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I
didn't used to be that paranoid. But lately, I am looking
over my
shoulder and beyond my desktop more. Why? Several
reasons:
My
email inbox is filled with viruses, spam, worms, and other
effluvia,
to the point of overflowing. I have written about
the
products that I use to combat these annoyances, and
hopefully
2003 will bring continued improvements to these
tools.
My
corporation now scans every inbound email, rejecting many
because
of unfortunate combination of words or phrases that
are
deemed verboten. The ultimate folly of this exercise was
brought
home to me when I tried to send a colleague an email
from my
personal account to his corporate account, only to
have it
bounced back. Granted, there are better products than
what we
use that have improved heuristics at catching porn
and
letting through legit messages. Unfortunately, our IT
department
doesn't use them. Maybe in 2003 that will change.
Given
the number of times my cable modem is scanned by
outside
parties, every home user should use a firewall on
their
networks these days. Too bad my cable company still
continues
to ignore the peril they place their users in. They
continue
either ignore home networks or else ask their
customers
to remove these firewalls when troubleshooting home
networking
problems. Maybe 2003 will bring enlightenment to
the
cable operators and they can finally begin to offer these
products
as part of their standard installation.
Maybe
2003 will see the moment in time when a version of
Windows
server product will actually be more secure and less
hackable
than a version of Unix. I don't think so, but I can
dream,
can't I?
I think
2002 was the year that VPNs became commodity
products,
offered on sub-$150 routers. Maybe 2003 will be the
year
that we all start using VPNs. Maybe it will also be the
year
that VPNs actually can be configured by the average
person.
This
was the year that wireless networking became pervasive,
and
also the year that stealing wireless bandwidth became
popular.
Hopefully, there will be better protocols, tools,
and
techniques to enable secure wireless networks in the
future.
My
government is spending more time figuring out ways to get
around
individual liberties and freedoms in the name of
fighting
terrorism. While I don't like terrorism and
terrorists
as much as the next guy, I do believe our Bill of
Rights
entitles us to certain things. Maybe our elected
officials
will get more enlightened in 2003, but I don't
think
so.
I hope
you all had a restful and happy holiday weekend. Let
me know
your own thoughts for the coming year.
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Entire contents copyright 2002 by David Strom, Inc.
David Strom, dstrom@cmp.com, +1 (516) 562-7151
Port Washington NY 11050
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