ON SECURITY By Susan Bradley OpenAI’s recent attack on another company’s cloud instances reminds me that sometimes we forget the basics. As we understand the situation at the moment, OpenAI’s test platform was meant to be isolated and not connected to the Internet. But because it needed to download certain items, it was given read-only […]

NETWORKING By Mary Branscombe Windows tries to keep your PC safe online by not allowing incoming network connections unless the software you’re using asks for them. Here’s how it figures that out, and how you can fine-tune it. In the real world, a firewall is a physical barrier meant to stop a fire — or […]

NETWORKING By Simon Bisson Small Office/Home Office (SOHO) routers are more secure than you think — although they could do with a little help from their friends. Way back when we used dial-up to connect to the Internet, software firewalls such as ZoneAlarm were all we needed to protect our PCs — because slow-speed connections […]