Virtual machines are continuing to grow in performance with reduced cost of ownership resulting in what I believe to be greater adoption for self hosted systems. Even when purchasing hardware in the cloud, this is often how it is configured in SAAS or IAAS. What I’m wondering is that through the use of Virtual Machines if we are violating some […]

When we are saving passwords in our systems everyone seems to be in agreement that the password should be encrypted if stored in a database for future retrieval and verification. Some are more careful and save it as a one way encryption so that if the user forgets their password it cannot be retrieved. The only thing the system will […]

SQL Server 2014 Goodness There is a lot to be talking about with SQL Server 2014 and the different things released around it. In case you missed it, it just recently dropped to production availability and there are some very cool things going on with the release. I think one of the more interesting things going on is more about […]

Agile vs. Big Picture – How Do You Reconcile? I had written about three different things to get started and out of the way when starting a project – things developers and consider in bringing a project online. Good feedback and questions though – and I’ve had questions on the site and in email about how this all fits in […]

Security breaches and systems failures seem to be events that we rapidly forget. In the last four months we have had a major credit card theft from a major department store and exposed a significant hole in OpenSSL that has been there for a very long time. Service providers have been quick to respond to these intrusions and possible open […]

The Stability of Information Systems is… Dangerous? Sorry to sound like an "old guy" but it used to be that when systems were deployed, much testing ensued and systems were essentially assumed questionable (at best) until proven accurate. Systems would be checked and double-checked, underlying engines would be load tested, beaten up to make sure they were doing what was […]

The recent security hole found in OpenSSL has me thinking about security from a large perspective. I have been educated that the majority of times your system or system data are compromised occurs from an internal source; not from someone who has found an open door somewhere. So, I want to drop some random thoughts for consideration and see where […]

Have you ever found that someone had actually hacked into your company? I have. About ten years ago someone had broken into our data center through a security hole in SQL Server. It wasn’t through SQL Injection, but rather through a buffer overflow problem in the SQL code itself. What I remember the most was the impact of that occurrence. […]

Is Big Data in Danger of Becoming Its Own Worst Enemy? I’m a big fan of what we can learn from patterns and information taken on a massive scale. I think the psychology of data is pretty fascinating. That we can predict with really pretty great accuracy what types of things people need, actions they’ll take, etc. It’s pretty incredible. […]

You have probably already heard or read about the security hole in the OpenSSL library used by many operating systems and other products. The importance is huge, and a web site has been setup to disseminate information about it at http://heartbleed.com. Now that I have brought it to your attention I have been talking with colleagues about open solutions. Should […]