Marcel Brown: September 26, 1996. IOmega kicked off a 17 stop Zip Across America promotional tour demonstrating their new mass storage device, the ZipDrive. Do you all remember those? It was a 3. 5 inch, 100 megabyte capacity disk.

Trac Bannon:  I’m reporting from Jersey City, New Jersey. I’m at the DevOps World Tour sponsored by CloudBees and dang, I’m excited. I’m getting to see old friends and meeting new. Our topics are including AI Augmented DevOps, Platform Engineering for App Modernization, SEI Quality of Service at Scale with CI Observability.

Edwin Kwan:  Phishing scams just got more sophisticated with scammers targeting hotel staff in order to phish their customers. They first make contact with the hotel staff under the guise of making a reservation.

Ian Garrett:   There’s another casualty in the war between security and usability. Google has started notifying Gmail users about the retirement of basic HTML view in January 2024. After this date, users will need modern web browsers to continue accessing Gmail.

From Sourced Network Productions in New York City, It’s 5:05. I’m Executive Producer, Mark Miller. Today is Tuesday, September 26, 2023. We’re going to start off with something new today. Trac Bannon has been live at the CloudBees DevOps World Tour in Jersey City. And she’s recorded a couple segments with people that have been presenters at the conference itself. This is going to be a short, ongoing series over the next couple of days. Today Trac talks with Bill Bensing about governance engineering. Sit tight, this is kind of fun.

 

The Stories Behind the Cybersecurity Headlines

 

Trac Bannon
Live at DevOps World with Bill Bensing

Trac Bannon: Hey, this is Trac Bannon and I’m reporting from Jersey City, New Jersey. I’m at the DevOps World Tour sponsored by CloudBees and dang, I’m excited. I’m getting to see old friends and meeting new. I just ran into Bill Bensing and Topo Pal is somewhere in the room. We’re going to have a lot of fun today.

Our topics are including AI Augmented DevOps, Platform Engineering for App Modernization, SEI Quality of Service at Scale with CI Observability. Observability Suffice to say, got a lot of good stuff going on today here at DevOps World Tour 2023.

There was a virtual kickoff last week, and today is the physical kickoff. I am here with a friend and colleague, Bill Bensing. Hey dude, I loved what you talked about this morning for Investments Unlimited, but I want to dive a little bit deeper, just get a couple of minutes with you on governance engineering.

It’s a new term. You’re kind of, you’re kind of at the forefront of this. What the heck is it?

Bill Bensing: So, governance engineering, simple. Taking a software engineering approach to solving the governance problems. When I say governance, of course we’re going to start with software delivery, but think about what it means to govern across the enterprise.

Let me define governance real quick. It’s just simply proving you’re doing what you say you’re doing. There’s two parts of it. One, what do we need to do? And two, proving you’re doing it on a consistent basis.

The proof part, like, software is great with that. That’s just automated checklist. At the end of the day, you don’t need humans in the middle. The whole idea behind governance engineering and the movement is to start to get people from the community who are doing this stuff.

People have been doing this for years. How do we formalize? How do we share a community of knowledge and to inspire the folks who are doing it to do it better.

One other agenda I have on it is leadership. I call it the teddy bears. They want to see other people successfully doing it, and that’s their teddy bear.

So how can we use governance engineering as a core foundational concept to help build a teddy bear for organizations that want to do it, and they need proof for their leadership.

Trac Bannon: I see in the very near future a couple of stickers that have teddy bears that say governance engineering on them. I’m just putting it out there. I’m seeing that in the future for you.

If people are really interested in this, and I know I am, how do I learn more about it? What avenues are there for me to get smart?

Bill Bensing: There is some published posts out there at ITRevolution. You can also go to GovEng. io. GovEng is what we’re going to name the community. There is also GovernanceEngineering. io, which is a bit more thought leadership.

Go subscribe to those. If you go look up Governance as a Service or Governance Engineering in Google, you’ll see a couple things out there from ITRev. That’s where to get started.

