January 21, 2008 by dbarker.

PCI DSS requirements are applicable if a Primary Account Number (PAN) is stored, processed, or transmitted. If a PAN is not stored, processed, or transmitted, PCI DSS requirements do not apply.

This is an interested tidbit. Most banks and financial institutions don’t realize that they fall under PCI DSS requirements. I was doing an audit for a credit union and this came up on a discussion. They issue credit cards, and take credit card payments, but these transactions are handled by a third party, passing the PCI DSS requirements onto the third party. However, the ATMs they have take credit cards and debit cards, and the Primary Account Number (PAN) (the credit card number) is transmitted and stored in their computers. Now they fall into PCI DSS requirements and subsequently PCI audits will be necessary.

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January 21, 2008 by dbarker.

Well, I’ve been working from home for the last two weeks. It’s been pretty rough. Not that my job is that physical, but you try sitting up all day with back muscles that have been traumatized by spinal surgery. It’s not easy.

It will be five weeks since the surgery tomorrow, and I told work that I’d be out for at least six. Customers are looking to get me back onsite. I’m not sure I’m ready as I can’t lift anything, and I tire out about 4 o’clock and I haven’t been starting until 9am.

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January 4, 2008 by dbarker.

I got the staples and stitches out today, it was a little late because the skin had started to grow over the stiches and staples. There is a small hole about the size of a dime where the skin hasn’t grown together. I have to watch this for a while until it scars over.

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January 1, 2008 by dbarker.

Although, I had previously said that I didn’t ever want to have back surgery again, I had a rather extensive one on my back on the 18th of December 2007.

There were two procedures involved, the first was called a posterior lumbar interbody fusion with instrumentation. They fused the L5-S1 and the L4-L5 together, and fixed the spine in place with screws and titanium rods and plates. They cut the back part of my spine away in a procedure called a laminectomy. The laminectomy is basically where they cut the back part of your spine out, exposing the spinal nerves underneath. They removed all the disc material from my degenerated spinal discs and replaced it with the bone from the laminectomy as the fusion material in addition they used OP-1 Putty from Stryker. OP-1 putty is recombinant human bone morphogenetic protein-7 (rhBMP-7), formulated with a purified Type I collagen carrier. Once implanted in the body, OP-1 stimulates natural bone healing by actively recruiting stem cells from the surrounding tissue and blood supply, initiating the bone formation cascade. The combination of the interbody fusion cage and fusion material should promote a successful fusion.

In addition, they performed a Sacral laminectomy. From that opening they removed the tumor that has grown in that space. According to the surgeon, he was able to remove all the tumor that he could see. Hopefully they got enough of it so that I will never have to worry about it again.

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September 23, 2007 by dbarker.

I travel a lot. This weeks adventure will be to migrate from Check Point firewalls to Juniper Netscreen firewalls for a government client of mine. It’s kinda sad, because it’s the passing of an era where Check Point could compete by technology alone. Since there is almost parity in the firewall market the Juniper products are winning at some clients due to cost. Check Point needs to do something about the 40% list price renewals for 24×7 support and software subscription, this will ultimately kill them if they don’t lower their annual costs.

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September 23, 2007 by dbarker.

Well I haven’t updated this site in about a year, and before that it was hosted at home. Bellsouth decided to start blocking smtp so I had to move my mail server to a hosted domain and moved the site as well. Since this is wordpress and my previous blog wasn’t, I decided to start over. At least now if someone hacks in a puts a picture of a butt or something on the blog, it wasn’t really me that was “vulnerable”. Pretty crappy of me to peg a hosting company with the url “areyouvulnerable.com” kinda begs someone to remove my site and post a resounding “yes”.

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August 21, 2006 by dbarker.

Check Point NGX R60 HFA04 is out, but not officially. It has some nice “enhancements”.

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