Tag Archive for: keeps

AT&T boosts U-verse data cap to 1TB, keeps DSL users at 150GB

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Data cap cash. (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

AT&T is raising the data caps for U-verse Internet customers to 1TB a month and providing unlimited data “at no additional charge” to customers who subscribe to the company’s 1Gbps service.

But DSL users on AT&T’s network aren’t getting any extra data, and those users must continue to make do with a 150GB monthly limit.

AT&T has been enforcing data caps on DSL users for years but only began enforcement of caps on its faster U-verse service in May this year. Data caps were set at 300GB, 600GB, or 1TB based on the speed tier. But the changes announced today—which take effect August 21—give all U-verse customers a monthly data cap of 1TB or no cap at all. Previously, a 1TB cap was only for customers with speeds from 100Mbps to 1Gbps.

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Technology Lab – Ars Technica

How Microsoft keeps the bad guys out of Azure

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Microsoft has published its latest Security Intelligence Report (SIR), which it does twice a year, covering security issues for the prior six months. This latest edition covers the second half of 2015, analyzing the threat landscape of exploits, vulnerabilities and malware using data from Internet services and over 600 million computers worldwide.

It is a massive effort, with dozens of Microsoft staff from different groups contributing. For the first time, they looked at not only PC malware but threats to its Azure cloud service as well, which the company says “reveals how we are leveraging an intelligent security graph to inform how we protect endpoints, better detect attacks and accelerate our response, to help protect our customers.”

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Network World Security

What keeps white hat hackers from turning to the dark side?

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To protect her identity, let’s call her Dee.

Dee describes herself as an ethical hacker. She is young, attractive, speaks with an Eastern European accent and has fiery red-purple hair. She reminds me of Mila Jovovich in the sci-fi movie, The Fifth Element. We were eating lunch at the Hack-in-the-Box conference in Amsterdam.

“So what would it take to make you go black hat?” I asked. “Would you hack for a million dollars, if you knew you wouldn’t get caught?”

She responded immediately and firmly. “No. For me it is an ethical issue.”

“OK, how about a billion dollars?”

Now she paused.

Dee is one of three-dozen white hat hackers I interviewed over the last year, specifically on the subject of what keeps them on the right side.  A white hat hacker is one who uses computer security skills in service of “good.” The white hat knows how to penetrate systems, but applies that knowledge to defend networks rather than attack them.

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Network World Security

FinalCode keeps files safe wherever they go

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Startup FinalCode secures files so permissions that protect them follow them around even when they are accessed outside secured networks.

The company’s FinalCode platform encrypts files and imposes restrictions on who can access them, when, for how long and with what privileges. So a person could be allowed to read a document but not copy and paste it, be allowed to open it only twice and only for 24 hours.

The company offers its platform as software entirely under control of the customer or as a service in which FinalCode handles the server side.

That is a big advantage for businesses that want this type of protection but don’t want to deal with the key management and infrastructure, says Eric Ogren, principal analyst for the Ogren Group. “They don’t even see the keys,” he says. “They can if they really want to, but why would they want to.” So the problems of scaling the number of files that are encrypted are handled by the service, not corporate staff.

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Network World Tim Greene