We use them dozens of times a day: The Ctrl+Z, Ctrl+X, Ctrl+C, and Ctrl+V shortcuts that trigger Undo, Cut, Copy, and Paste. But where did they come from, and why does Windows use those particular keys for those functions? We’ll explain.
It Goes Way Back to Apple The story of Ctrl+Z, Ctrl+X, Ctrl+C, and Ctrl+V shortcuts for Undo, Cut, Copy, and Paste in Windows goes back to the very early 1980s. The earliest ancestor of these shortcuts appeared on the Apple Lisa computer in 1983. The Lisa was a precursor of the Macintosh and Apple’s first mouse-based computer.
The Apple Lisa (1983) introduced the Z, X, C, and V shortcuts. Apple
While developing the user interface for the Lisa, #Apple programmer Larry Tesler chose to use the Z, X, C, and V keys in conjunction with the #Lisa’s Apple key to represent Undo, Cut, Copy, and Paste. Together, they made Apple+Z, Apple+X, Apple+C, and Apple+V. In a circa-2016 email to Dr. Brad A. Myers of Carnegie Mellon University, Tesler described exactly why he chose those specific letters:
The Lisa was the first system to assign XCVZ to cut, copy, paste and undo (shifted with the “apple” key). I chose them myself. X was a standard symbol of deletion. C was the first letter of Copy. V was an upside-down caret and apparently meant Insert in at least one earlier editor.
Z was next to X, C and V on the U.S. #QWERTY keyboard. But its shape also symbolized the “Do-Undo-Redo” triad: top rightward stroke = step forward; middle leftward stroke = step back; bottom rightward stroke = step forward again.
Tesler also notes that the Apple+Z key originally served as both an Undo and a Redo key—instead of the multi-step Undo we now know today (with Ctrl+Y usually being Redo on Windows), which makes his symbolic explanation of the letter “Z” for Undo make more sense.
The Apple Lisa keyboard layout with Apple, Z, X, C, and V keys highlighted. Apple
Obviously, these keys are also handy in that they are located in the lower-left corner of the keyboard near meta keys such as Apple (on the Lisa), Command (on the Mac), and Control (on PCs). So if you’re using a computer’s mouse with your right hand, you can quickly trigger these frequently-used functions with your left hand.
When Apple developed the Macintosh, it brought forward the Lisa’s Z/X/C/V keyboard shortcuts but adapted them for the Command key that was unique to the Mac platform. So on a Mac in 1984, as with today, you’d press Command+Z for Undo, Command+X for Cut, Command+C for Copy, and Command+V for paste.
It’s worth noting that while the Apple Lisa introduced the Z/X/C/V shortcuts, the actual concepts for Undo, Cut, Copy and Paste originated earlier with interfaces for software developed for the Xerox Alto in the 1970s.
The Shortcuts Come to Windows At the dawn of the Graphical User Interface (GUI) era for Microsoft, Apple licensed some elements of the Macintosh OS to Microsoft for Windows 1.0, but Redmond took care to not exactly duplicate the Macintosh interface. It’s probably no surprise then that between Windows 1.0 and Windows 3.0, Microsoft originally assigned different shortcuts for Undo, Cut, Copy and Paste than the ones most people use today:
Undo: Alt+Backspace
Cut: Shift+Delete
Copy: Ctrl+Insert
Paste: Shift+Insert
Windows still supports these legacy shortcuts (and some people still love using them). At some point during the development of Windows 3.1, Microsoft brought Ctrl+Z, Ctrl+X, Ctrl+C, and Ctrl+V to Windows as well. They had already appeared Word for Windows 2.0 in 1991, and possibly other Windows Office apps.
We asked former Microsoft VP Brad Silverberg the reason for including these new shortcuts in Windows 3.1, and he recalls that the Windows team might have been trying to be consistent with Office apps, some of which originated on the Macintosh. They were also more user-friendly: “I liked ZXVC better—easier to remember, and it seemed like a good idea,” says Silverberg.
PC Magazine noticed the new shortcuts in its 1992 review of Windows 3.1 and called the decision “one of the more controversial changes made in this upgrade.” But from what we can tell, there was never any kind of mass protest over adopting these shortcuts into Windows. “I don’t think they were all that controversial and were adopted very quickly,” recalls Silverberg.
It all worked out well in the end. Since 1992, every desktop version of Windows has included the Ctrl+Z, Ctrl+X, Ctrl+C, and Ctrl+V shortcuts for Undo, Cut, Copy, and Paste.
Microsoft has started kicking unsupported PCs out of Windows 11 testing. A new warning message recommends that Windows 11 testers reinstall Windows 10 if they don’t meet hardware requirements.
