Universities have been on lockdown through the holiday break, and now it’s time for students to return to the classroom. With the return of students come sneaky ways hackers can bypass security.

Here are a few tips to keep them out:

In retrospect it's wonderful that so many buildings had the foresight to install fiber optics in their walls. The copper lines originally used are now past their breaking point, having exceeded their limitations. Copper has become woefully inefficient when faced with the current need for lightning-fast data transmission and cyber security.

 

Dark fiber would make a great name for a cereal brand.

At least then we’d know what to expect, unlike the leased dark fiber options companies are faced with these days.

Just because fiber optical cabling is labeled “dark fiber,” it doesn’t necessarily mean that it is so. Not in the true sense of the term, anyway. 

I tend to think of footwear when someone mentions active wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) for fiber communications. My mind automatically wanders to the differences between active footwear and, say, a dress shoe with a small heel and an adjustable strap.

We’ve all done it. Missed the obvious. Just this weekend I was running late to a mutual friend's barbecue and figured I’d leave the navigating to my iPhone in order to make up the time.

Siri hardly ever lets me down.

As with anything that is not familiar to us, it is human nature to think that something mystical, or difficult to understand must be involved in the creation of that which is not familiar and already understood.