Surfing Safely: Which Website Security Badges to Trust

Those small security badges featured at the bottom of online commerce pages may seem insignificant, but they can have a big impact on a company's online sales. According to Visual Website Optimizer, one conversion specialist ran a study of online websites displaying security badges, and found that those security badges can increase conversions by up to 32 percent. The numbers prove that online consumers remain wary of online identity theft phishing schemes and other fraudulent activity. While it's smart for consumers to look for these security badges before forking over their purchasing information to an unknown online entity, not all security badges are created equal. Some have a much stronger reputation than others, while others may be...

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Certificates Section Missing From Fortigate Web Interface

At my day job that shall not be named I use a Fortigate 60C at one of the sites I maintain. The other day I noticed that the SSL certificate for it expired, and when I went into the web UI for the unit I couldn't find the section to manage certificates. If you are new to Fortigate that is usually located in System > Certificates. Here is what it looked like:   I know it used to be there because that is how I generated a certificate for it when I first got the device. Since then though I have performed firmware upgrades and somewhere down the line that functionality disappeared. Well I contacted Fortinet support and they suggested doing yet another firmware upgrade, so I did, and again no joy. I went back to them and said it...

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Great Gear for the Business Traveler in 2014

Are you a fearless road warrior? Did you go on one of the approximately 460 million business trips that the U.S. Travel Association reported were taken in 2012? If so, then you are probably on the lookout for new products and devices to help you keep your sanity as you negotiate airport security lines as well as grueling hours on the road. Portable Charger If you have ever played the game "Find a place to charge my phone," then you know how frustrating it is to be in the airport with a dying phone and realize that all of the available outlets are being used by other needy passengers. Or perhaps you have a business trip that will include a long period out of doors where you know you won't have access to an outlet. For those times, you'll...

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StartSSL Is Down Hard Due To Cut Optical Lines

At my day job today one of the developers asked me to renew the SSL certificate on one of their QA servers. For that particular server we were using a free StartSSL certificate. No problem right? just go to StartSSL.com and request a new cert. Ummm, not so much. The site just wouldn't come up for me. I even checked Is It Down Right Now, and here was the result: Great, so it is really down and not just me. I decided to hit up Twitter to see if there was an explanation. Sure enough! Here was their tweet: Yep, confirmed! They were down hard and it was because of cut optic lines! Other tweets later asked customers to try again tomorrow, and hopefully everything will be back up. Many customers had issues because Firefox was not able to...

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How To Change The Luks Encryption Password in Xubuntu Easily

I've been going through all of my stuff lately changing passwords. I like to do that periodically for security reasons. One of the things I needed to change recently was the Luks password on my Linux desktop which is running Xubuntu Linux. There is an easy to use GUI for Gnome that you can use to do this. Just run the following from the terminal to install it: sudo apt-get install gnome-disk-utility Once installed you can find it listed as "Disks" in your Settings manager: Once open you can find the Luks portion of your drive. Select it and from the drop down menu you can select to change your password: Next just enter your old password, then enter your new password in twice and click Change:    That's it! Now your...

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Affording IT Solutions on a Small Business Budget

Eighty-five percent of small small businesses increasing investments in technology can expect higher revenue, according to the 2012 SMB Routes to Market Study. Business can't afford to ignore the benefits of implementing technological solutions if it means making money. Small businesses can implement IT solutions comparable to large businesses. There are many open source software solutions available to small businesses: Databases MySQL is the world's second most used open source database. Several paid editions that use MySQL and increase functionality include Joomla and WordPress. Paid WordPress themes start at $75 per year. LDAP is an application protocol made for organizing a set of records, such as a corporate email directory. LDAP includes...

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On Suing Facebook, And General Privacy Issues In Our Police State: Use Encryption

I was watching the morning news the other day when I saw that a group was suing Facebook for scanning their allegedly private messages and selling the information to third parties. From Bloomberg: Facebook Inc. (FB) was sued over allegations it systematically intercepts its users private messages on the social network and profits by sharing the data with advertisers and marketers. When users compose messages that include links to a third-party website, Facebook scans the content of the message, follows the link and searches for information to profile the message-sender’s Web activity, violating the Electronic Communications Privacy Act and California privacy and unfair competition laws, according to the suit.  Although I understand...

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Everything You Wanted To Know About The 'Deep Web' [Infographic]

I am a huge proponent of Tor, and anonymity online in general, however there is more to Tor than just hiding your IP address from Big Brother. There is an entirely separate Internet for those on the Tor network than many refer to as the "Deep Web". In this infographic, we present everything you need to know about it! [Via WIHT] Related articles Everything You Wanted to Know about TOR & the Deep Web The Hidden Internet - Exploring The Deep Web Cyberwar in the Deep Web as Silk Road clones vie for supremacy Behind 'Deep Web': Alex Winter's excellent Bitcoin adventure ...

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