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Friday, March 27, 2009
Stop Joking On Sardar ..Contd part-II
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
ACCESS GRANTED....To hackers on my System ?????
Seven Rs of Change Management
The Seven Rs of Change Management is used as part of the change assessment activity.
Who RAISED the Change?
What is the REASON for the change?
What RETURN will the change deliver?
What RISKS are there is we do or do not carry out the change?
What RESOURCES will be required to perform this change?
Who is RESPONSIBLE for this change being performed?
What RELATIONSHIPS are there between this and other changes?
1. Who raised the change?
Unauthorized change is the scourge of IT. One way to address authorization is to develop a system for centrally recording all changes. Such a system must incorporate appropriate controls to address change handoffs across functional areas. This single “system of record” is especially useful during audits.
2. What is the reason for the change?
Answer this question so you can avoid changes that introduce risk without offering any corresponding business benefits. This assessment will ensure appropriate prioritization of change and expose gross potential misalignments before they sap IT resources.
3. What return is required from the change?
While ITIL recognizes two key inputs into the change management process (problems and innovation), guidance about how innovation should be regulated is sparse. “ITIL Financial Management for IT Services” can provide useful cost-related information but needs to be supplemented with value-based metrics to objectively measure the true financial impact of change.
4. What are the risks involved in the change?
All change involves risk. The question is how much risk. Some risks can be avoided or mitigated and some have to be accepted. You must make every effort to assess the likely impact of change on your infrastructure. Identify a regression strategy should the worst happen. Make sure that you also consider the risk of not making a change.
5. What resources are required to deliver the change?
Both people and IT assets are needed. From a people perspective, mechanisms need to be in place to determine what skills are needed to make the change, as well as whether those skills are actually available. Assets require a similar analysis.
6. Who is responsible for the “build, test, and implement” portion of the change?
Responsibilities for each of these three functions must be appropriately segregated, especially in light of compliance and auditing requirements. Segregation of responsibilities, however, should not be restricted to application development.
7. What is the relationship between this change and other changes?
Change relationships need to be determined from within and across functional boundaries. Failing to do so will result in longer periods of planned downtime due, for example, to incorrect or sub-optimal change sequencing. Shared scheduling of planned changes can help here, as can change impact analysis and relationship mapping from an integrated configuration management database (CMDB).
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Regards,
Amarjit Singh
WHO ARE HACKERS?
The definition of a hacker has been influenced and tainted over the years. There have been various computer related activities attributed to the term “hacker”, but were greatly misunderstood. Unfortunately for the people who are truly defined within the underground tech world as a “hacker” this is an insult to them.There are various types of “hackers”, each with their own agenda. My motto is to help protect you from the worst of them.
Anarchist Hackers
These are the individuals who you should be weary of. They are more likely to be interested in what lies on another person’s machine for example yours. Mostly you’ll find that these individuals have slightly above computer skill level and consider themselves hackers. They glorify themselves on the accomplishments of others. Their idea of classing themselves as a hacker is that of acquire programs
and utilities readily available on the net, use these programs with no real knowledge of how these applications work and if they manage to “break” into someone’s system class themselves as a hacker. These individuals are called “Kiddie Hackers.” They use these programs given to them in a malicious fashion on anyone they can infect. These individuals are usually high school students.
Hackers
A hacker by definition believes in access to free information. They are usually very intelligent people who could care very little about what you have on your system. Unfortunately, many journalists and writers have been fooled into using the word ‘hacker.” They have attributed any computer related illegal activities to the term “hacker.”
For real hackers, the higher the security the better the challenge. The better the challenge the better they need to be. They don’t particularly care about bragging about their accomplishments as it exposes them to suspicion. They prefer to work from behind the scenes and preserve their anonymity. Not all hackers are loners, often you’ll find they have a very tight circle of associates, but still there is a level of anonymity betweenthem.
Crackers
For definition purposes I have included this term. This is primarily the term given to individuals who are skilled at the art of bypassing software copyright protection. They are usually highly skilled in programming languages. They are often confused with Hackers. As you can see they are similar in their agenda. They both fight security of some kind, but they are completely different “animals.” Being able to attribute your attacks to the right type of attacker is very important. By identifying your attacker to be either an Anarchist Hacker or a Hacker you get a better idea of what you’re up against.
“Know your enemy and know yourself and you will always be victorious...”