosed. According to SC Magazine, yesterday a West Virginia resident slapped another lawsuit and is suing TJX for $5 million. * U.S. Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., chairman of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, has called for the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the hacking, according to a eport today in the Boston Globe. * Today, the Government of Canada, stated that it is launching an investigation into TJX and the data breach. * Of note is that the hacking may have started in May 2006 and the breach was discovered only in December 2006 (and publicized in January 2007).
Universities
University systems are usually highly decentralized which makes it hard to ensure tight security. To the extent that one department may have deployed a hardened security infrastructure while others loll in lax measures making the whole system weak.
What exactly is space and bandwidth in Web hosting
A technical requirement that you need to consider while getting your site hosted is how much disk space you will be needing and you much bandwidth you will be using. Disk space basically means the amount of hard drive disk space you are allowed to use from your hosting service.
The hosting company offers a certain amount of disk space along with every package. Everything that you put into your website, your documents, images, animations need to be stored in the server and must fit into this storage space. Its just the way you use your hard disk space on your personnel computer. Its just that here we are dealing with the hard disk space on the server computer. This space is filled by your web pages which get stored on this server. Its easy to estimate how much space you will need. Your web page will take similar amount of storage on the server as it takes on your hard disk. So just checking the size of your webpage folder on your PC will tell you much server space you need. Its always better to go with a package that has some extra space than you need so that you can later on upgrade your website.
Another important concept of web hosting is bandwidth. Bandwidth is the amount of traffic that is allowed to occur between your web site and the rest of the internet. In computer networks, bandwidth is often used as a synonym for data transfer rate – the amount of data that can be carried from one point to another in a given time period. If bandwidth is the number of lanes on the highway, traffic is the number of cars.
Thus, in case of a website having a 10MB net connection, if a 2MB mp3 is being downloaded by a maximum of 5 people simultaneously, no one has to wait. But if 6 people are doing it, there is a traffic of (2×6) 12MB being created, where as bandwidth is just 10MB. Thus someone has to wait. This is the significance of bandwidth and traffic.
What exactly is space and bandwidth in Web hosting
A technical requirement that you need to consider while getting your site hosted is how much disk space you will be needing and you much bandwidth you will be using. Disk space basically means the amount of hard drive disk space you are allowed to use from your hosting service.
The hosting company offers a certain amount of disk space along with every package. Everything that you put into your website, your documents, images, animations need to be stored in the server and must fit into this storage space. Its just the way you use your hard disk space on your personnel computer. Its just that here we are dealing with the hard disk space on the server computer. This space is filled by your web pages which get stored on this server. Its easy to estimate how much space you will need. Your web page will take similar amount of storage on the server as it takes on your hard disk. So just checking the size of your webpage folder on your PC will tell you much server space you need. Its always better to go with a package that has some extra space than you need so that you can later on upgrade your website.
Another important concept of web hosting is bandwidth. Bandwidth is the amount of traffic that is allowed to occur between your web site and the rest of the internet. In computer networks, bandwidth is often used as a synonym for data transfer rate – the amount of data that can be carried from one point to another in a given time period. If bandwidth is the number of lanes on the highway, traffic is the number of cars.
Thus, in case of a website having a 10MB net connection, if a 2MB mp3 is being downloaded by a maximum of 5 people simultaneously, no one has to wait. But if 6 people are doing it, there is a traffic of (2×6) 12MB being created, where as bandwidth is just 10MB. Thus someone has to wait. This is the significance of bandwidth and traffic.