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Most hosting companies have introduced 2+ plans. The price of the hosting depends on the hardware and software the company is offering the customer. A plan that offers a low amount of RAM or a single core processor will be less expensive as compared to a plan that provides heaps of system memory and CPU. No matter what plan you use, you must always keep an eye on the server CPU usage. If you don’t do so, a user process may use up to 90 - 100% CPU and other applications/system processes won’t be able to execute their tasks. ...

The AI domain extension was launched in 1994/1995 for the use of companies and individuals based in a Carribean country Anguilla. Google, the world’s largest search engine doesn’t display the information of Anguilla when you enter the search phrase as “AI”. Even Bing displays Artificial Intelligence search results for the search phrase “AI”. In computer science, AI is an abbreviation for Artificial Intelligence. AI programs are self-learning applications that can be used for various purposes. ...

A project I was recently working on had in place a cloud-based infrastructure that was designed to support a single installation of the Drupal CMS running in Amazon Web Services (AWS). This infrastructure included an auto-scaling setup with load balancers hosting a ‘cache’ layer and an ‘application’ layer that hosted the Drupal CMS. On the backend tier, an AWS Relational Database Service (RDS) provided the MySQL database needed for the application. There were other components of the infrastructure such as our shared services for continuous integration, monitoring and development tools. ...

Academy Pro is a premium WordPress theme developed by StudioPress. It has a brilliant design and many features. It is ideal for membership and educational websites. Academy Pro is powered by Genesis framework and it looks great on all types of computing devices. Here’s my review of this theme: Academy Pro review Like other StudioPress templates, AP is easy to install. Once you download the theme, use the WordPress Content Management System’s theme installer tool to get started with Academy Pro. Here are the various features of this theme: ...

In the United States, a sizable amount of the overall federal budget is allocated to defense spending. The 2018 Defense Budget was signed into law on December 12, 2017, by President Trump, which authorized just under $700 billion in defense spending (Blankenstein, 2017). In contrast to just a few years ago where the fiscal year defense spending was set at $593 billion, the amount of money set aside for defense continues to grow. Traditionally a lot of this budget has gone into supporting the military, purchasing equipment, machinery, and paying salaries. In recent years, more money has been set-aside for defense contractors, who in turn provide products and services to the Federal Government. In 2016, nearly half of the defense budget was allocated to defense contractors. The biggest beneficiaries included Lockheed Martin- $36.2 billion, Boeing- $24.3 billion, Raytheon- $12.8 billion, General Dynamics- $12.7 billion, and Northrop Grumman- $10.7 billion (Hartung, 2017). A more detailed table of the defense sector follows. ...

I was recently notified that one of the sites I support was getting a ‘C’ rating on SSL Labs. It turned out that there were three main issues that needed to be resolved. Two out of the three were relatively easy to find via the SSL Labs documentation, which required simple fixes to the ssl.conf file. This server is vulnerable to the POODLE attack. If possible, disable SSL 3 to mitigate. This was relatively easy to fix. I resolved it by modifying ssl_protocols in the ssl.conf file - thank you Digital Ocean for your comprehensive write-up on this! The server does not support Forward Secrecy with the reference browsers. Again, more simple changes in the ssl.conf file. In case you run into a similar issue, be sure to read this helpful article, Configuring Apache, Nginx, and OpenSSL for Forward Secrecy. The third issue, however, was not quite as straightforward: This server accepts RC4 cipher, but only with older protocols. I found a number of helpful articles on this stating that by adding !RC4 to exclude RC4 in SSLCipherSuite, will result in mitigation of this vulnerability. I spent quite a bit of time trying different cypher list combinations and always including !RC4, however no matter how many times I tweak this, restart httpd and revisit SSL Labs, I kept getting the annoying ‘B’ grade and RC4 complaint. For anyone facing similar issues, I highly recommend reading Hardening Your Web Server’s SSL Ciphers. ...

Prior to any cyber attack, an organization should already have a solid crisis management plan and set of disaster recovery precautions in place. In addition to this, a risk analysis should be carried out involving a holistic approach and careful investigation of information systems and the overall environment. The purpose of such an analysis is to evaluate all endpoints that could potentially fail in a disaster or cyber-attack. (Pfleeger & Pfleeger, 2007) The analysis should describe the current state of an organization’s security approaches and examine areas of the company’s infrastructure as well as external factors. ...

Cryptocurrency is virtual currency or digital currency that is designed to be used as a medium of exchange to make secure transactions. It does not have any centralized control and there isn’t any regulatory authority as opposite of banks and electronic money. Its control works as a blockchain that is a distributed ledger. The technical system that is base of cryptocurrency was created by an unknown person or a group named Satoshi Nakamoto. In 2017 thousands of cryptocurrencies were created, most of them were like Bitcoin. Is the system of cryptocurrencies the balance and safety of ledgers are managed by miners which are a community of distrustful parties. Miners get a financial benefit for maintaining the security. ...

Because of erroneous PHP and Java extensions, I’ve switched from Atom to Microsoft’s VSCode aka Visual Code Editor for writing applications. VSCode is a powerful editor. With the help of some extensions, you can use VSCode as a replacement for RAM hogging Integrated Development Environments. If you’ve just installed VScode and you’re searching for extensions that will improve your productivity, you’re at the right place. Below, I’ve shared the list of best Visual Code extensions. ...

Organizations continue to struggle with policies and processes to effectively secure their infrastructure to protect their information assets and intellectual property. In recent years, we have seen the increase of cyber-attacks and breaches to the point that they have become common news worldwide. As systems have grown in complexity with increased capacity to store large amounts of data, so to has the appeal of targeting such systems by cyber criminals. Traditional approaches of defense including signature-based detection, behavioral-based detection, and defense in depth strategies are not enough to protect against advanced distributed attacks and zero-day attacks. Current technologies used to detect traffic, whether packet-based, time-based, or behavior-based, can provide some level of defense. Unfortunately, however as our tools and techniques improve, so too do the accuracy and advancements in sophisticated attackers. ...