Some Windows 11 testers will need to reinstall Windows 10
Microsoft is starting to drop PCs from its Windows Insider testing program that are ineligible to upgrade to Windows 11. If you’ve been helping Microsoft test Windows 11 on a machine that doesn’t meet the minimum hardware requirements, you’ll likely see a message in Windows Update warning that you’ll need to reinstall Windows 10.
“Your PC does not meet the minimum hardware requirements for Windows 11,” says Microsoft’s warning. “Your device is not eligible to join the Windows Insider Program on Windows 11. Please install Windows 10 to participate in the Windows Insider Program in the Release Preview Channel.”
Windows 11 testers in both the Dev and Beta channels have started receiving the message on incompatible PCs this week, just as Microsoft has announced its October 5th release date for the upcoming OS. It’s something that Microsoft warned testers would happen at the beginning of the beta period of Windows 11, but it still highlights the often confusing minimum hardware requirements that Microsoft has set.
Windows 11 testers that have been running the OS on unsupported hardware will be able to use a workaround to install an ISO version of the final release. But Microsoft warns that devices in this unsupported state won’t be eligible for Windows Updates, and that could include security patches.
Microsoft recommends that Windows 11 testers that don’t meet the hardware minimums should install Windows 10, as this OS will be supported until 2025. Many Windows 11 testers, who are often loyal Microsoft enthusiasts, will still be left confused why their PC isn’t officially supported even though it has likely been running the OS just fine for months. Microsoft has attempted to justify its Windows 11 minimum hardware requirements around a push for security and reliability, but it still leaves some PCs sold just a few years ago from being able to upgrade. Windows 11 raises the baseline of security to the CPU level, and Microsoft has been clear it wants to enforce or support Trusted Platform Module (TPM), UEFI Secure Boot, and virtualization-based security methods.
Windows 11 will now arrive on October 5th, and Microsoft will continue to release new Dev builds of the OS to testers. Android app integration isn’t arriving at launch but Windows Insider testers will get access in the coming months to the feature which relies heavily on modern hardware.
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The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) this week published a new document providing recommendations on how to prevent data compromise during ransomware attacks.
Recent high-profile incidents involving ransomware have resulted in sensitive and personal information being stolen by the attackers, in addition to encrypting data on compromised machines and causing major service disruptions.
In fact, adversaries typically lurk for a long time in the compromised networks to identify and exfiltrate data of interest, and only then deploy ransomware to encrypt the victim’s machines. Thus, they increase the impact of the attack, as they can blackmail the victim into paying a ransom, threatening to make the stolen information public.
In a newly published fact sheet aimed at both government and private sector organizations, CISA provides information on how to prevent and respond to ransomware-caused data breaches.
“All organizations are at risk of falling victim to a ransomware incident and are responsible for protecting sensitive and personal data stored on their systems,” CISA notes in the document.
To prevent a ransomware attack, the agency says, organizations should maintain offline, encrypted backups of all of their data, and ensure they have a cyber incident response plan in place. They should also patch vulnerabilities in all internet-facing assets, audit their environments for misconfigurations, implement appropriate phishing protections, and practice good overall cyber hygiene.
In order to keep sensitive and personal information secure, organizations are advised to first identify the data and who has access to it, to implement physical security and cybersecurity best practices, and make sure that response and notification procedures for data breach incidents are included in cyber incident response plans.
When facing a ransomware attack, CISA says, organizations should attempt to stop additional data loss, collect information from the compromised systems, and follow the appropriate notification requirements.
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Thirty years ago today—on August 6, 1991—Tim Berners-Lee posted about his World Wide Web project on the alt.hypertext newsgroup, inviting the public to take a look at the world’s first website. The invitation eventually launched a billion websites. Let’s look back at the web’s genesis.
WWW: The NeXTSTEP in Internet Evolution
In 1989, a British software developer at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (commonly abbreviated “CERN”) named Tim Berners-Lee grew frustrated with how scientists shared research at his organization. With many different file formats, programming languages, and computer platforms, he found it frustrating and inefficient to locate electronic records and figure out how they should be used.
To solve this, Berners-Lee envisioned a network system using hypertext that would allow computers of different kinds to effortlessly share information over a computer network. That invention, first documented in 1989, became the World Wide Web, or WWW for short.
In 1990, Berners-Lee wrote the first web browser—called WorldWideWeb.app at first—and the first web server, httpd. They ran on Berners-Lee’s NeXTCube computer, which included advanced object-oriented development tools that shipped with the NeXTSTEP operating system.
Tim Berners-Lee used a similar NexT computer to design the World Wide Web. NeXT, Inc.
On his personal website, Berners-Lee recalls how NeXT’s development platform, which allowed people to quickly design graphical interfaces, helped him develop the web quickly. “I could do in a couple of months what would take more like a year on other platforms, because on the NeXT, a lot of it was done for me already,” he wrote, referring to the ability to quickly create menus and display formatted text.
