Before our takeoff in Minneapolis, the flight attendant announced that this was the newest aircraft in this airline’s entire fleet and on one of its first flights.

All was normal during takeoff. The plane had climbed and leveled off at altitude. The flight attendant was in the aisle, just emerging from the forward galley.

Without warning, there was a blinding flash of light, right where she was standing! She seemed to disappear and was replaced by what looked like an orange fireball.

Everything happened at once. All the lights went off inside the cabin. There was an ear-splitting BOOM! The seats launched upwards with a powerful jolt.

Passengers’ minds raced. Did a terrorist plant a bomb in the cargo hold and now we were all going to crash? How long does it take to dive seven miles straight down? Do we have a chance to survive? Calmly, my thoughts were of our family and how I would miss getting to help them, as well as how much I’d miss getting to help organizations protect their networks – the two missions of my life.

I expected to feel the heat of flame and the smell of smoke, but there was none.

Instead of diving, the plane stayed straight and level.

The lights in the cabin came back on. The flight attendant was getting up from the floor.

The man in the seat next to me announced, “We just experienced a lightning strike under the nose of the jet.”

We all turned to look at him. Interesting choice of words – he used the word experienced, rather than the word survived. He went on to explain that he was from London, and his firm built many components for this new jet.

He started explaining: In the past, planes were made of aluminum, and getting struck by lightning was no big deal. The lightning usually travelled around the aluminum hull of the plane and exited without causing any problems.

New jets replace aluminum with carbon fiber since doing so can shave more than 10,000 pounds of weight off a jet.

But, carbon fiber doesn’t conduct electricity, so a lightning strike would make a plane explode into flames. To overcome this, the aircraft manufacturers embed a conductive metallic mesh into the carbon fiber, and the mesh will conduct the electricity from lightning around the fuselage.

Just like in cyber-security, a computer must be protected to achieve survivability.

Akin to the metallic mesh pressed into carbon fiber on new aircraft, computers and networks must be protected.

The wire mesh you use needs to be making sure to keep up to date with the most recent critical security patches, use technologies like click-to-play, uninstall non-essential programs, and make sure users use standard (not administrative) local user accounts.

Once you protect your network, it is possible that security strikes will be thwarted and the event may even go unnoticed. Similarly, maybe some lightning strikes go unnoticed. But not the strike that night – there was still a bright beam of light, surround sound, and a tooth jostling bump.

Please forward this to anyone you know who might benefit from knowing that, just like metal mesh inside modern aircraft protects against lighting strikes, there are important steps to protect computers from cyber-attacks too.

The post The Jet Seemed to Explode appeared first on Foster Institute.

The application inventory shows how many machines have a specific program installed on them, such as:

Qty – Application
18 – Adobe Flash Player version 11
22 – Adobe Flash Player version 16
79 – Adobe Flash Player version 20
29 – Mozilla Firefox version 38.0.1
99 – Mozilla Firefox version 44.0.2

Your list will be longer.

Notice that there are three versions of Adobe Flash Player and two versions of Firefox.

As you can imagine, more recent versions of software are generally the most secure. Most organizations such as Adobe and Mozilla recommend that you always use the most recent versions of their tools.

Using the most secure versions of applications is especially important for programs that interface directly to the Internet, such as Flash, Java, and your browsers.

Ask your IT Professionals to update, when possible, those kind of applications. Then, they can show you an updated application inventory report, one that shows the machines being all up-to-date. And, you’ll be able to sleep better at night.

Please forward this email message to everyone you care about…

The post Security Version 2.0 appeared first on Foster Institute.

Qty – Application
79 – Adobe Flash Player
84 – Microsoft Office Standard
99 – Mozilla Firefox
10 – WinPcap
25 – WinZip
And your list will be much longer…

To make your systems more secure, look through the list, and identify the applications that are essential to your doing business. Then, ask your IT Pro to remove anything that is not essential.

As you remove the non-essential programs, you make your network more secure. The fewer toe-holds, the more like The Bean, the more secure you will be.

Forward this…

The post Smooth and Slippery for IT Security appeared first on Foster Institute.