Jon’s Network

A customer recently evaluated Brightmail, Fortimail 400 and Barracuda 600. They said Barracuda would have been great had it been the only one they tested, since the reporting impressed them, but they noticed the poor catch-rate once they tested Brightmail and Fortimail. Fortimail ended up winning the deal.

• Spam filtering - Barracuda detection rates were fair compared to Brightmail and Fortimail
• User experience - All were good, no complaints
• Mail server integration - Barracuda fair, Fortimail much better
• Reporting - Barracuda reporting excellent
• Yearly subscription - Barracuda higher than Fortimail

Lynne Kiesling at Knowledge Problem imagines a refrigerator that is not only a kitchen appliance but also a network appliance.

By equipping refrigerators with an IP address and a web interface we could tell them to do things like ordering a new filter from a specified vendor at the appropriate time. Where it gets interesting is when you can also set power consumption policies based on the price of energy, time of day, contents of fridge and more.

I would like to have a fridge that would take an inventory of its contents and my cupboards (RFID anyone?) on a regular basis, compare that to my shopping list that it has access to over the network, place an order at my grocery stores, who then deliver the goods to my door.

As far as autonomous controls saving energy goes, her idea reminds me of an existing product by Lumisys that controls the brightness of the lights in a room, say a classroom or office, based on the the amount of daylight, how many people are in the room and where they are sitting. Lights near the window are dimmer than lights further away. If a cloud covers up the sun, the lights brighten automatically. Really cool stuff and usually a good idea for new construction.

LUMENSION “THE OFFICE” GAME

Some clever marketing by Lumension….it took me forever to find #8. Lack of vulnerability management.

Computer Defense has a Denial of Service Survey to research people’s perception of it.

A computer crimes agent from the FBI told Richard Bejtlich that a company can reduce vulnerabilities, but it is up to the FBI to reduce threats.

In other words, it is beyond the legal or practical capability of most computer crime victims to investigate, prosecute, and incarcerate threats.

Richard points out this CDT press release that explains the State’s inability to protect consumers from online criminals.

Victims of computer crime are at the mercy of the government when it comes to hunting down their criminal. But the government has little to no incentive to do so. If a victim instead decided to track down the criminal and obtain restitution, it would likely be deemed illegal by the same government whose protection services were inadequate for the victim in the first place.

What we have then is a law enforcement monopoly - a protection racket - that makes us all less safe, because the monopolist doesn’t have any incentive to protect us. In the case of the government, they get more funding if they make mistakes. When they do catch criminals, the criminals pay restitution to the government, not the victim, or are incarcerated at the victims expense.

Better technology can only go so far to protect us from online crime. A better legal and law enforcement system would help far more. A free market in law enforcement and protection is the logical alternative.

Along the lines of the free filtering you get when you use OpenDNS (that I mentioned here and here), Blue Coat has a free client designed to run on home computers:

K9 Web Protection - Free Internet Filtering and Parental Controls Software

Interesting limitation on the 8e6 AD integration

For the AD Agent, it is currently has only been released for Active Directory environments with 2200 users or less.

FileAdvisor by Bit9

Use Bit9’s database for free.

Web Filtering by Bloxx - Internet Monitoring Products

This company looks like they have combined Vericept-like analysis with URL filtering in a single solution, but instead of merely logging everything, they actually block based on content. Not sure how well it works yet.

Educators struggle with AUP enforcement

But a movement growing in schools today says taking away a student’s access to technology is akin to denying that student valuable learning opportunities–and so many school leaders are now searching for better alternatives.

As opposed to banning a kid from the internet and forcing teachers to create new lessons for them that don’t require internet access. I would say most schools still ban kids from the internet or otherwise suspend or expel them for AUP violations, demonstrating that you can’t force someone to learn.

I still recommend Vericept for schools that want to monitor online behavior beyond what the typical filter will do.

Still, behavior problems in schools are systemic. If you abolish compulsory education and child labor laws, they would more or less disappear.