Ben Gross

Category: General

  • Password Managers Relieve Password Headaches

    Passwords Are a Hassle I’ll be the first to admit I can’t remember all my passwords. Most of us can’t, so we pick a few passwords that are easy to remember and then use them with multiple sites. This results in two immediate problems. A password manager can help with both of these problems. First,…

  • Your New Year’s Resolution–Pick Better Passwords

    As we near the end of 2011, I can’t help but think this is the year I had the most trouble telling the difference between actual news stories and pieces from “America’s Finest News Source”, The Onion. As I write this article, details are still unfolding from the data breach at the private intelligence firm…

  • Security, Productivity, and Usability in the Enterprise

    During interviews I conducted for my dissertation research, I asked individuals how the security policies and systems affected their daily life in terms of productivity and work and personal communication. Interviewees gave many examples of tradeoffs between security and usability. People understood the reasoning behind many of the security restrictions. However, these implementations often significantly…

  • The World is Not Flat and Neither Are Social Networks

    Now that I and the rest of the Internet has grown accustomed to Google Plus and Facebook’s most recent friend categorization features, I thought it was time to revisit and revise a previously unpublished piece of mine. Take a moment and think about your friends, family, colleagues, friends of friends, acquaintances, and members of the…

  • Tracking, Geolocation and Digital Exhaust

    You are unique… In so many ways… The accounting systems on which modern society depends are surveillance systems when viewed with another lens. All administrative, financial, logistics, public heath, and intelligence systems rely on the ability to track people, objects, and data. Efficiency and effectiveness in tracking have been greatly aided by improvements in data…

  • SSL Is Critical Infrastructure at Risk

    Problem Areas for SSL The security of the transactions for much of the consumer Internet relies on the Secure Socket Layer (SSL) protocol. SSL and its Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) are critical Internet infrastructure. Most consumer Web, email, and VoIP traffic relies on SSL for security as does substantial portions of enterprise Internet traffic both…

  • ForeverSave Prevents Lost Work on the Mac

    It’s happened to all of us. You are busy writing, entering data, or working on a slide deck and all of a sudden something freezes and then the application crashes. If either we recently saved the document all is well, otherwise the inevitable explicative follows. It is 2011 and there is no excuse for not…

  • Time Machine vs. CrashPlan for Backups

    Trouble in Time Machine Land In my recent article, A Simple and Effective Backup Strategy for Mac OS X, where I recommended a three part backup system: 1) a full disk clone, 2) local incremental backups with Apple’s Time Machine, and 3) networked incremental backups with CrashPlan. I found Time Machine problematic for my own…

  • A Simple and Effective Backup Strategy for Mac OS X

    Disk is inexpensive compared to the value of your time and data. My personal backup configuration consists of three types of backups. The following combination has proven itself over the last several years and I recommend it. It includes 1) A full disk clone, 2) an incremental backup, and 3) an online backup service. This…

  • Data Evaporation and the Security of Online Identities

    Disappearing Data What happens to our data when we are gone? What happens to us, when our data is gone? Does any of this missing data make us vulnerable? These questions that once seemed theoretical are increasingly relevant to our everyday lives. The consequences include not only the potential for lost communications, but also lost…