The Selor, the official recruitment agency for the Belgian federal government, just started a new recruitment campaign for 24 cyber security specialists amongst which 20 with a master degree and relevant experience. Its an ambitions objective and we can applaude the will to increase our capability in fighting the cyber war within the ministry of defence. However, it is a difficult goal to achieve as there is not so many skilled specialists, they don’t have absolutely a master degree and they may not be satisfied with a yearly salary around 42 K€ (gross). However, we should not underestimate the patriotic sense or the desire to step into the military/spy world. Additionnally, it is certainly an interesting choice for some people to make a new step forward in their career.
So, if you have the rights skills, the desire to work in a very stimulating environement fighting the war against the cyber-soliders and cyber-criminals, you have until the 19th of June 2015 to apply here (in French): http://www.selor.be/fr/cyberdefense or here (in flemish): http://www.selor.be/nl/cyberdefense.
Our illustration: Lt. Col. Tim Sands (from left), Capt. Jon Smith and Lt. Col. John Arnold monitor a simulated test April 16 in the Central Control Facility at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla. They use the Central Control Facility to oversee electronic warfare mission data flight testing. Portions of their missions may expand under the new Air Force Cyber Command. Colonel Sands is the 53th Electronic Warfare Group AFCYBER Transition Team Chief, Captain Smith is the 36th Electronic Warfare Squadron Suppression of Enemy Air Defensestest director, and Colonel Arnold is the 36th Electronic Warfare Squadron commander. (U.S. Air Force photo/Capt. Carrie Kessler)
If you have an office network or a home network, you might be willing to use a proxy server to cache and speed up your Internet surfing. More you have machines connected on your network, more likely it is that you will request multiple time the same files (Just imagine how often the Doodle from Google is uploaded on a network with 10 machines on it). A proxy is also a good way to add restriction allowing you to prevent your users to go to undesirable websites or to use unsafe protocols. It can also allow you to request a user authentication before being allowed to access the Internet. Or, it can also allow you to channel all traffic through a privacy protection service like TOR.
Whatever is your reason, if you have a Synology server, setting up a proxy server becomes much easier these days.
There is two parts in setting up a proxy: 1° Install the server 2° Ensure the users will use the proxy.
For the first part, on a synology, it is now really easy. Go to The Packet Center, click on Utilities and select Proxy Server (from Synology inc.). Click on Install, that’s it.
You will have to configure it: Just provide your email address if you want your user to be able to contact you should they have a problem and set the port address on which the server will listen. You can use 8080 but any not used port will do it. Noticed that it is likely that port 80, 443, 5000 and 5001 will be already taken. Usually, we advise not to use port numbers between 1 and 1024 as they are already reserved and assigned to specific services. Above 2048 is even safer. 8080 is quite common for web services or proxy servers. Activate the cache and the connection, check “Activate Automatic Proxy Discovery” in proxy deployment and leave the other parameters by default.
That’s it, your proxy is up and running. Congratulation!
Now you have to tell your computer to use this proxy to navigate in HTTP or HTTPS.
Hopefully, you clicked on activate automatic proxy discovery and it will help.
The first possibility, if you have a standalone computer, is to go to the network settings (it can be through your Internet Explorer or Chrome settings) and set Use a proxy.
To make it easier, you can configure your DNS and/or your DHCP to provide automatically the proxy setting to your client computers using a PAC file (Proxy Automatic Configuration). When clicking on the proxy distribution address, this file was automatically generated and configured for you on your synology.
For the DHCP, you must add the DHCP option 252 (text or String) with the url to the wpad.dat file (example: http://192.168.1.254/wpad.dat)
For the DNS, its even easier, the webserver on which you have placed the wpad.dat file (in the root folder of the server), likely your Synology server, must be know by the allias wpad.your_network.com (where you replace your_network.com by the domain name of your network as define in the DNS server). When configured on Automatic Proxy Configuration, browsers will look for a set of possible variant of http://wpad.my_network.com/wpad.dat. When the file is found, it is used by the browser to configure how it access the Internet using a proxy.
Be sure your computers are set on Automatic Discovery of Proxy settings (in network settings).
Sometimes, the default wpad.dat file generate by Synology will not work perfectly as it might try to use the proxy to access computers on your own network. You can edit the file using an editor (the file is located in the root folder of your web server on the synology) and type something like this:
function FindProxyForURL(url, host) { if (isInNet(host, "192.168.1.0", "255.255.255.0")) { return "DIRECT"; } else { return "PROXY 192.168.1.254:8080" ; } }
In that example, 192.168.1.0 is the network address of the local network. 192.168.1.254 is the IP address of the Synology and 8080 the port defined for the proxy server.
Be really careful with wpad.dat file, it is extremely sensitive to misplaced whitespace or the absence of trailing “;”.
While I was discussing the different ways of leveraging changes in a company, a little story came back into my mind. It’s a famous one, I think, but it still worth being shared:
“During a company’s board meeting, The HR director is asking for a budget to provide communication and soft skills training to the employees.
– The CFO: but what happen if people leave the company? we’ll loose this investment.
– The CEO: maybe, but what will happen if they stay and we don’t train them?”
Budget to train people are sometimes hard to obtain (fortunately, not in most companies). The dialog here above must not be so far of the questions that senior executives might have in mind, sometime.
One of the question that comes to my mind is: where does the value of your company reside? Is it in hardware, software, bricks or in your employees’ ability to perform their jobs efficiently. Where are your margins? Where do you have room for improvement? In IT, it is quite common to purchase hardware of software with maintenance included. It seems to be less the case with people. Although most HR department have budget for training, I often hear that it is not fully used when we are talking about consulting companies or that there is not enough to train people as they should be in other. It also strikes me that some companies prefer to provide technical training, hard skills, than soft skills. But if you think about it, what are the most difficult skills to develop? Hard or soft? And training like stress management, emotion management, inter-personal communication or mindfulness are often sees as solution to a problem or a “deficiency”. Should they not be part of the common skills all employees should have? Wouldn’t it be beneficial for all?
Of course, one of the risk might be that your employee become to love their work, their managers and their company and finally decide to stay because they are happy. It is a risk. Are you ready to face it?
