The recent breach of major cybersecurity company FireEye by nation-state hackers was part of a much larger attack that was carried out through malicious updates to a popular network monitoring product and impacted major government organizations and companies. The incident highlights the severe impact software supply chain attacks can have and the unfortunate fact that most organizations are woefully unprepared to prevent and detect such threats. A hacker group believed to be affiliated with the…

The company at the center of revelations over a widespread Russian information-stealing campaign has said that fewer than 18,000 of its global customers were affected. SolarWinds produces popular software that helps organizations manage their IT networks and infrastructure. However, it was revealed by FireEye that attacks which compromised the security vendor and US government departments had used the software as a key attack vector. In a way not dissimilar to the NotPetya attacks of 2017…

Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) stopped many things in 2020. While in-store holiday shopping may be greatly reduced for some, there’s still a lot of shopping happening online. Near the end of November 2020, Statista revealed that holiday retail sales were expected to grow approximately 3.6% over the previous year. And Adobe Analytics reported that online sales would likely rise 33% to a record $189 billion. CNBC clarified that this number condenses two years’ worth of economic…

As I had mentioned previously, this year, I’m going back to school. Not to take classes, but to teach a course at my alma mater, Fanshawe College. I did this about a decade ago and thought it was interesting, so I was excited to give it another go. Additionally, after a friend mentioned that their kid wanted to learn Python, I developed an Intro to Python course aimed at high school students that I’m teaching…