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Mobile Win Fax & Guaranteed data security

Sunday, November 28, 1999

Really portable faxing

If you travel a lot, carry a Palm computing device, and occasionally wish you could send faxes the way you do from your desktop computer, I have good news for you. Symantec's Mobile Win Fax not only allows you to send and receive faxes, but also coordinates faxes with your desktop system back at the office.

The Palm devices have limited faxing capabilities, but Mobile Win Fax expands those capabilities greatly. Users can send and receive faxes via a compatible clip-on modem or GMS cell phone adapter. But what makes Mobile Win Fax stand out is the desktop component that enables synchronizing the Palm's faxes with faxes sent or received by the desktop system. This is particularly useful because of the limited storage space on Palm Computing devices.

Mobile Win Fax users can create faxes on their Palm computers and address them by using the Palm's address book. Mobile Win Fax also makes it possible to provide a signature via fax. By using the synchronize function, users can receive fax messages that arrived on their office computer while they were gone -- either the full faxes or a list of received faxes.

Mobile Winfax uses Win Fax Pro as the desktop send engine if it is installed on the user's desktop machine, so faxes sent from the Palm device will be logged on the desktop system.

Mobile Win Fax sells for less than $50. For more information, see http://www.symantec.com/.

Absolute security guaranteed

Maybe. So many people seem to be worried about computer security, that I thought I'd explain how to make any computer 100% secure (with a confidence level of about 99.999%). Let's face it: If an art thief can figure out how to steal a priceless art treasure, a data thief can figure out how to steal your data. But if you're really serious about making your data secure, here are 11 easy steps you can take:

1. Disconnect the computer from any network (intranet, local area network, and particularly the Internet).
2. Remove any network interface card from the computer.
3. Remove any serial ports or internal modem from the computer.
4. Remove any parallel port from the computer.
5. Remove any USB ports from the computer.
6. Remove any firewire ports from the computer.
7. Remove the floppy disk drive from the computer.
8. Place the computer inside a windowless room at the center of an RF-shielded building. To avoid break-ins through the roof or tunneling under the floor, the room should be on a middle floor. Floors, walls, ceiling, and doors should all be reinforced with quarter-inch stainless steel.
9. Place security cameras inside and outside the room, making certain that no camera shows what's on the monitor. Also avoid having any camera show what keys the user is pressing.
10. Place guards outside the room. The guards will be observed by the surveillance cameras, so it is essential that the guards and those who view the surveillance video do not know each other. Ideally, those who view the output of the cameras should not know where the video is coming from -- not even the state.
11. No more than one user may be in the room with the computer at any time. Arrival and departure times should be logged both by the video monitors and the guards. No user may carry anything into or out of the room.

Of course, this makes the computer somewhat less functional than it might otherwise be. Without serial, parallel, USB, or firewire ports, the only way the computer can obtain input is from the keyboard or mouse; the only way the computer can produce output is on the screen. The user cannot bring files on a floppy disk or take files elsewhere to work on them. Information from the corporate intranet or LAN or the Internet will not be available.

The installation would be secure -- unless somebody figured out how to bribe a susceptible guard, or impersonated a repair technician, or found a way to plant a bug that could transmit information from the computer to an outside receiver. That's why I left that 0.001% doubt in my confidence factor.

Anything that one human (or group of humans) devises to provide security, another human (or group of humans) can eventually defeat.

Omit any of the 11 steps shown above and you'll compromise security. Still, most of us have found that people don't do their best work when they're being watched by television monitors and guards, that it's convenient to be able to print reports, that networked computers allow us to share data with co-workers, that the Internet is useful for gleaning information from around the world, and that RF-shielded rooms with metal-clad walls are expensive to build and maintain.

So we purposely create systems with security holes. We consider it a reasonable risk for the benefits we receive.

Recently, I've been asked about services such as cable modems and ADSL lines that can provide a high-speed connection to your personal computer whenever the computer is on. People recognize the benefits of these services, but they're concerned about the danger of hackers.

