uncompiled.com

Today, Eastern Michigan University’s Information Assurance program worked with the local technology company Compsat to bring together students, businesses, and government employees to learn more about the evolving landscape of information security in the United States.

This month is National Cybersecurity Awareness Month but the rally-cry of this event and others like it is that idea of being proactive on our computing infrastructure should be year-round, without exception. As one of the presenters stated early on into the day, “This is not an event, it’s a lifestyle change”.

A majority of the event was framing security around Industrial Control Systems (ICS). ICSs represent technology in our elevators, amusement park rides, energy systems, and other relevant components to the modern life of all people. Much of the content throughout the day was relating ICS installations to that of typical information security with computer networks. ICS deployments have themselves a massive amount of protocols, interfaces, and other technical aspects that make the comparison between general IT and ICS fairly obvious. That said, it was presented that the real differences come in at an operational level.

Much of the discussion regarding ICS security was presented by Bryan L. Singer, whose company Kenexis deals heavily in this space for industries all over. Through his original backgrounds in both the military and information security, Bryan understands better than most the relevant differences of ICS vs. general information security of computer networks. While an information security specialist may want to throw an IPS into a situation, Bryan speaks to the fact that false positives that may shut down ICS deployments, even temporarily, is unacceptable in most cases. While much traditional IT thought applies, it doesn’t always apply in a direct way.

In ICS, milliseconds matter more than easily deployed security systems. For instance, password-protecting a safety shut-off control may risk lives. In IT security, password-protecting everything is common. This and other examples showcase where the overlap ends and business needs begin between IT security and ICS security.

The Department of Homeland Security also has created a tool called CSET which helps organizations examine their security for control systems. More so, they will come help do free assessments for organizations who want to be proactive to security.

The event was a success for many reasons. Foremost, many students got to enjoy technical presentations on topics they may of not otherwise had any clue about. Secondly, the university was able to network with businesses to help place students for internship and co-op positions. Lastly, the event was a great place for networking with other people in the industry and share experience and make new contacts.

After deciding to bring back uncompiled.com my first decision to make was “where do I host it?” In 2002, the decision for a random web site I was learning how to do web programming with was simple: put it on my home server. Seven years later, I’d like to believe my purpose is stronger and so is my budget. That said, my budget was still less than $20/mo as I highly doubt this will net me any revenue.

Being that I fancy myself a system administrator, the idea of using a generic web hosting account was kind of sickening. My only real choice at this point for the price I was looking for was to get a VPS (Virtual Private Server) account somewhere. I immediately thought “Cool! But wait, I’ve never bought one — who do I even go through?

So began a search involving copious Googling, firing off Tweets and Facebook posts hoping for advice, and generally, a feeling like I was wading through the endless supply of hosting companies. I decided to put together a basic list of what I wanted from a VPS company and see what I could find.

My VPS Company Wants

1. Based in the USA
2. $20/mo or less
3. In business a few years
4. Positive reviews online
5. Competitive features
6. Simple process
7. A decent web site (yes, really)

While I did receive a slim amount of recommendations, I found that the pricing for the average “big name” VPS company was a bit much for what they offered. Once I cut-away the forest of VPS brand names, I started to compare & contrast about 10 smaller companies, each with their individual perks and price points. One decision that I had not yet made was “What OS do I really want to run?“. This question was mostly settled for me when I found that FreeBSD VPS companies were fairly expensive for the features they were offering. I decided on just going with Debian as it was a fitting choice for a low RAM box (as VPS allocations generally are).

This is where things really got gritty: deciding which of 5 VPS providers, seemingly with very similar services and pricing are set apart from each other. As I started to narrow, fivebean.com started to stand on its own.

A Michigan-based company near Grand Rapids, I was immediately pulled-in for a geographic pride to support a company local to my home state. That being said, pride does not out-weight quality and pricing. Starting to do some quick research (read: googling) I noted quite a number of positive reviews for them. Snippets about great customer service, quality VPS deployments, and fair pricing had me ready to buy almost immediately.

Being the pragmatic technology purchaser I am, I dove further through their own site, admiring the clean design, no non-sense pricing, and direct access to relevant FAQ material and contact information. A technology company who understands how to be marketable for these reasons are going to have a better sense of how to provide top-tier customer service as well. Sometimes it is the small things that really matter.

I ended up finding a suitable VPS package for my current hosting needs, filling-out their simple checkout (PayPal or Google Checkout, nice!), and within seconds, received a litany of e-mails covering everything from my purchase invoice to my server’s IP & credentials. I was floored. Everything was completely automated and worked without a hitch. I was on my VPS in minutes after signing-up and had nothing to complain about!

The administrative interfaces for your account and VPS are simple and easy-to-use. I immediately changed my nameservers and started to host my DNS with their servers and also was able to immediately configure reverse DNS on my IP address. My VPS statistics were clearly laid-out for me, and all of the relevant information I needed was at a finger’s touch.

Magically, I did find a reason to contact customer service a few minutes later. I had read about a promotion regarding some free VPS upgrades by doing an affiliate mention. I shot-off a quick ticket to their customer service and had a reply within an hour. If an hour sounds long to you, I should mention I set my priority to low on the ticket for them, as it was nothing critical. Most companies barely can seem to do 24-hour replies. The reply that I did receive was friendly, personable, and took care of my ‘problem’ before I could finish reading the response.

It’s been a few days now and I am still completely happy with my experience with fivebean.com. For what it’s worth, there was no deal for me to write this about this, nor any compensation sought. I just really appreciated the experience I had from browsing, to sign-up, to deployment, to customer service. I highly recommend them for VPS needs of all sizes.