“First, you need to secure network objects such as shared folders and make adjustments to Windows Firewall to allow (or block) certain networking services, programs, and ports,” the author begins.

“Second, if you have a wireless component to your network, you have an inherently non-secure set-up because wireless data is almost always broadcast beyond your home or office.”

Network security is a ‘weakest link’ proposition, he cautions. “Your network is only as secure as the least secure network computer. That is, all your security precautions are for naught if you have a computer on your network that uses a weak password (or no password at all), or contains malware such as a virus, Trojan horse, or spyware.” Which is why the first step is to secure the network clients, reasons McFedries.

He speaks of a fundamental security conundrum, thus: “How do you give users the flexibility and power of activities such as installing programs and devices, and at the same time prevent viruses and other malware from performing the same activities?” As answer to this puzzle, Windows Vista has a new account type called ‘Standard User’ for the least-privileged user.

You can use this group for people who are inexperienced users, particularly young children, or for people with moderate experience but who are not yet responsible enough to merit inclusion in the ‘Administrators group,’ the author guides.

Like many, if you think that your computer is too obscure or worthless for someone else to bother with, “Think again,” advises McFedries. “Hackers probe a typical computer connected to the Internet for vulnerable ports or installed Trojan horses at least a few times every day,” he warns.

To see how vulnerable your computer is, he suggests the use of sites such as http://grc.com (Gibson Research), www.dslreports.com (DSL Reports), and HackerWhacker.com.

A disturbing piece of information pops up from one of the ominously grey boxes in the book: that black-hat hackers have one foot in your digital door already! How so? Because they know that every Windows Vista machine comes with an account named ‘Administrator,’ the author explains.

“If you’ve disabled the Administrator account, you almost certainly have no worries. However, you can close the door completely on malicious intruders by taking away the one piece of information they know: the name of the account.”

The trick he proposes is to change the name of the account name from Administrator to something completely unobvious, and add thereby an extra layer of security to Windows Vista.

“The Guest account also has an obvious and well-known name, so if you’ve enabled the Guest account, be sure to rename it, too.”

Essential read for those in the networking landscape.

The early 1980s was when the Japanese memory producers appeared on the scene in overwhelming force, recounts Andrew Grove in Only the Paranoid Survive ( www.crosswordbookstores.com).

“People who came back from visits to Japan told scary stories. At one big Japanese company, for instance, it was said that memory development activities occupied a whole huge building. Each floor housed designers working on a different memory generation…” reads a graphic account.

“On one floor were the 16K people (where ‘K’ stands for 1,024 bits), on the floor above were the 64K people, and on the floor above that people were working on 256K-bit memories. There were even rumours that in secret projects people were working on a million-bit memory…”

Business success contains the seeds of its own destruction, sombrely observes the former Intel chairman in his preface to the book. “The more successful you are, the more people want a chunk of your business and then another chunk and then another until there is nothing left.” He believes, therefore, that the prime responsibility of a manager is to guard constantly against other people’s attacks and to inculcate this guardian attitude to the staff.

Watch for ‘strategic inflection points,’ advises Grove. Such points, which are times when in the life of a business its fundamentals are about to change, are opportunities to rise to new heights, but they can just as likely ‘signal the beginning of the end.’

These points, caused by technology or otherwise, can be deadly when unattended to, says Grove. “They build force so insidiously that you may have a hard time even putting a finger on what has changed, yet you know that something has…” Companies that begin a decline as a result of these changes ‘rarely recover their previous greatness.’

Resuming the Japan story, Grove remembers how Intel had to fight hard. “Riding the memory wave, the Japanese producers were taking over the world semiconductor market in front of our eyes… Their principal weapon was the availability of high-quality product priced astonishingly low.”

More depressing was a secret document that Intel could lay its hands on. It was a memo sent to the sales force of a large Japanese company. Grove recites the key portion of the memo: “Win with the 10 per cent rule… Find AMD (another American company) and Intel sockets…Quote 10 per cent below their price… If they requote, go 10 per cent again… Don’t quit till you win!”

The downward pricing spiral pushed Intel to try niches and earn a premium. “We tried to invent special-purpose memories called value-added designs, we introduced more advanced technologies and built memories with them,” writes Grove of those days. “There was a saying at Intel at that time: ‘If we do well we may get 2X (twice) the price of Japanese memories, but what good does it do if X gets smaller and smaller.’”

Meanwhile, Intel continued to spend heavily on R&D because, as a technology company, it believed that ‘every problem should have a technological solution.’

A saga of survival.

Tailpiece

“Considering the huge popularity of TLAs in the IT space, I began…”

“TTF, The Three-letter-acronym Factory for the information technology industry?”

“No, a TUO, for TLA Understanding Outsourcing.”

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