Famous researcher/scientist/Inventor in the Technology World

In This blog post we will stay in the field of technology but putting Information Security aside for a bit. I will introduce a person who has had a huge impact in the world of Information Technology , Computer Science and the whole world in general. Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee, also known as TimBL, was born in London, England in 1955. TimBL is a computer scientist, and his biggest achievement is the invention of the World Wide Web, or “www” in the beginning of every URL. His proposal was made in 1989 which was when he first implemented the first communication between a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) client and server via the Internet. TimBL is the director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which supervises the Web’s development, the founder of the World Wide Web Foundation, and also a senior researcher and holder of the Founder’s Chair at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory(CSAIL).  In 2004, TimBL was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his work, and in 2009 he was elected a foreign associate of the United States National Academy of Sciences.  Berners-Lee’s impact in the world of technology and communications and the society in general has been one of the greatest of all time. We can all agree that without the Internet and its wonderful communications network we wouldn’t be where we are now with technology.  It is the Internet which facilitates our ability to communicate instantaneously with each other using a cell phone, a computer, or anything that has the capability of connecting to the Internet and sending and receiving signals. In conclusion, along with the invention of the telephone, computer, and cell phone, this is probably one of the greatest inventions of the century.  During the 2012 summer Olympics opening ceremony, TimBL was honored as the “inventor of the World Wide Web”. tim_berners_lee's TED talks

Ebay has been CyberAttacked

As stated in the introductory post, it is crucial to be on top and alert of all information securities’ “barriers” in order to keep important data safe from attackers or hackers to be more technical. A recent incident happened when Ebay suffered a cyber attack and thousands of member’s accounts and passwords were stolen.  The hackers in this case were able to gain access to the companie’s corporate network, this all resulted with every single user having to change their passwords and login credentials. This kind of attack can get dangerous in the fact that by stealing member’s login credentials, hackers can get access to people’s credit card information, home addresses, phone numbers, shopping history, etc. As scary as it sounds, It is sometimes impossible to be prepared for every single cyber attack because security specialists just can’t predict in what way and using which network resources the hackers will try to penetrate the network. As stated in the introduction of this blog, Security experts cann only be on the lookout examining  suspicious network traffic constantly  in case there is an “intruder” in the network that shouldn’t be there. Of course it is not just the Information Security Officer’s duty to protect the network , software engineers also need to develop software programs that are secure and hard to hack into. Network administrators are also responsible when it comes to providing network access to strangers and how much of the network resources each of the users connected to the network are permitted to use and for how long. This particular incident about ebay is an example of a breach in one of their databases ( which could be on the software engineer’s side), but of course no one will ever know how and using what the intruders were able to penetrate the network. Ebay says “it is working with law enforcement and leading security experts to “aggressively” investigate the matter”. more on this article

Introduction to Information Security

Information Security an area of the Information Technology field.  We can all agree that data in businesses, organizations, and even our own personal data needs to be protected.  Organizations hire a team of Information Security specialists to keep their businesses running while securing their data. When it comes to personal data, we all as regular users can have updated anti-viruses installed in our computers. Information Security does not only protect data stored within our networks, but it also protects data while it is being transmitted throughout the internet, for example, by e-email, instant message, etc. Without going into details about how this complex procedure works, in summary, the data being transmitted gets broken apart in bits of pieces and going through algorithms to finally become encrypted. No one else can open that document or data because it contains an encryption key that only the recipient has access to. While this is only a technique used to transmit data securely over the internet, securing data in a regular day basis for an organization also has techniques based on the infrastructure of the network. Of course it couldn’t be as simple as just implementing security in the business world. Information Security Specialists have to be able to determine just about how much security is to be implemented without slowing down business productivity. Sometimes if there is too much security implemented, users may be restricted to some network resources, such as online network services or files and documents needed to get their particular jobs done. 

In conclusion, there will always be a tradeoff between Information Security and Network Resource 
Availability. Specialists can only strive for the perfect balance between the two, but after many studies and 
research on the topic, there will always be a tradeoff, it is just a matter of how important the data being secured is, and the overall network infrastructure. More on Introduction to Information Security.