I will admit it’s very new and very nascent right now, so I’m working on more and more content, hopefully in the next month or two there’s going to be a lot out there. But we do have on the gov eng. io, in the governance engineering, that you can put your email in and follow along with weekly updates.

Trac Bannon: Fantastic. Well, I know for when I’ll be subscribing. Hey, thanks for taking time with me today, and I’ll see you around the conference this afternoon.

Bill Bensing: Really? Thank you!

 

Edwin Kwan
Beware: Phishing Scam from Legitimate Booking Platforms

Phishing scams just got more sophisticated with scammers targeting hotel staff in order to phish their customers.

This is Edwin Kwan from Sydney, Australia.

Security researchers discovered a sophisticated credit card-stealing campaign where the hackers first target hotel staff. They first make contact with the hotel staff under the guise of making a reservation. After establishing communications, the criminal will invoke a reason, such as a medical condition, or special request to send important documents via URL to the staff member. The URL leads to a malicious site that has information-stealing malware to collect sensitive data like credentials or financial information.

Once they have the staff members’ credentials, they then go after their final target, which are, the hotel customers. They send out a well-written, professional messages modeled after genuine hotel interactions to the customers using the now -compromised hotel or booking service.

The message is received by the victim through the booking site’s messaging platform to make it look legitimate. The link would be to a fake version of the hotel or booking service and would ask for the victim’s credit card details.

Users are advised to avoid clicking on unsolicited links, be suspicious of urgent or threatening messages asking for immediate action, and to check URLs for indicators of deception.

Resources
– Bleeping Computer: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/hotel-hackers-redirect-guests-to-fake-bookingcom-to-steal-cards/

 

Ian Garrett
Google Basic HTML Users Need to Find a New Home

There’s another casualty in the war between security and usability, and Gmail users who like Gmail basic HTML view are about to be disappointed. Google is set to retire its Gmail basic HTML view in January 2024. This move will impact how some users access Gmail, and it’s important to understand what’s changing.

Hey folks, this is Ian Garrett in Arlington, Virginia.

Google has started notifying Gmail users about the retirement of basic HTML view in January 2024. After this date, users will need modern web browsers to continue accessing Gmail. Instead of the basic HTML view, users will be automatically redirected to the more modern standard view, which supports the latest usability and security features.

The basic HTML view is a simplified version of Gmail designed for users in areas with limited internet access, people using older hardware with restricted memory, or those employing legacy web browsers that lack support for current HTML features.

One of the primary reasons some users opt for the HTML view is its compatibility with text to speech tools used by individuals with visual impairments.

The standard view introduces technical complexities that pose challenges for these tools, making the basic HTML view a more reliable option. For users who depend on accessibility features, Thunderbird is known to work well with screen readers like JAWS, NVDA, and Windows Eyes. It also offers various display and text size adjustment options to enhance usability for individuals with visual impairments.

This change in Gmail’s interface is part of Google’s efforts to provide a more modern and secure email experience. While it may require some adjustments for users who rely on the basic HTML view, there are alternative email clients and accessibility features available to help ease the transition.

Resources
– Bleeping Computer: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/google-is-retiring-its-gmail-basic-html-view-in-january-2024/

 

Marcel Brown
This Day, September 26, in Tech History

This is Marcel Brown with some technology history for September 26th.

September 26, 1973. The supersonic aircraft Concorde makes its first non-stop Atlantic crossing and sets a new speed record in the process. Flying from Washington, D. C. to Paris, France in 3 hours 32 minutes at an average speed of 954 miles per hour, the Concorde cut the old speed record in half.

September 26, 1996. IOmega kicked off a 17 stop Zip Across America promotional tour demonstrating their new mass storage device, the ZipDrive. Do you all remember those? It was a 3. 5 inch, 100 megabyte capacity disk. But for about 5 or 6 years before the emergence of USB flash drives, iOmega Zip disks were very popular.

That’s your technology history for today. For more, tune in tomorrow and visit my website, ThisDayInTechHistory. com.

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Resources
– https://thisdayintechhistory.com/09/26