During its initial testing phase, the World Wide Web remained an internal project to CERN. According to CERN, Berners-Lee published the first website on December 20, 1990. Just 21 days later, on January 10, 1991, Berners-Lee invited the high-energy physics community to participate in his project, releasing his software outside of CERN for the first time.
Throughout 1991, Berners-Lee kept refining his browser and server code with feedback from others. On August 6, 1991, in a reply to a request on the alt.hypertext Usenet newsgroup, Berners-Lee described the web and mentioned a very public invitation for the wider community to participate: “The WWW project was started to allow high energy physicists to share data, news, and documentation. We are very interested in spreading the web to other areas, and having gateway servers for other data. Collaborators welcome!”
The “Info” box for the 1991 WorldWideWeb browser on NeXTSTEP.
This seemingly mundane post is now seen as a key historical moment, mostly since it’s so clearly documented. Berners-Lee’s desire to “[spread] the web to other areas” followed his earlier realization that the web could be useful to everyone on Earth, not just scientific researchers. It was time to share his creation with the entire world.
In his next post on the same day, Berners-Lee provided an executive summary of the WorldWideWeb project at CERN, describing its purpose and how it worked. At the very end of the document, he included the now-famous first website URL: http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html, which you can still visit today.
The First Website: Simple and Informational
Titled “World Wide Web,” the world’s first public website served as a bare-bones introduction to the concept of the web itself for those outside of CERN who might have been interested in the technology. Amazingly, CERN still hosts a copy of the site that you can view in your modern browser, which reportedly dates to some time in 1992. Sadly, though, the original December 1990 version is lost to history.
The first website running in the WorldWideWeb browser on NeXTSTEP.
Just like today, to use the first-ever website, you’d follow hyperlinks (underlined on the page) by double-clicking them in the original WorldWideWeb browser. Each link would take you to further sources of related information in a decentralized, non-hierarchical web model, where information could take its most convenient form without rigidly imposed restrictions.
It’s worth noting that Berners-Lee’s WorldWideWeb browser held the distinction of allowing editing source web documents as well as viewing them, which was part of his original vision for the web. Subsequent browsers lost this capability until many years later. For a time, the web was mostly a read-only medium, with authoring taking place using offline tools.
Try the First Web Browser Today
If you’d like to get a feel for what using the first browser was like, CERN hosts a simulation of the first web browser as it appeared in the NeXTSTEP operating system, and you can run it in your browser today. The menu on the side of the screen follows the conventions of NeXTSTEP at the time. It’s rendered in shades of gray because many NeXT computers shipped with high-resolution monochrome monitors.
A simulation of the original WorldWideWeb browser running in a modern browser.
The link that we’ve provided will take you directly to a recreation of the first website, but CERN also provides instructions on how to browse to other sites. And if the text looks blurry or choppy in Windows, we’ve found that zooming the text size in or out by holding down Ctrl and moving your mouse scroll wheel in either direction can clear it up.
The Rapid Growth of the Web
After Tim Berners-Lee opened the web to the public in 1991, the new medium grew rapidly. In particular, a few key milestones took place in 1993. On April 30, CERN released the fundamental technologies of the WWW into the public domain, paving the way for the web to become a royalty-free standard that anyone could use free of charge. That was huge.
An excerpt from the April 1993 document declaring the web (“W 3”) as public domain.
Also in 1993, NCSA released Mosaic, the first web browser to display in-line graphics (images within text on the page instead of in a separate window), sparking a multimedia revolution on the web. Mosaic also integrated support for other internet protocols such as FTP, NNTP, and Gopher, bringing them conveniently under the web browser’s umbrella. And Mosaic was free to download, further encouraging the use of the WWW as an open platform.
In 1994, Tim Berners-Lee founded the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which was almost as important as inventing the web itself. Without the open guidance of the W3C, it’s possible that the web would have splintered into many incompatible technologies long ago, which would have hindered the web’s rapid adoption worldwide.
But that didn’t happen, and today, there are over 1.2 billion websites online, according to Netcraft, although they estimate that only about 126 million of those are “active” and not just parked domain names or other placeholders. Still, there’s no doubt that activity through web-based social media (which isn’t counted in those results) has grown astronomically over the past decade as well.
Will the web ever give way to a future technology? Only time will tell, but for now, the WWW is still an essential tool that links most of humanity’s information sources together, just like Tim Berners-Lee envisioned 30 years ago.
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Forty years ago today—on August 12, 1981—IBM introduced the very first #IBM #PersonalComputer, also known as the #IBMPC (#Model5150). It sold well and set standards that are still with us today. Here’s what it was like to buy and use one in the early 1980s.
