Kenneth van Wyk

Perhaps it’s just me, but what on earth were they thinking? I’m keenly aware of email security when it comes to protecting myself and my company from incoming nasties. We run a couple tiers of anti-spamming and anti-virus screening on the incoming side, and then I make sure we all follow a policy of “if […]

Along the same lines as what I said last month about Internet Explorer vs. Firefox, I am convinced I’m safer using pretty much any email client other than Microsoft’s Outlook. Outlook is simply not as secure as its competitors. So again, instead of taking my opinions at face value, let’s explore how I came to […]

I am safer browsing in Mozilla’s Firefox browser than I am in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. I firmly believe this to be the case. Yes, that’s right, Firefox is safer than IE. In the same vein as my series earlier this year on Windows vs. OS X vs. Linux security, let’s explore how I came to […]

So here it is, iPhone month. At last. It’s been on the mind of many a gadget geek ever since Steve Jobs announced it in January. That’s a long time to make us wait, by the way, Steve. But will it be worthy of our expectations? Of course I’m referring here to our security expectations. […]

There’s a lot more at stake in Microsoft’s new Vista operating system than many people realize. Sure, it’s a new operating system and it needs to fight its own fight for market share, but I think we’re probably all pretty realistic about the inevitable outcome in that fight. What’s at stake is a new way […]

I’m more secure on Linux than I am on Windows. Yup, that’s right. I have no doubt whatsoever that I am. I started down this path by comparing how secure I am on a Mac vs. on Windows, then I compared Mac vs. Linux. To complete that trifecta, I guess it’s only fair to compare […]

In last month’s column, I said “I’m more secure on a Mac than I was on Windows XP.” Some of you asked how Linux fares in that comparison. To that, I’ll say I’m marginally more secure on Linux than on a Mac, but I prefer a Mac anyway. I can almost see my inbox filling […]

I’m going to buck tradition a bit here. Instead of focusing on what happened this year or what might happen next year, I’m going to focus my first column of 2006 on just a couple of issues that mean a lot to me: passwords and email security. I’ll preface what I’m going to say with […]

Unless you’ve been visiting some other planet, it’s more than likely you’ve heard or read about the so-called ‘rootkit’ software that was found on some copy protected Sony BMG audio CDs recently. It used to be we only had to worry about the bad guys putting bad stuff on our computers. Now, we also need […]

Hold software developers liable for security defects in their products! Well, that’s what former White House and Microsoft security advisor Howard Schmidt says, anyway. For sure, I’ve seen so many buffer overflow bugs that resulted in the remote execution of arbitrary code — the penultimate software security defect — I’ve wanted to scream. But hold […]