Wolf Halton on what’s changed in tech and where we are headed

The tech industry is changing at a massive rate especially after the storage options moved to the cloud. However, this has also given rise to questions on security, data management, change in the work structure within an organization, and much more. Wolf Halton, an expert in Kali Linux, tells us about the security element in the cloud. He also touches upon the skills and knowledge that should be inculcated in your software development cycle in order to adjust to the dynamic tech changes at present and in the future. Following this, he juxtaposes the current software development landscape with the ideal one.

Wolf, along with another Kali Linux expert Bo Weaver were also interviewed on why Kali Linux is the premier platform for testing and maintaining Windows security. They talked about the advantages and disadvantages for using Kali Linux for pentesting. We also asked them about what they think about pentesting in cybersecurity, in general. They have also talked about their stance on the role of pentesting in cybersecurity in their interview titled, “Security experts, Wolf Halton and Bo Weaver, discuss pentesting and cybersecurity”

Security on Cloud

The biggest change in the IT environment is how business leaders and others are implementing Cloud-Services agreements. It used to be a question of IF we would put some of our data or processes in the cloud, and now it is strictly a question of WHEN.  The Cloud is, first and foremost, a (failed) marketing term designed to obfuscate the actual relationship between the physical and logical networks.  The security protections cloud companies give you is very good from the cabling to the hypervisor, but above that, you are on your own in the realm of security.  You remain responsible for safeguarding your own data. The main difference between cloud architectures and on-premises architectures is that the cloud systems aren’t as front-loaded with hardware costs and software licensing costs.

Why filling in the ‘skills gap’ is a must  

The schools that teach the skills are often five or ten years behind in the technology they teach, and they tend to teach how to run tools rather than how to develop (and discard) approaches quickly.  Most businesses that can afford to have a security department want to hire senior-level security staff only. This makes a lot of sense, as the seniors are more likely to avoid beginner mistakes. If you only hire seniors, it forces apt junior security analysts to go through a lot of exploitative off-track employment before they are able to get into the field.

Software development is not just about learning to code

Development is difficult for a host of reasons – first off, there are only about 5% of the people who might want to learn to code, have access to the information, and can think abstractly enough to be able to code.  This was my experience in six years of teaching coding to college students majoring in computer networking (IT) and electrical engineering. It is about intelligence, yes, but of a group of equally intelligent people taught to code in an easy language like Python, only one in 20 will go past a first-year programming course.

Security is an afterthought for IoT developers

The internet if things (IoT) has created a huge security problem, which the manufacturers do not seem to be addressing responsibly.  IoT devices have a similar design flaw as that, which has informed all versions of Windows to this day. Windows was designed to be a personal plaything for technology-enthusiasts who couldn’t get time on the mainframes available at the time.  Windows was designed as a stand-alone, non-networked device. NT3.0 brought networking and “enterprise server” Windows, but the monolithic way that Windows is architected, along with the direct to kernel-space attachment of third-party services continues to give Windows more than its share of high and critical vulnerabilities.

IoT devices are cheap for computers and since security is an afterthought for most developers, the IoT developers create marvelously useful devices with poor or nonexistent user authentication.  Expect it to get worse before it gets better (if it ever gets better).

Author Bio

Wolf Halton is an Authority on Computer and Internet Security, a best selling author on Computer Security, and the CEO of Atlanta Cloud Technology. He specializes in—business continuity, security engineering, open source consulting, marketing automation, virtualization and data center restructuring, network architecture, and Linux administration.


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