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Showing posts with the label Security

The importance of Trust

The importance of Trust Data breaches, corporate re-structuring and collapses have alerted business to the value of an intangible ... trust. We are big advocates for the use of email as a communication medium rather than the paper documents of the past. Working in law firms and accounting firms though has always been at odds with "Paperless" and environmentally responsible communication. I believe that as a profession it is no longer possible to ignore paperless processing. The time has come to embrace the challenges and implement features like electronic payments WITH the requisite controls. Unfortunately we see a focus on the problem and not the solution. Electronic control systems can close fraud options that are available now. A recent article in New Zealand is a case in point. OpenEFT  would have prevented this fraud. The conclusion that Lawyers and clients should be careful with emailed instructions could have been ensure you have systems and policies in pla...

Security Update for SQL Server

This month Microsoft released a rare patch for SQL Server. A Security Update to fix venerability within Reporting Services. We'd urge you to check the bulletin list of susceptible candidate versions of SQL Server. Rather, since there are so many versions susceptible, scroll to the list of non-affected versions. If your install is listed here, breath easy. If not, this update's for you. I installed and function tested the update on SQL 2008. It's straightforward and SQL Server needs a re-start to kick it in, which means an outage if you're applying this to a core business server. This patch covers a venerability in Reporting Services. Through this loop-hole malicious code could elevate access privileges and gain control and cause some damage. The malicious code could be planted on a web site or in an advertisement. Looking innocent enough, it's the sort of thing anybody could trigger. The link between an external web site or advertisement and your ...