Word: backups
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Primitive though Morse may be, the world may want to keep it alive, if only as a backup when global communications networks crash-as they did spectacularly on Dec. 26 when an earthquake off Taiwan's coast damaged seven undersea fiber-optic cables that handle some 90% of phone calls and data traffic in the region. Millions of homes and businesses across Asia were left without Internet access, e-mail and international phone connections. Financial markets were interrupted. And those lucky enough to connect to overseas websites experienced exasperatingly sluggish data-transfer speeds. While most services have been at least...
...built by independent consortia of private telecom companies and investors, and network design has been driven by economics. Reliability is important, of course, but intercontinental cable systems can cost billions of dollars, so they tend to connect to countries where demand is greatest and they often lack costly parallel backup circuits that would be underused most of the time. Vulnerabilities exist, and the recent quake found a chink in the armor. It struck in the Luzon Strait south of Taiwan, an area that has an unusual concentration of major undersea cables. "It's quite an exceptional event to have...
...1980s, Stanford University scientists applied the technique to computer security. But it was not until BioPassword bought the patents from the school in 2002 that keystroke dynamics found its first commercial use. BioPassword's developers harnessed the technology into portable software and began selling it in 2004 as a backup password-protection authentication method for many online sites. Now more than 30 companies, or about half a million users, have signed on. As BioPassword CEO Mark Upson puts it, "For $1 per user annually, you've got online security that can't be sold, lost or replicated...
Many banks, fearing the Big Brother aspect of biometrics, have chosen in-depth analysis of customers' online behavior as a backup. Such monitoring can then determine whether a certain customer needs a higher level of security, like a token or an RFID tag. "Some of the most advanced technology we're seeing is those tokens being embedded in something that a consumer is carrying every day, such as a cell phone or credit card," says cybersecurity expert Fran Rosch of VeriSign, a leader in online authentication. "That makes it less likely to be lost." Less likely, but not impossible...
...time to install a wireless "sniffer" that could later broadcast information going in and out of the bank. He could also have shut down the security cameras, alarm and telephone systems. The pair got access to the back side of the ATM and a room with boxes of backup customer data. Alsbury was able to drop a disc into an unattended, logged-on computer: a Trojan Horse virus could then download itself and allow him to hack the credit union's system. "There was nothing more we could have done," says Stickley laughing, when the pair returns triumphant...