Author: Maikel Mardjan

  • Open Security News week 21-2025

    Cyber security is a vital concern for individuals, organisations, and societies at large. To address this pressing issue and to ensure a safer digital environment, we need to do a better job.

    For many years, we have struggled to get security right. We,security experts and software developers, have been trained and influenced by commercial vendors. We use too many complex, expensive cyber security solutions that are costly to implement and maintain and lack transparency, as most enterprise cyber security solutions are not open source.

    Next week, on Sunday 06-01 you are invited to join my talk on simplifying cyber security. Check the conference at t-dose.org and the schedule!

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  • Open Security News week 18-2025

    Cyber security is complex. But effective cyber solutions do not need to be complex and very expensive. To avoid misunderstandings: Simplifying your security landscape is not simple at all, but rather means rethinking your strategy and re-prioritizing objectives. More budget and more expensive cyber technology does not help to mitigate your security risks. The best preventive solutions like creating a good security architecture require no complex technology nor expensive maintenance. Try it with open tools.

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  • Shift left:  from complex and reactive to simple and proactive

    Cyber security is complex. But effective cyber solutions do not need to be complex and very expensive.

    To avoid misunderstandings: Simplifying your security landscape is not simple at all, but rather means rethinking your strategy and reprioritizing objectives:

    • Risks
    • Costs
    • Value
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  • Open ML/AI News week 13-2025

    Hosting cost and development costs for training LLMs are immense. Offering licenses to companies and sell LLM prompts as SAAS services are by far not enough for a healthy revenue for AI companies. So the risk is that AI companies will sooner or later sell your data. That is why ethical AI is a must. Machine learning systems must be data responsible. They should use only what they need and delete it when it is no longer needed (“data minimization”).

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  • Open Security News week 12-2025

    Cyber security is a complex field. It requires expertise of many different areas like business sciences and computer sciences. Security risks are difficult to manage and to control. Despite the costs and resources will be invested: major disasters due to security breaches are always possible. Simplification of security measurements, both tools and processes, is challenging but in the end always profitable.

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  • Open Security News week 10-2025

    When using FOSS software you have the advantage to inspect the source code on malicious flaws. However almost all software is distributed to end users as pre-compiled binaries. This creates a problem: How do you know if the software is not injected with malicious code?

    Compiling the software yourself is not enough to be sure that no flaws have been introduced. So check if your software has a reproducible build. A reproducible build is, an approach to determine whether generated binaries correspond with their original source code.

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  • Open Security News week 8-2025

    Cyber security is a key quality aspect that can not be integrated later in a product. You can not create a better security architecture when your product is finished. Security is a core product quality aspect that can not be added later. Security should be seen as a foundation quality aspect that is developed in parallel with your new product. You don’t have to be a genius to make cyber security simpler and better. Continuous learning is key!

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  • Open ML/AI News week 7-2025

    General accepted definitions for open ML/AI are a must for Free and Open ML / AI systems and software. But despite several attempts there is still no general de facto accepted definition for ML/AI software and applications. The OSI Open Source AI Definition is not perfect. It is and was heavily criticized. However it is a first step towards a better definition.

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  • Simplify Python

    This book is NOT another Python learning book. This book simplifies software development using the Python programming language. So with all key references included that professional programmers use. This Playbook is created to be used daily.

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  • Pushing complexity to users

    Creating simple IT solutions is challenging, but that doesn’t mean your product has to be difficult to use. Too often, we are confronted with seemingly simple tasks like creating a document, ordering a ticket, booking a hotel, or completing a mandatory government form online. Why do these simple tasks turn out to be a nightmare and time sink? 

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