Purchasing Your IBM PC
It’s late 1981, and you want to buy a brand new IBM PC. If you’re in the US, you can get one from a computer retailer like #ComputerLand or a department store like Sears. When you walk into the store, a sales associate will demonstrate the IBM PC and give you their sales pitch.
When you’re ready to buy, IBM gives you a wide variety of configuration options that vary based on RAM and internal controller cards that allow the use of floppy drives, color graphics, a game controller, a serial port, or a parallel port. There’s no IBM-provided hard drive option—that will come later with the IBM #PCXT (1983). But no matter what the configuration, the PC always ships with an #Intel8088 CPU running at 4.77 MHz.
Typical IBM PC 5150 configurations range from a bare-bones model with 16 KB of RAM, a monochrome graphics adapter, a keyboard, and no floppy drives for $1,565 (about $4,121 today) to a 64K RAM unit with color CGA graphics, two double-sided floppy drives, and an Epson MX-80 printer for $4,500 (a whopping $13,246 today). The maximum RAM the IBM PC can use at launch is 256K, but later cards will expand the system up to 640K of RAM.
Even with that settled, you still need to buy a monitor ($345 for the monochrome version, much more for color) and an operating system. IBM PC-DOS (developed by Microsoft and also sold as MS-DOS) is available at launch for about $40, with CP/M-86 (about $140) arriving in April 1982 and UCSD Pascal p-system after that.
Setting Up
Now that you have your IBM PC, the first thing you’ll want to do is pull the various components out of their shipping boxes and set them on your desk. If you bought any expansion cards that weren’t preinstalled at the retailer, you’ll need to open the main IBM PC unit with a screwdriver and install them.
Once that’s settled, the system is fairly simple to hook up. Plug the AC power cords into the IBM PC and monitor, then plug them into the wall. Next, attach the video cable from the monitor into the proper DB9 connector on your video card in the PC. Finally, plug the keyboard into the back of the PC.
The back of the IBM PC with a couple extra cards installed.
The slightly awkward layout takes some getting used to, but there’s arguably no better keyboard on the market when it comes to durability and tactile feel. (In a few years, IBM may even improve on it!)
Booting Up
It’s finally time to start up your IBM PC. The PC comes with the IBM BASIC programming language built-in, so if you want to use that, no disk is required. You can switch on the machine, write a program, then save it to a cassette tape using a special cable that plugs into a port on the back of the PC.
If your unit has a disk drive, pull the PC-DOS 5.25″ boot disk from its jacket and insert it into the drive. After flipping the power switch in the back, the PC’s fan will whirr up, and you’ll hear loading noises (clicks, hums) from the floppy drive. After a moment, you’ll see an A> prompt on the screen. Type the DIR command, and you’ll see the contents of the disk.
Now you’re in business
Using PC-DOS and Applications
Using PC-DOS is slightly tricky if you don’t know what you’re doing. You need to memorize simple commands like DIR to show the contents of the disk and COPY to copy files. PC-DOS 1.0 doesn’t support subdirectories, so there’s no need to CD (to change directories yet)—that will come in 1983 with PC-DOS 2.0.
To run a program, either boot it directly from a disk—and it will run automatically with no operating system necessary—or find its EXE or COM file and run it by typing the file name at the A> prompt and hitting Enter.
Let’s say you want to play the first-ever IBM PC game, #MicrosoftAdventure. All you need to do is remove the Adventure disk from its binder, insert it into your first disk drive, then flip on the PC.
The PC will boot into Adventure automatically. You play it by typing in commands like an interactive fiction game (with no graphics). When you’re done playing, just switch off the computer. Pretty easy!
Or imagine it’s 1983 and you want to run the PC’s first killer-app, Lotus 1-2-3, a popular spreadsheet program. Just insert the disk, power up the system, type “123,” and hit Enter to start the program. (You can try to use Lotus 1-2-3 right now on a simulated IBM PC 5150 in your browser thanks to Jeff Parsons.)
Printing the Results
You spent all last night typing up a report or working on a spreadsheet and you need to share the results with your boss and co-workers. With no local area network (LAN) at your office, few options for modem-to-modem transfers, and few people with PCs, the best way to do that is by printing your work out on paper.
Luckily, you got a brand new IBM 5152 (a re-badged #Epson MX-80) dot-matrix printer at ComputerLand when you bought your PC—in our hypothetical scenario—so you hook it up to the parallel port on your PC. After directing print output to the proper LPT1 port, the printer screeches away, printing text line-by-line using a column of pins that strike an inked ribbon. The print comes out on tractor-feed paper.
