The Risk of Running Windows XP After Support Ends April 2014
Back in April I published a post about the end of support for Windows XP called The Countdown Begins: Support for Windows XP Ends on April 8, 2014.
Why does my AV software keep turning off?
Bob writes: My antivirus software keeps turning off and I can’t get it back on. Here are the most common reasons you might encounter this problem: Your computer is already infected with rogue security software The warning that you’re antivirus software is turned off might be a fake alert, also known as “rogue security software.
Ad injection and you: How adware gets on your computer
Are advertisements showing up in your browser (no matter whether you use Internet Explorer, Firefox or Chrome) on sites that you’ve never seen ads on before; or, do the ads seem different from what you’ve seen before?
Microsoft’s Free Security Tools – Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit
This article in our free security tools series focuses on the benefits of the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit. If you are an IT Professional then you know platform migrations can be a daunting task.
Microsoft Free Security Tools – Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer
This article in our series on Microsoft’s free security tools is focused on a tool called the Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer (MBSA). Many years ago before Windows Update was available, servicing software was much more painful than it is today.
Microsoft’s Free Security Tools – Summary
In July, we kicked off a blog series focused on “Microsoft’s Free Security Tools.” The series highlights free security tools that Microsoft provides to help make IT professionals’ and developers’ lives easier. A good tool can save a lot of work and time for those people responsible for developing and managing software.
Microsoft’s Free Security Tools – Portqry
This article in our series focused on Microsoft’s free security tools is on a tool called Portqry. This tool is a TCP/IP connectivity test tool, port scanner, and local port monitor. Portqry is useful for troubleshooting networking issues as well as verifying network security related configurations.
Microsoft’s Free Security Tools – Windows Defender Offline
This article in our series focused on Microsoft’s free security tools is on a tool called Windows Defender Offline. Windows Defender Offline is a standalone software application that is designed to help detect malicious and other potentially unwanted software, including rootkits that try to install themselves on a PC.
Fundamentals of Cloud Service Reliability
As the adoption of cloud computing continues to rise, and customers demand 24/7 access to their services and data, reliability remains a challenge for cloud service providers everywhere. As I said in the recent Cloud Fundamentals video on reliability, it’s not a matter of if an outage will occur; it’s strictly a matter of when.
Microsoft’s Free Security Tools – banned.h
This article in our series focused on Microsoft’s free security tools is on the Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) banned.h header file. This is an important tool for developers who are trying to minimize the number of security vulnerabilities that exist in the C or C++ code they write.
Warnings, /sdl, and improving uninitialized variable detection
Tim Burrell and Thomas Garnier of the TwC Security Science team present the sixth and last blog installment describing more /sdl functionality in Visual Studio 2012 RC. Please note that there will be an MSDN webcast discussing the security enhancements to Visual Studio 2012 RC – a wrap-up of sorts – on June 13 at 9:00AM (PST).
Secure Credential Storage
Pop security quiz: What’s the most secure way to store a secret? a)     Encrypt it with a strong symmetric cryptographic algorithm such as AES, using a 256-bit key. b)     Encrypt it with a strong asymmetric cryptographic algorithm such as RSA, using a 4096-bit key.