PII (Personally Identifiable Information) broadly speaking is information that relates directly to the individual (you) and allows you to be individually identified, plus it is often of a sensitive private nature. We explain in this article what it is and how to protect yourself against people trying to steal your identity through PII. Why is Read more about What is PII Really?[…]
Online systems need to be both secure and designed to last, so how can you achieve both and not blow the budget? This article covers a few simple principals you can adopt which are both good for your systems architecture and good for your security. #1 System Components should only do what they say on Read more about Systems Architecture & Security, winning at both[…]
Software/Enterprise/System/X Architect all seem to be pretty much interchangeable titles these days – the trouble is for most people it’s hard to exactly pin down what a X Architect is and what they are expected to do on a day to day basis. Well you are in luck, this article will shed some light on Read more about What is a software architect, really?[…]
According to this article Cisco just had a bit of a shock in the Vault 7 CIA leak – namely that a simple malformed telnet command to one of its effected switches can either reboot it or get it to execute commands with admin privileges (or the equivalent of admin). This is a Zero Day as Read more about Just turn off telnet everywhere now…[…]
Below are a list of Start-Up Incubators that currently operate in Sydney and are principally Australia/Sydney focussed. Note: I have not incubators which are part of a global chain or organisation, these are ‘home grown’ incubators only… BTW if you think I’ve missed someone that should be on this list – let me know. Cicada Read more about Start-up Incubators in Sydney[…]
Given the recent outage with AWS and how some bad typing could bring down a large part of the cloud infrastructure of Amazon I thought it might be informative to pull the veil back a bit on how cloud systems work and what are the common failure modes and how to guard against it. A Read more about Why do cloud services fail?[…]
This is in relation to some consulting with a business about whether to use an Off The Shelf (OTS) solution for some auth middleware or not. To OTS or not to OTS – is that the question? Sorry for mangling Shakespeare but when considering an OTS solution, compared to doing something else (like doing in Read more about Beware of Salesmen bearing SLA’s[…]
Moving a WordPress site to another hosting provider can sometimes not go exactly to plan. Listed below are some common problems that can occur and how to fix them. Blank page.. Did you actually put the website directly ‘in’ the public_html directory and not in a subdirectory? Most cPanel installations serve the main site straight Read more about Moving WordPress sites[…]
This question was recently put to me by an architect at a Sydney based cloud SAAS business I have done Architectural consultancy with, and I thought it would be good to publish my answer, as this impacts quite a lot of businesses and systems architecture decision making all over the place. The question is an Read more about Should API’s provide Client Libraries?[…]
This is part of the TechEd Section. As mentioned previously you need to be very careful when using multiple sources of power that are coupled by a common rail – nasty things can happen which will ruin your day (as well let all the critical magic smoke out). Luckily for me my power supplies are able Read more about Arduino, RS485, mixed powers and multiple devices[…]
This is part of the TechEd section. As I mentioned previously , I had a need to double check that the 5v USB supply from my laptop was floating with respect to my lab power supply. I measured a no load difference on the 0v lines of around 120v – which raised the obvious concern Read more about Arduino and multiple power sources – things to watch out for…[…]
After having spent a bit of time trying to work out how to get Propel and Composer to play nicely together, I thought it would be helpful to write up a little aid for those going through similar pains… The end game is to have your custom behaviors ‘live’ in their own Git repo to Read more about Propel, custom Behaviors, Composer and Git – how to get it all working[…]
At home I have a need to measure temperature and control various circuits in response to those temperature changes and other inputs. The sensor network needed to span at least 100m and ideally should have the ability to reach out to 200m (so I could get down to the Chicken Coop and pool). Looking around Read more about Arduino Uno clone RS485 network[…]
PayPal have committed to a longer signing key length and part of this is in the need to upgrade your SSL and CURL stack to support TLS 1.2 and HTTP/1.1, this will hit most people via the IPN acknowledgement call back. Why the longer key length? Basically over time the ability of computers to ‘crack’ a Read more about PayPal SSL upgrade to TLS 1.2 and HTTP/1.1[…]
One thing is very clear, the future is going all STEM… According to various articles, it appears we are heading for a future full of robots and technology that will drastically increase the degree of automation as part of the economic and manufacturing process. I think this is largely inevitable as there are a few Read more about STEM, AI and the future[…]
Although lightning is a common occurred in Australia, not much thought is given to the consequences of it; that is until you suffer a lightning strike.. About 4 weeks ago we had a very severe storm cell that hung around Sydney, in particular it was producing quite a loud lightning show not that far away.. Read more about Lightning Strikes[…]
Just had an interesting email exchange with a perspective client who wanted us to work on an unfinished WordPress website abandoned by the previous website developer… It appears that there is no brief or specification document to be found and no idea on budget, yet he was quite willing to have a chat and see Read more about The importance of a specification and a budget![…]
Websites or online services come under constant attack from hackers using automated scripts, if left unmanaged such attacks can consume sufficient resources to impact your quality of service, negatively impacting your brand. This article explains why this is a major problem and what the solution is. Online Security Matters, Dictionary Attacks are everywhere Every online Read more about Online Security and Hungry Caterpillars – they have a lot in common…[…]
It is often the case that in an attempt to quickly set up business services and scale that people will turn right away to Off The Shelf (OTS) solutions, usually zeroing in what they have used before and just buying in and applying. The idea being to forego development costs of an in-house system in Read more about How Off The Shelf (OTS) Solutions ruin Data & Business Integration efforts[…]