It’s going to take a while, so you might as well go get a drink and a snack, maybe watch a little Dallas while you wait for your work to print. At least you can relax and know you’ve put in a full day’s work. The IBM PC will be waiting at the ready for you to do it all again tomorrow.
Why Was the IBM PC Platform So Successful?
Fast-forward to today. Vestiges of the IBM PC standard remain as the underpinnings of the modern Windows and Intel platform used by billions of people around the world. How did the IBM PC pull this off when dozens of other computer platforms—think Atari, Commodore, Macintosh, DEC, CP/M—didn’t?
The historical consensus usually includes four main factors: a) the IBM brand name encouraging heavy early adoption, b) the IBM PC’s open nature, c) the quick rise of 100% compatible clone machines, and d) the continued release of faster, backward-compatible CPUs from Intel.
IBM made three stunning decisions when designing the IBM PC, as Byte Magazine mentioned in its original preview of the IBM PC in October 1981. The first was that IBM leaned on existing software developers in the microcomputer industry like Microsoft instead of exclusively writing its own software. As an extension of this, IBM also utilized off-the-shelf chips such as the 8088 CPU from Intel instead of rolling its own. The third was that IBM provided extensive documentation that allowed developers to craft both hardware accessories and software for the platform without the need for a license.
All these played to IBM’s advantage. By using off-the-shelf software and hardware, it could pull from the best minds in the personal computer industry and piece together a machine with only 13 months of development time. And by keeping things open like the Apple II, third parties would quickly provide the hardware add-ons and software library that made the IBM PC platform essential.
Some of that openness came back to haunt IBM with the rise of PC clones—fueled by ever-more-powerful backward compatible Intel CPUs and operating systems from Microsoft—but those clones were what made the platform into a true industry standard.
The original 1981 PC itself often gets flack for its uninspired design. Sure, it wasn’t a stylish Ferrari like the Macintosh. Instead, it was more like a Ford Model T: A durable, fixable, modular, expandable workhorse. If one part broke, you could easily swap it out for another with a screwdriver. And with a great software library appearing within a few years of its launch (including 1983 killer-app Lotus 1-2-3), you could get real work done with it.
In 2011, I spent three days using the original IBM PC in an attempt to do modern work with the system, and I documented the results for PCWorld. In the process, I found the IBM PC 5150 to be a solid, reliable machine. Its high-quality keyboard made text-based tasks pleasant, and its large software library allowed me to get a lot done, even with only a 4.77 MHz CPU.
The fact that the IBM PC I used still worked (after I swapped out a couple of bad RAM chips) after so many decades was a testament to its build quality. In fact, that PC still boots just fine 10 years later and looks almost new. The same can’t be said for many Macintosh models of a much newer vintage in my collection, which often fail due to discolored, brittle plastics and bad capacitors. With this kind of quality, I think there was some practical truth behind the old saying that “Nobody ever got fired for buying an IBM.”
Happy Birthday, 5150!
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Cybersecurity is a subset of the IT field that’s experiencing rapid growth. That growth has brought the industry to a valuation of over 170 billion dollars in revenue per year.
As digital security services rise in popularity, it’s becoming apparent to businesses that if they’re not hopping on the bandwagon, they may end up victims of hacks, leaks, and other online threats that could hobble their organizations. That thought has led many to invest in crafting a cybersecurity strategy.
If the prospect of putting together a digital security plan to protect your business data seems daunting, you’re not alone and we’re here to help. Below, our team shares tips regarding key things to stay mindful of that’ll help guide your process.
1. Familiarize Yourself with Risks Appreciating the urgency of creating a cybersecurity strategy before you begin making investments is key. With an understanding of how common security threats are and how they’ve affected competing businesses, you’ll find the prospect of cutting corners less attractive as you start exploring solutions.
Familiarizing yourself with security risks can be done via running an online search for data leaks. Better yet, formalize your familiarization process by talking to security consultants and asking them to brief you on what risk factors your industry is experiencing.
2. Understand Your Budget You could believe that there is no line-item more important to your business than security investments. Despite that, if you don’t have the budget to back up that belief, you’ll be limited in what you can do.
Because of that, before you start engaging vendors and exploring solutions, sit down with your finance point-person to see what you can afford.
Don’t get discouraged if you’re finding your monthly spending can’t align with your security vision. You’ll be surprised by just how far your dollars can stretch in today’s market.
3. Staff Up One of the most expensive aspects of initiating your security plan will be putting bodies on your project. If those bodies are going to come in the way of bringing on full-time employees, expect to spend a lot.
The average full-time cybersecurity specialist makes over 70K per year not including benefits. You’ll probably need to hire a security lead at that rate and a couple of lower-level team members per your project’s scope.
4. Consider a Consultant/External Group If your head is spinning looking over the cost of bringing on internal headcount, don’t get too stressed out. You’ve got options.
