Simson Garfinkel (a journalist whose
work I read with persistent interest) has justly won an
award for his writing.
"For my work as a columnist at CSO Magazine (Chief Security Officer Magazine), I was awarded a Jesse H. Neal National Business Journalism Award. (I was also the 2nd place runner-up to the Grand Neal award).
"This is for my 'Machine Shop' column that preports to explain complicated things about computer security to a semi-technical audience."
And boy does he ever. This is my favorite here:
"Since then, I have repeatedly indulged my habit for procuring and then analyzing secondhand hard drives. (...) Last summer, I started buying drives en masse on eBay.
"In all, I bought and analyzed the content of more than 150 drives(...) In fact, only 10 percent of the drives I purchased had been properly sanitized.
"Much of the data we found was truly shocking. One of the drives once lived in an ATM. It contained a year's worth of financial transactions–including account numbers and withdrawal amounts–from a organization that had a legal requirement to not divulge such information. Two other drives contained more than 5,000 credit card numbers–it looked as if one had been inside a cash register. Another had e-mail and personal financial records of a 45-year-old fellow in Georgia. The man is divorced, paying child support and dating a woman he met in Savannah. And, oh yeah, he's really into pornography."
That's from this piece here.
These two are swell, too.
*Kudos.
