Saturday 2 May 2015

Things you should know about the Opera browser (Presto) and its features

For me, the ultimate browser is the Opera Web Browser. I have been using Opera as my default browser under Windows since 2001 (Mozilla under Linux) where I had the luxury of having multiple tabs open while I was enjoying the amazing speed of the fastest browser at the time. Due to the fact most viruses were being written at the time to affect Internet Explorer, Opera was unaffected by malicious scripts and viruses hosted on web servers/portals. Also, one of the most life saving features of Opera was that whatever happened to the OS (the OS used to hang and crash a lot back then) you would never loose your work! All my tabs, with all the things I was reading/researching were kept as they were, no matter what e.g. power failure. 

Many "experts" at the time were claiming that a multi-tab browser is a pointless feature because you are always going to be using one tab in front of you at any time anyway. Today the answer to these people seems obvious, but back then it was a nightmare to convince these "opinionated experts"  that multi-tab browsing is the future. 

Friday 1 May 2015

Cyber Essentials Scheme explained

Cyber Security is of increasing importance to private companies, SMEs and organisations. Becoming certified against a cyber security standard can be proven a trivial task. Getting familiar with the Cyber Essentials Scheme might proven invaluable when it comes to the cyber security of a business/organisation and to obtaining government contracts. Becoming certified to a cyber security standard significantly lowers the risk of becoming the victim of a data breach. 

According to the Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report (2013-2015) most of the attacks require very little skill or experience to be carried out. Consequently, the UK government in order to roll out a basic level of security for protecting businesses against these widely spread cyber attacks (usually low-tech attacks) introduced the Cyber Essentials Scheme on the 1st of October 2014.

Thursday 30 April 2015

Guest Speaker for University of South Wales (Information Security Research Group) - CyberSecurity and the Payment Card Industry

I had the pleasure to be invited as a guest speaker to the University of South Wales in order to give a talk about CyberSecurity and the Payment Card Industry more specifically for the Information Security Research Group (ISRG).
The talk included an introduction to the Payment Card Industry (PCI),  Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) and the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI SSC). The participant had an opportunity to understand what is an Approved Scanning Vendor (ASV), a Qualified Security Assessor (QSA) and last but not least a PCI Forensics Investigator (PFI).

Tuesday 21 April 2015

Download videos from online resources, such as YouTube, Dailymotion, etc..

Among the most popular video hosting resource on the web is YouTube, being the third most popular website in the world. Sometimes we find ourselves in need to download a video in order to be able to watch it offline. 

There are several online services which allow us to save a copy of our favourite videos but not all of them allows you the option of downloading in different qualities and formats.

Monday 20 April 2015

BSides London 2015 - CFP

I hope you all look forward to BSides London 2015, https://www.securitybsides.org.uk. In case you want to tweet about it, this year we are using the #BSidesLDN2015 hash tag. The event will take place on Wednesday 3/Jun/2015 at the ILEC Conference Centre, 47 Lillie Road, SW6 1UD, London (see the MAP). 

As a side note, this year InfoSecurity Europe in London will take place between the dates 2nd and 4th/June/2015. Usually, Security BSides London is in line with InfoSec and the event takes place on the first day of InfoSec. However, this year, make sure you note down that the event will take place on the second day of InfoSec (see InfoSec). 

I am happy to see that my talk for this year is number 2 on the list of submissions (CFP Submissions). Voting for the talks opened today 20/Apr/2015 and it will be running until 1/May/2015. Please find some more information about my talk in the section below (click Read More). You can find/follow me at twitter @drgfragkos and I really hope you spread the word regarding this talk to your friends and followers.