Letters: Steganography can foil data leakage programs

When I read stories such as "Majority of tech execs watch employee Web use," I can't help but wonder how many employees who know they are being monitored are using techniques to hide information, such as digital steganography.

Many CIOs are in denial that it is an emerging and very serious threat. Some CIOs believe employees won't use steganography because it's too difficult, but there are more than 1,000 applications available as freeware/shareware on the Internet, and they are easy to find, download, install and use.

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Steganography can foil data leakage tools

When I read stories such as "Majority of tech execs watch employee Web use," I can't help but wonder how many employees who know they are being monitored are using techniques to hide information, such as digital steganography.

Many CIOs are in denial that it is an emerging and very serious threat. Some CIOs believe employees won't use steganography because it's too difficult, but there are more than 1,000 applications available as freeware/shareware on the Internet, and they are easy to find, download, install and use.

Until CIOs wake up to this threat, sensitive corporate information and intellectual property will continue to leak out of their enterprise networks, and insiders will be able to continue concealing evidence of criminal or unauthorized activities.

James E. Wingate

Fairmont, W. Va.

More IT physics

Mark Gibbs' column on the Physics of IT was very interesting. His Law of IT Politics is reminiscent of Newton's Law of Inertia. In the case of what is frequently referred to as development projects, the external force is generally the lack of continuing funding.

It's possible, however, to include a subset of requirements for the Law of IT Politics, which defines the absence of invalid oral presentations as being the lack of lip movement.

The underlying premises of Gibbs' well-thought-out laws would appear to be from a minitome by C. Northcote Parkinson, in which, "Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion [and] . . . there need be little or no relationship between the work to be done and the size of the staff to which it may be assigned."

I formulated a law years ago during some design work for an automotive client:

Garner's Iron Law: Any product that is designed to be properly assembled by unskilled labor and then go on to fulfill its design objectives for an extended period of time in a reliable and trouble-free manner is well engineered.

Lou Garner

Las Vegas

Once again, Mark Gibbs made my day by forcing me to recall a project estimate some years back: Bob's value was one year. Actual result was three years. But the "scope creeps'' moved in without any acknowledgement. Needless to say, I was known for years by this "mistake."

From this I learned Bob's first law: You cannot trust anything or anyone, especially yourself!

Robert W. Carter

Killeen, Texas

Time for a tune-up

In reference to Mark Gibbs' column "Welcome Back, Winrot", I've been using Tune-up Utilities for a number of years. It does quite a good job cleaning up the trash and garbage that Windows leaves around. It also will let you configure your system to do all those nice little tweaks that you used to need tweaking for. As far as defragging goes, nothing beats a license of Diskkeeper Professional.

Glen Merrick

Dartmouth, Nova Scotia

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