When developing a cybersecurity strategy, many opt to go with external specialists that work several accounts in addition to their company’s. That diversity of clientele enables you to pay less working with vendors than you would working with an internal team.
Even if you’re insistent on working with an internal team, bringing on an external consultant to help guide your security strategy is helpful. Third-party agencies often come with unique experiences that can help you develop a more robust plan.
5. Opt for a Phased Rollout You’ve got a team in place, that team has identified key risks for your company, and you’re getting ready to implement changes that’ll plug those risks. Before you flip the figurative “on switch” to execute your changes, take a step back and appreciate the risks.
Making changes to your systems and workflows can and almost always does cause downstream issues. These issues can immobilize your business if you’re not careful.
Staying cognizant of that, we recommend rolling your strategy out in phases so you can ensure stability step-by-step. When you exercise that sort of patience, you set yourself up for fewer hiccups and a better return on your investment.
6. Be Prepared to Adjust Course No cybersecurity strategy is perfect at its inception. As yours rolls out, you’ll identify hurdles that’ll force you to make new decisions. Some problems may even lead you back to the drawing board.
Know that setbacks when implementing a security strategy can be a good thing. It enables you to eliminate ideas that aren’t working and further strengthen your defenses.
As a matter of fact, you should learn how to select the best penetration testing company for your business and have your selection try to break into your systems at every phase of your security rollout. In doing that, you can let your ideas crash faster so you can make them bulletproof as quickly as possible.
7. Plan on Continued Support Cyber threats are constantly evolving. So too should your security strategy.
Don’t think of your security investments as a one-and-done spend. Think of them as spends that are front-loaded but will then beg continued, smaller investments so you can continue to stay ahead of the curve.
By making those investments and keeping wary of your security year-round, you can have full confidence that your business will withstand not only today’s issues but tomorrow’s.
Start Drafting Your Cyber Security Strategy Today
Every moment your business operates without a cybersecurity strategy in place is a moment you could lose everything. Stop rolling the dice and start being proactive in protecting your company!
All you have to do to get started is take our steps to heart, pick up the phone, and call a security consultant.
We wish you the best as you improve your defense against common cyber threats. And if you’re finding you need additional guidance as you work through solutions, we’ve got you covered.
Consider exploring our newest, related content on our blog to continue fulfilling your need to know!
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Worried that your organization won’t have the right hardware to run Windows 11? Microsoft hears your cries. But when it comes to the requirements needed to install Windows 11, they’re not going to do anything about it.
Microsoft doubles-down on Windows 11 requirements
The company just put out an “Ask Microsoft Anything” video where Microsoft tech experts explain what you will need to run Windows 11 — although the requirements seem unnecessarily restrictive to many IT admins tasked with installing the operating system. With a beta version of Windows 11 out, many techies have been trying to fiddle around with the hardware requirements to get older machines to run the OS. One of the things Microsoft hammered home in the video is that this will not be possible with the final release of Windows 11.
Hardware enforcement Windows 11 will automatically check your computer’s requirements, and if it doesn’t pass, it won’t allow the download. Some techies have been able to tweak the registry’s Group Policy to allow the beta to download even if their machines don’t have the necessary requirements. But Microsoft senior program manager Aria Carley said in the video that this type of MacGyvering will not get around the “hardware enforcement” in the Windows 11 final version. “We’re still going to block you from upgrading your device to an unsupported state since we really want to make sure that your devices stay supported and secure,” Carley said.
We know it sucks that some aren’t going to be eligible for Windows 11. But the great thing to remember is the reason we’re doing that is to keep to devices more productive, have a better experience, and better security than ever before so they can stay protected in this new workforce. — Aria Carley, Microsoft senior program manager
What about TPM? A major topic continues to swirl around the Trusted Platform Module (TPM), specifically TPM 2.0. Having the TPM chip on your computer is a requirement to run Windows 11. The confusion stems because many older computers don’t have TPM 2.0. Additionally, some that do have the TPM chip don’t have it enabled. In either case, the computer will fail Microsoft’s minimum requirements to install Windows 11.
You can check out the entire Ask Microsoft Anything video below.
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In the interest of simplification or abstraction, we like to think of the laptop on the kitchen table as a single discrete unit of processing. In fact, there is a surprisingly large number of small processors alongside the many cores that make up the processor. [8051enthusiast] dove into the Realtek rtl8821ae WiFi chip on his laptop and extracted the firmware. The Realtek rtl8821ae chip is a fairly standard Realtek chip as seen in this unboxing (which is where the main image comes from).
True to his name, [8051enthusiast] was pleased to find that the rtl8821ae was clearly based on the Intel 8051. The firmware was loaded on startup from a known file path and loaded onto the chip sitting in an M.2 slot. Careful consideration, [8051enthusiast] reasoned that the firmware was using RTX51 Tiny, which is a small real-time kernel.
