FairPoint Accused of Falsfying Readiness Tests

Posted 856 CommentsPosted in Business, Telecommunications, Telephony

This article broke yesterday, in which an alleged whistleblower claims that FairPoint falsified the tests that showed its readiness to take over Verizon’s New England landlines. “The account from an alleged FairPoint Communications insider may explain why telecommunications regulators in northern New England were surprised when FairPoint customers complained so vigorously after the firm took […]

“XYZ Technology is Dead.”

Posted 9 CommentsPosted in Business, Internet, Security

I frequently hear security professionals and pundits proclaim that such and such a technology “is dead.” Lately, I’ve heard that “antivirus is dead,” “Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS) are dead.” A while back it was “firewalls are dead,” and “SSL is dead.” People who utter phrases like this are doing a disservice to the security community.

What is “Unified Threat Management?”

Posted 821 CommentsPosted in Business, Email, Internet, Security, System Administration

“Unified Threat Management” is a buzzphrase (that is, a few buzzwords strung together) heard a lot in networking and network security. Essentially, this is something (usually a device) which combines several network security services, including email filtering, web content filtering, firewalling, intrusion detection/prevention, and others. A UTM device can provide other services as well, such […]

Oracle to Buy Sun Microsystems

Posted 25 CommentsPosted in Business, Database, Internet

I just heard that Oracle intends to buy Sun Microsystems. Most of my clients are small enough that they do not (directly) use any products from Oracle. However, just about all of them use Sun Microsystems‘ Java development platform. Furthermore, just about every web site we’ve created in the last ten years has been driven […]