Stories by Ira Winkler

What awareness gamification programs can learn from Pokemon Go

At the moment, the only intended gamification of Pokemon Go is to encourage people to spend money within the game. There are potentially future uses of the game, such as to get people to spend money at partner vendors. For now however, most gamificat...

Pokemon Go: What security awareness programs should be doing now

Pokemon Go represents a tremendous security threat. As with all tremendous threats, it can also be your greatest opportunity.

Pokémon Go: Into the real world, with real crime

The game is getting its players off the couch, which already wasn’t safe from the bad guys.

Facebook needs customer service to woo businesses

I had to laugh when I read about Facebook's latest effort to woo businesses. While Facebook wants to look like its well ahead of Google + in the commercial uses of social networking, its track record of dealing with users suggests that businesses sho...

Mobile payment systems: A disaster waiting to happen

When I saw the Computerworld article about Square touting how it is going to replace cash registers with iPads, I was dismayed that there was no discussion of security. And Square's app isn't the only payment app that makes me anxious. While I admit ...

Dear Facebook, act like a grown-up about security

Dear Facebook, I appreciate your service. I really do.

The real problems with cloud computing

The recent Twitter hack, where a French hacker compromised internal Twitter documents by accessing the account of administrative assistant, among others, was essentially an attack on Google Docs. The reason is that Twitter outsourced their infrastruc...

End lusers are only part of the problem

The response to last week's column about introverts had me thinking about some of the experiences I've had with technical professionals. Last year, I wrote an article titled "Dumb and Dumber" that discussed security problems that resulted from "stupi...