The firmware is loaded at 0x4000 but it calls to code below that address, which means there is a ROM on the chip that contains some code. The easiest way to extract it would be to write some custom code that just copies the masked ROM back to the main CPU via the shared memory-mapped config space, but the firmware is checksummed by the masked ROM code. However, the checksum is just a 16-bit XOR. With a tweak in the kernel to allow accessing the shared config space from userspace, [8051enthusiast] was on his way to a complete firmware image.
Next, [8051enthusiast] looked at what could be done with his newfound hackability. The keyboard matrix is read by the Embedded Controller (EC), which happens to be another 8051 based microcontroller. There also happens to be an RX and a TX trace from the EC to the m.2 slot (where the rtl8821ae is). This has to do with 0x80 postcodes from the processor being routed out somewhere accessible via the EC. With a bit of custom code on both the EC and the WiFi chip, [8051enthusiast] had a keylogger that didn’t run on the main processor broadcasting the PS/2 keystrokes as UDP packets.
[Main image source: Realtek RTL8821AE unboxing on YouTube by Евгений Горохов]
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Over the course of four decades, dozens of manufacturers experimented with different floppy disk formats and densities. Here’s a list of a few notable ones, including a few that we’ve already mentioned.
8-inch Magnetic Disk Cartridge (1971): When introduced by IBM, the first 8″ floppies held a mere 80 KB of data and weren’t designed to be written by the user. But they set the template copied by later floppy disk formats.
8-inch IBM Diskette (1973): The first read-write floppy diskette system from IBM launched with the IBM 3740 Data Entry System. Initial disks could hold about 250 KB. Later 8″ diskette formats could hold up to 1.2 megabytes per disk.
5.25-inch (1976): Invented by Shugart Associates, the initial 5.25″ floppies could only hold about 88 KB. By 1982, a high-density 5.25″ floppy could hold 1.2 MB.
3-inch (1982): As a joint project between Maxell, Hitachi, and Matsushita, the 3-inch “Compact Floppy” shipped in a hard shell and initially held about 125 KB (single-sided format), but later expanded to 720 KB. It mostly found use in word processors and Amstrad computers, but never became widespread in the U.S.
5.25″ Apple FileWare (1983): This special 5.25″ floppy format with two read-head windows used only in the Apple Lisa computer could hold about 871 KB of data. Apple soon discontinued its use in favor of 3.5″ Sony drives in future models.
3.5-inch (1983): Several companies shipped the first 3.5″ floppy disks based on a Sony design that could hold 360 KB in its single-sided configuration, or 720 KB double-sided. Later versions could store up to 1.44 MB or 2 MB of data.
3.5″ Floptical (1991): Developed by Insite Peripherals, this obscure format used special disks similar to 3.5″ floppies that could hold 21 MB each thanks to optical head-tracking technology that increased track density dramatically.
Zip Disk (1995): Iomega’s 100 MB Zip Disk became an alternative floppy disk standard in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Later models held up to 750 MB of data.
3.5″ Imation SuperDisk (1996): The 3.5″ floppy format’s last stand—as far as new densities were concerned—came in the form of this 120 MB magnetic disk that achieved its high-data densities thanks to laser-tracking techniques. In 2001, Imation released a 240 MB version of the disk. As a bonus, SuperDisk drives could read regular 3.5″ floppies as well.
Floppy as Save Icon With so many people using floppy disks to store computer data on personal computers in the 1980s and 1990s, software programs in the GUI era began to represent the act of saving data to disk with an icon of a physical floppy disk. Decades later, the trend persists in programs such as Microsoft Word and Microsoft Paint.
This has led to some criticism due to the fact that many computer users today didn’t grow up using floppy disks, so they might not know what they are. For the past decade, there’s been a joke going around on the internet where someone represents a real floppy as a 3D-printed “Save” icon.
End of the Floppy After the introduction of the CD-ROM drive in the 1980s and its mass adoption in the 1990s, and then competition from Zip Disks and beyond, the 1.44 MB 3.5″ floppy format seemed doomed by the late 1990s. But the format held out far longer than anyone expected, regularly shipping in PCs up until the mid-2000s thanks to its traditional role of providing BIOS updates to PC motherboards and as a cheap way of distributing device drivers for PC peripherals.
Either way, 50 years after the floppy disks’ launch, it’s amazing that the technology is still with us. I’d say that’s a big success, and IBM is rightfully proud of itself for initially inventing the medium. Happy birthday, Floppy Disks!
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You might have heard of Brave as a browser option. Here’s why Brave is becoming such a popular choice.