Let's start by turning the security question around. Consider that you're a big-time computer crook. You steal valuable data and sell it to the highest bidder. Consider your data from the crook's point of view. If you're not the president of the United States, chief scientist for a big research and development firm, or the operator of a bank, the crook will probably have little interest in your data.

Willie Sutton, the infamous bank robber, said that he robbed banks because that's where the money was. Data thieves are no less discerning.

Still concerned? If so, you need to check one important setting under Network in the Control Panel. Make sure you've not selected "share files and printers". This will eliminate the threat. (Yes, there are still other ways to get in, but the cracker who goes after an individual's PC isn't too bright to begin with, so you can consider the threat eliminated unless you store data that a crook could use -- and you advertise the fact.)

For more information on security, see http://ciac.llnl.gov/ http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/SecurityTools.html http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/security/default.asp

Nerdly News

Priceline signs on more airlines

Priceline.com has just added United Airlines (#1), American Airlines (#2), and US Airways (#6) to its stable, so the company is representing 8 of the top 10 US carriers and 20 foreign airlines. Other US airlines that work with Priceline.com are America West, Delta, Continental, Northwest, and TWA.

Priceline.com has expanded into hotel rooms, rental cars, and other items, but the company's first product was airline travel. Prospective buyers make an offer for a ticket online and Priceline.com has 60 minutes to find an airline that will accept the price. If the search is successful, the bidder must purchase the ticket. Those seeking tickets must be flexible when it comes to departure time, travel time, arrivals, and routing, so the service has more appeal to vacation travelers than to business travelers.

At first, TWA and America West cooperated with Priceline. Earlier this year, Delta signed on -- then Northwest and Continental. Apparently the larger airlines were unwilling to turn over control of their inventory to an outside company, but Priceline is now selling about 50,000 tickets per week, compared to about 5,000 per week at the beginning of the year.

Priceline is at http://www.priceline.com/.

That was one expensive short cut

The federal government says the cost of repairing the year 2000 computer problem would be $100 billion. That's $365 for each man, woman and child in the United States. The Commerce Department now says that the effect of computer failures on the economy would be "something like a tangled shoelace for a world-class marathon runner."

Commerce Secretary William M. Daley says he won't lose any sleep over the problem. Some commerce officials say that businesses are expected to adjust inventories to hedge against possible supply problems between now and January 1st. This will add apparent growth to the economy in the final quarter of 2000, but isn't expected to slow growth during the first months of 2000.

The mall vs. the call

The big battle this year is between malls and dot.coms. Going to a mall means fighting crowds and dealing with parking, but you can touch the merchandise. Ordering on the Internet is fast and easy, but not at all tactile.

The dot.coms are advertising heavily on traditional media -- using the same techniques regular merchandisers have used to drive up traffic. On the Friday after Thanksgiving, Outpost.com gave away gift bundles every 15 minutes from 8 a.m. until 11 p.m.

Outpost.com CEO Bob Bowman says, "With the Internet at almost everyone's finger tips, now is the perfect time for people to start shopping online." Hold it, Bob. Only about 50% of the nation's homes have computers, and only about 60% of those are connected to the Internet. It true that almost everybody can get Internet access by going to a library, but it's hardly at everyone's fingertips yet.

Outpost.com gave away grand prizes on Saturday, November 27th -- a $25,000 shopping spree with the winner chosen from the Friday winners and another $15,000 shopping spree for which all entrants were eligible.

For more information, see http://www.outpost.com/.

Dyson to salute women in technology

Esther Dyson, one of the best known consultants and advisors in technology will speak at the first meeting of the New York chapter of Women in Technology International (WITI) on Monday, December 6. The talk is titled "How the Net Changes the Balance of Power."

WITI regional director Kathleen Harris emphasized the importance of networking in career development -- what once was called the old-boys network. "Our annual and regional conferences provide ideal opportunities to meet with fellow technology professionals and hear from some of the high-tech industry's most dynamic business women."

For more information on the organization, see http://www.witi.org/, where you'll learn that there is a central Ohio chapter of the group.