When General Keith Alexander, head of the U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency (NSA), says the military’s massive web of networks isn’t defensible, it can make you stop and think: If the combined efforts of the Cyber Command and the NSA can’t defend a network, who can?

The FBI, acting in concert with law enforcement authorities in other countries (primarily New Zealand), took down the popular website Megauploads by seizing its servers and other assets, shutting down its domains and arresting the people who run the site. It was a well-planned, coordinated attack that missed a few people, but got most of the principals.

As of midnight, Jan. 12, 2012, you can register for a vanity top level domain (TLD). In other words, this blog entry could appear on www.techsecuritytoday.techsecure or you might be able to look for burgers at www.mickyd. ICANN has thrown open the doors for anyone to choose whatever top level domain they want.

Government IT managers, government contractors or those who work for companies implementing DNSSEC know that configuration can be a nightmare, and that’s on a good day. Even DNS expert Casey Deccio, a computer scientist at Sandia National Labs, was having diffidulty troubleshooting problems with DNSSEC. So he decided something needed to be done.

By now you’re familiar with the basic phishing e-mail. You know the one -- it comes from a bank you don’t do business with asking you to verify personal information such as your name, Social Security Number and your existing bank account information. The e-mail may claim the bank it purports to represent has a check to deposit to your account, is trying to clear a check or something else along those lines. These phishing e-mails are easy to spot, their misspelled words obvious and the bogus links show up clearly. They’re also fairly easy to fight.