Brave is an open-source browser that is originally based on Chromium. Unlike Google Chrome, it focuses heavily on performance and user privacy. Undoubtedly, Google Chrome is an impressive web browser—but for almost a decade now, it has been the dominant choice for a modern web browser experience.
So, to present a different approach to what Google offers, you will find several chrome alternatives available. And Brave is one of the popular ones. Here we’ll take a look at some reasons the Brave browser is becoming so popular.
1. Moving Away from Big Tech
Services and products by internet giants constantly dominate the web. While they try to provide their best, it is always refreshing to have different choices. The advantage of having competitors like Brave makes sure that big tech does not dictate users’ choice.
Also, tech giants are often considered to be anti-competitive. But users opting for alternatives such as the Brave browser, encourages healthy competition for them, which is a good thing.
2. Respects Privacy
If you are browsing the web, your activity is being tracked in one way or the other. But not everyone wants to give away their information online. Brave practices a better privacy policy by not collecting users’ browsing activities.
Everything you do on the browser stays private on your device and will not be shared with any third-party. Also, Brave encrypts your sync data to seamlessly use the same browser settings and bookmarks on multiple devices.
3. Faster Browsing Experience
Chrome is commonly known to eat up system resources, especially if you have many things going on in your web browser. Brave surprisingly offers a faster experience with focus on being more resource efficient.
Officially, Brave claims that it needs 33 percent less memory when compared to Chrome and has a lower impact on your system’s battery life. This may vary depending on your system configuration, but generally Brave manages to provide a faster experience.
4. Open Source
Chrome is a proprietary project originally based on Chromium (which is open source). But Brave is a completely open-source web browser. So, anyone can inspect the source code to verify the claims and assess the security of the browser if needed.
There are other benefits of using an open-source software as well, such as community involvement for adding features, and a couple more.
5. Beats Censorship
Most of the web is centralized. In other words, the resources you access is usually stored in a central storage location. Brave integrates the IPFS protocol that lets you access the decentralized web.
It allows users to utilize a peer-to-peer network where you can access resources using IPFS. This guarantees that no one can control or restrict access to a resource. Hence, with this feature integrated, Brave browser can be an effective tool to beat censorship of the web.
Also, with the help of the IPFS protocol, you can easily distribute resources without worrying about server resources or costs, which makes them more accessible as well.
6. Tracker Blocking
There are several types of tracking technologies used to track internet users. Some tracking could help make the web more useful. But other trackers may end up collecting too much data out of your browsing activity.
This is where Brave swoops in to offer a built-in privacy protection feature, where you can choose to block trackers. The feature could also drop the need of looking for privacy-focused chrome extensions.
7. Brave Rewards
Normally, you support your favorite websites by not blocking the advertisements displayed. And with Brave, you get another way to help the creators of a website, through Brave Rewards.
It is completely optional, but with Brave Rewards, you get to earn tokens when you visit and spend time interacting with a website. You will find a wallet integrated with the Brave browser, which stores these tokens, and you can contribute them to your favorite website, if you choose to.
Also, you can add funds to your wallet using any currency and spend them to support the publishers registered for Brave Rewards.
8. Tor Integration
For an enhanced level of privacy, Tor network is the way to go. Unfortunately, the easiest way to use it is through the Tor browser, which is not the most user-friendly or performance oriented browser.
Thanks to Brave, you can use Tor connectivity through a private browsing mode. It’s worth noting that it is not a complete replacement of Tor browser, but Tor network is used as a proxy to hide your original IP and location.
9. Premium Firewall and VPN Feature for iOS Devices
Apple’s iOS is all about tightly integrated services. Brave tries to step up a notch by offering a firewall and VPN service that you can use through the browser, though it’s an additional paid option.
This may not be for everyone, but if you swear by Brave’s web browser on your iOS device, the VPN can help enhance your digital privacy.
10. Integrated Services like Brave Search
Brave is not just a browser, but it pitches several other offerings like private advertising solution, decentralized web, and some more. Brave Search is yet another something impressive by them. It aims to be an independent search engine and focuses on providing privacy-friendly search results.
Even though you can use Brave Search on any other browser, it should be a seamless experience when coupled with the Brave browser. And that is an attractive offering for users.
Brave Is a Great Chrome Alternative
Brave manages to do many things better than Google Chrome. Considering that most of us increasingly rely on the web browser to get things done, the search for the perfect web browser will never stop.
Among all the other alternatives, Brave is becoming a popular choice as a web browser for desktop and mobile as well. It’s constantly evolving—so there could be more reasons for its popularity by the time you are reading this.
#BeSafe #Stayinformed, #Stayconnected, practice #Socialdistancing, #Washyourhands and fight the #corona pandemic together.
IT Solution INDIA, 