Claudiu Popa

Claudiu Popa is a security and privacy advisor to Canadian enterprises, associations and agencies. He is an author, speaker and lecturer. Connect with him on Twitter @datarisk, Facebook, G+ or LinkedIn.

Articles By Claudiu Popa

Sample of the data offered by Snapchat.db (blurred out by the site's authors).

Snapchat’s breach of trust: What’s the big deal?

Easily one of the most addictive time wasters ever to emerge from Silicon Valley, Snapchat has grown by leaps and bounds over the past two years.  Yet for anyone watching this juggernaut from

Published on: January 3rd, 2014 Claudiu Popa

Did the NSA Deal Fatally Damage the RSA Brand?

Secrecy is not a poor security practice as much as a compromise of integrity. EMC's RSA Security division recently made headlines when its enterprise products were expertly hacked, undermining the security of thousands of

Published on: December 23rd, 2013 Claudiu Popa

Can a computer ever be secure enough for Grandma?

Has this ever happened to you? No matter where you are in your career, you still get unscheduled support calls from your mom, asking for help with her latest computer gremlin. I'm sure

Published on: December 16th, 2013 Claudiu Popa

Can you even trust a new PC these days?

Five years ago I concocted a grandiose plan to sell out-of-the-box secure laptops to people who actually care about the security and privacy afforded by their computers. I contacted a number of laptop

Published on: November 25th, 2013 Claudiu Popa

How much fun could an IT security conference be, anyway?

In many ways, attending Toronto's biggest hacker conference is like drinking from a fire hose. At any point in time you have 6 seminars of which at least half are of particular interest.

Published on: October 10th, 2013 Claudiu Popa

Are online banking apps, mobile ransomware a match made in cybercrime heaven?

In a recent report, antivirus software maker McAfee (now safely in Intel's hands and no longer related to notorious troublemaker/troubadour John McAfee) reports a vast increase in the number of unique instances of

Published on: August 22nd, 2013 Claudiu Popa

5 reasons you’d be an absolute fool to launch a faulty product

Every day, business managers and IT execs risk their reputations by taking insecure systems and vulnerable applications to market Do you really need 5 reasons? I don't think so. But it serves to illustrate

Published on: July 23rd, 2013 Claudiu Popa

Is “Wrongsourcing” Security Worth the Risk to Your Business?

There are all kinds of reasons to insource operational tasks, especially ones of the IT persuasion. But when organizations choose to insource activities that should instead be outsourced services, that’s what I call

Published on: July 10th, 2013 Claudiu Popa

News flash: National security through obscurity doesn’t work

How did secrecy become ubiquitous in the Information Age? It looked good on paper. Pervasive surveillance would be needed to protect the populace, and technology could facilitate the enormous challenge of inspecting global

Published on: June 17th, 2013 Claudiu Popa
Image of lock on keyboard

Does anti-virus software make things worse?

According to the handy Wolfram Alpha search engine, some 24.5 years have passed since the introduction of the first Internet virus. And the first self-replicating malware to exist on the Internet’s precursor, the

Published on: June 6th, 2013 Claudiu Popa

Taking the daily deluge of security breaches with a grain of salt

There’s no doubt that each high profile breach is both a warning and an opportunity for competitors to make a strong case for better security and to bolster their defenses. Along with each

Published on: May 8th, 2013 Claudiu Popa

How could LivingSocial’s failure do more good than harm?

When LivingSocial.com discovered that the personal information of their 50 million or so users had been stolen, they did what most companies do: they initiated an investigation and hunkered down to weather the

Published on: April 30th, 2013 Claudiu Popa

The risk of commoditizing security and privacy

Protecting your small business means more than checking off a few boxes If you’ve taken a stroll through office superstores or even a modern mega-bookstore you’ve no doubt noticed the abundance of ‘kits’

Published on: March 4th, 2013 Claudiu Popa
Image of lock on keyboard

What are the risks facing your business and your data?

A secret unit of the Chinese army is linked to global cyber espionage. A recent survey indicates that the majority of Web surfing young employees don’t follow online security policies. How are emerging

Published on: March 1st, 2013 Claudiu Popa
Schneider Electric Digital Transformation Study

Tragedy when loss of data leads to loss of life

Security assessments are always interesting. I know, I do them all the time. You can never guess what you'll find when you're investigating a breach and a federal agency recently found that to

Published on: January 14th, 2013 Claudiu Popa