A few weeks ago an announcement was made regarding the fact that Disney had acquired Lucasfilm, home of the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises. Anybody who, like me, is a Disney fan will know that all of this goes together like peanut butter and jelly. My most treasured pin is Minnie Mouse as the classic Star Wars Princess Leia but that’s just one example of how the two universes have collided. However, what surprised me were the negative remarks from many of my friends and colleagues about what a disaster this was. The comments focused on all the various ways that Disney would betray the Star Wars fans, from commercialisation to characterisation, but it was all negative.

As somebody who is both a lifelong Star Wars fan (I adore all of the films from I to VI. I was 5 when Star Wars came out and I went to the cinema 4 times to see it. My son was 7 when Episode I came out so he grew up watching those, with me enjoying his enjoyment) and a huge Disney...

I think it’s about time to refer to PCI DSS as a rather mature and dissected standard. And I’m ready to bet that you heard at least once in your life the sentence “PCI only demands for common-sense security!” All true, still we keep on facing situations where organizations struggle to maintain compliance with PCI DSS. It seems that we do a pretty good job at covering PCI DSS requirements, but somehow neglect to drive an approach that would help organizations stay compliant and protect their business through their evolution.

PCI standard is based on a very simple yet effective equation: you need to protect a specific and well defined type of data and you must do it with a series of well-defined measures, most of them technological (PCI DSS is probably the standard that, more than any other, dares to get its hands dirty with technology) and many other procedurals... It...

Problem:

When trying to recconnect, rebuild or reinstall just the application portion of the SEPM, windows authentication fails to connect to the database. The connection information, account permissions, and account passwords are correct. The tomcat error logs show that the domain isnt trusted. DBAs can see that the account connects to the database but goes no further. The error from the installer is that the connection to the database failed (no error code), and it refers you to a troubleshooting document relating to server connections. 

Solution:

Start the Management Server Configuration Wizard using the windows service account needed for the database (run as different user in the right-click menu if you hold down shift). In my case i also needed to grant the account local rights. The database configuration will now succeed.

In order to better understand cybercriminals, and improve businesses’ ability to defend against today’s threats, Symantec is sponsoring a series of Cyber Readiness Challenge events. Following the first event held in Toronto earlier in the month, the second was held on November 29 in Irvine, California. This technical competition pits users against each other, according to level of technical ability, in a capture-the-flag style environment, to perform a series of tasks attacking and defending simulated data centers.

On a rare rainy evening in Southern California, the competition opened with a presentation by Samir Kapuria, vice president of Symantec Strategy and Security Intelligence, on today’s cyber threats and how they are evolving. Kapuria also talked about how software...