(ISC)2 requires that a candidate meets some requirements before he/she receives the right to call himself/herself (ISC)2 certified.

Receiving the (ISC)² credential is a several-step process:

1. Required Experience – possessing the required number of years for the appropriate credential
2. Study – taking advantage of the educational materials (ISC)² makes available for you to review and refresh your knowledge before taking the credential examination
3. Application – validating your education and/or experience
4. Examination – sitting and passing the appropriate exam
5. Code of Ethics – committing to and abiding by principles and guidelines set forth by (ISC)²
6. Endorsement Process – attesting to your eligibility requirements

After that you get : 

Maintaining your membership requires the following:

• Remain in Good Standing - to remain in good standing as a member of (ISC)² a credential holder must abide by the
  (ISC)² Code of Ethics
• Earn Continuing Professional Education Credits (CPEs) - Credential holders must earn the minimum number of Continuing Professional Education credits (CPEs) annually during each year of the three-year certification cycle. Although members may earn more than the minimum number of CPE credits required for credential maintenance for the three-year cycle, they are still required to earn and submit the minimum annual number to maintain their certification in “good standing.”
• Pay Annual Maintenance Fees (AMFs) - Payment of Annual Maintenance Fees (AMFs) ensures that the organization has the necessary financial resources to maintain member records, ensures certification continues to meet the needs and requirements of the market, and ensures that the organization will continue to be a functional, dynamic entity far into the future.

Avira Survey Finds Computer Users Don’t Feel Safe on Social Media Sites

Softepedia republished my article in the TechBlog about “Spring cleaning your computer” into a new article.

This is the original:  Spring cleaning your computer

This is the new article:  Expert Offers Tips on How to Clean Up a Computer

Check the other article I wrote about Dropbox.

While playing with the mklink, I made a mistake of trying something new:

mklink /D S t:\S

Remember that the Dropbox folder was located in T:\S\.

So, basically I created a circular reference… and this is what happened:

This is what was transferred until when I stopped the Dropbox program after receiving errors that I run of space:

Apparently, Dropbox doesn’t have any kind of loop detection.

I will let them know that…

I recently tested a couple of online backup solutions and one of them was Dropbox.

If you know the system, you know also that Dropbox requires the user to choose a folder which will be synchronized in the cloud.

That folder is called “Dropbox” and can’t be changed.

I wanted to backup a couple of folders which I have on my Truecrypt partition but I didn’t want to move them in the Dropbox folder in order to be synchronized with the cloud. For that, I created symlinks with the “mklink” command:

cd t:\S\Dropbox

mklink /D name directory_source

 

My Truecrypt partition is called T and in it are folders S together with folders P and N which I wanted to backup.

I added the symlinks to P and N in the folder S.

mklink /D P t:\P

mklink /D N t:\N

Dropbox sensed that immediately and started to synchronize.

So far so good…

There is a catch:

If you sync another computer with the same Dropbox account, you will have the problem that the folders N and P appear to be in folder S. You can change this by selecting what to synchronized in Dropbox.

So, it is over … I finally managed to be able to take the exam and I passed it.

Let’s see how I did it:

Study materials

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2012/012412-authorities-prepare-to-close-down-255242.html?hpg1=bn

“If your computer was infected at some point in time and it was using one of the DNS servers which are now controlled by FBI, after March 8, it will no longer be able to make any DNS requests through these servers,” Avira product manager and data security expert Sorin Mustaca said in a blog post. “In layman’s terms, you will no longer be able to browse the web, read emails and do everything you usually do on Internet.”

Article written in Techblog on Monday,23.1.2012, question from the journalist sent on Tuesday with deadline one hour (or less), article published the same day.

I love online media

Post initially published in Avira Techblog.

You must have heard already about the already “famous” malware DNSChanger which manipulates the DNS settings of the computer in order to silently direct the users to malicious websites.

FBI and others took action against this malware and in November 2011 have managed to break the botnet. According to FBI, more than 4 million computers were affected world-wide. The thieves manipulated DNS entries in order to block antivirus programs and the operating systems to update delivering this way even more malware on users’ computers. The DNSChanger malware was used also to redirect users to rogue servers controlled by the fraudsters, allowing them to control users’ web activity and generate income through online advertising. When FBI shut down the botnet, they also replace the servers which were directing to malicious domains with valid DNS servers.

So, if the botnet is shut down why all this trouble?

FBI will deactivate those new valid DNS servers on March 8, 2012.

If your computer was infected at some point in time and it was using one of the DNS servers which are now controlled by FBI, after March 8, it will no longer be able to make any DNS requests through these servers. In layman’s terms, you will no longer be able to browse the web, read emails and do everything you usually do on Internet. So, it is mandatory that the DNS settings of the computer are restored to their original state.

After an infection with DNSChanger malware, until now it was needed to restore the settings manually. Here are tutorials in German and in English.

With the Avira DNS-Repair tool released (press release in German only) on Friday, January 20,  you can revert to the default settings of Windows only with a few clicks.

You can download the tool free of charge from the Avira Support’s Knowledge Base website in German and in English.

Avira cooperated also with the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) and published the tool also on the special website created to check if the DNS requests are made to the right places: www.DNS-OK.de. Note that on this website you see the link to the Avira DNS-Repair-Tool only if it is detected that your system is affected by the malware.

If you own such a device, then the first thing you do with it is to upgrade its firmware to NextFW.

The Support forum of Fujitsu-Siemens is full of useful How-Tos which help you reach your goal.

After you’ve done that, you may want to enable the rsync daemon . With a running rsync service you can have basically your own private online backup service.

This is at least what I tried to achieve. But it is tricky to make it run correctly.

Read here about rsync utility and here about rsync daemon (aka rsyncd).

Here is how I configured it so that it works also on Windows:

amsadmin# cat /etc/rsyncd.conf
lock file = /var/run/rsyncd.lock
log file = /var/log/rsyncd.log
pid file = /var/run/rsyncd.pid
use chroot = no
#max verbosity = 1
gid = wheel
uid = amsadmin

[backup]
path = /mnt/home/storage/backup
comment = bck export area for storage
auth users = amsadmin
secrets file = /mnt/.zap/etc/rsyncd.secrets
read only = no
write only = yes
list = yes

Make sure you make symlinks to /etc/rsyncd.conf and /etc/rsyncd.secrets.

# ln -s /mnt/.zap/etc/rsync.conf /etc/rsyncd.conf

# ln -s /mnt/.zap/etc/rsync.secrets /etc/rsyncd.secrets

The file rsyncd.secrets is a standard plain text file containing something like:

user:password

Make sure you symlink rsync.sh from /mnt/.zap/etc/rc.d/rsync.sh to /mnt/.zap/etc/rc0.d/rsync.sh

 # ln -s /mnt/.zap/etc/rc.d/rsync.sh /mnt/.zap/etc/rc0.d/rsync.sh

Then restart and it will do the job.

If you wonder from where you should get the rsync on Windows, then just think to Cygwin.

This is how I use rsync.exe to backup my T drive:

rsync.exe -urtav –ignore-errors –exclude=outlook –exclude=RECYCLER –exclude=$RECYCLE.BIN –exclude=”System Volume Information” –delete /cygdrive/T amsadmin@sblan2::backup/

Let me know if I can be of any help.