Stuxnet Represents a New Phase in Malware Evolution

Malware has been commonly associated with being a simple annoyance that interrupts the use of personal computers. No more. Stuxnet represents the future: intelligent, targeted malware. Stuxnet is the computer virus (technically, a self-replicating virus referred to as a worm) written to infect and compromise Siemans industrial computer and software products. Siemans products are found [...]

Why Do Computers Get Slower?

Hey, it’s the 400th post on my blog! W00t w00t! Thanks for reading! Now, this evening, I’ll be lecturing on this problem to a bunch of graduate students. And here’s just a snippit of what I’ll be talking to them about. Computers get slower because of demands put on three resources: memory, processor, and I/O [...]

The 10 Most Vulnerable Things About You

Worried about identity theft? You should be. Here’s a few 2009 statistics from Spendonlife.com: Identity theft is on the rise, affecting almost 10 million victims in 2008 (a 22% increase from 2007) Victims are spending less money out of pocket to correct the damage from ID theft. The mean cost per victim is $500, and [...]

How Can I Re-engineer a Business Process?

Business Process Analysis (BPA) is the process of taking a close look at a business problem and considering how technology could reduce friction. Friction is cost – dollars or time associated with labor, transportation, waiting times, approvals, warehousing, distribution, downtime, error-rate, or corrective service. And these are just examples. A business process with a lot [...]

Disintermediation and You

Disintermediation is a term that we use to describe getting rid of middlemen; bypassing intermediaries. We see this a lot; it’s a common technology strategy. Think about a business process. What if technology could to simplify the process? Online ordering a book is an example of disintermediation. Doing so, you go directly to Amazon, search [...]

5 Ways to Sabotage Your Small Business

So on the drive home from a networking event today, I was thinking about the ways you could kill your business. Here are my ideas: You Place Too Much Investment in One Person. If your business is critically dependent upon one person then there’s darkness on the horizon. Spread the knowledge around. Don’t make one [...]