Kate Johanns

All posts by Kate Johanns

Kate Johanns is a communications professional and freelance writer with more than 13 years of experience in publishing and marketing.

Pioneers in Tech: Mary Golda Ross, Native American aerospace engineer

Pioneers in Tech: Mary Golda Ross, Native American aerospace engineer

In 1958, the panel and host of the game show “What’s My Line?” didn’t know what to make of Mary Golda Ross. Through a series of yes or no questions, the panelists—which included the actor Jack Lemmon—deduced that Ross had...

/ November 12, 2021
Tech Time Warp: SCA virus infects the Commodore Amiga

Tech Time Warp: SCA virus infects the Commodore Amiga

The Commodore Amiga offered many firsts to computer users of the mid-1980s: 256 kilobytes of RAM, a 256-color display, and preemptive multitasking, not to mention a splashy celebrity debut (Andy Warhol used the Amiga to create a portrait of Debbie...

/ November 5, 2021
Ghostball virus
Tech Time Warp: Ghostball virus haunts PC users in 1989

Tech Time Warp: Ghostball virus haunts PC users in 1989

The story of the Ghostball virus is a worthwhile tale to revisit as Cybersecurity Awareness Month draws to a close on Halloween. As some PC users found out in October 1989, malware can be difficult to exorcise from your system....

/ October 29, 2021
Pioneers in Tech: Agnes Meyer Driscoll, World War Codebreaker

Pioneers in Tech: Agnes Meyer Driscoll, World War Codebreaker

Cybersecurity is one of the most in-demand career fields today, with nearly 465,000 open jobs in the industry as of October 2021. These positions —cybersecurity analyst, penetration and vulnerability tester, etc.— have their roots in the work of Agnes Meyer...

/ October 22, 2021
Tech Time Warp: Gone phishing for cybersecurity history

Tech Time Warp: Gone phishing for cybersecurity history

The theme for Week 2 of Cybersecurity Awareness Month is “Phight the Phish!” Arguably one of the most insidious forms of cybercrime, phishing relies on tricking a recipient via social engineering into handing over personal information—and sometimes installing malware in...

/ October 15, 2021
Tech Time Warp: A Sober-ing tale for cybersecurity awareness month

Tech Time Warp: A Sober-ing tale for cybersecurity awareness month

The wriggling saga of the Sober worm is a cautionary tale worthy of a revisit during Cybersecurity Awareness Month. It’s a good reminder that once malware is on the loose, it’s hard to catch—and that it often undergoes a metamorphosis...

/ October 8, 2021 / 1 Comment
Tech Time Warp: The cybersecurity industry begins with RSA patent

Tech Time Warp: The cybersecurity industry begins with RSA patent

October 1 kicks off Cybersecurity Awareness Month, now in its 18th year. A joint initiative of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA), the awareness month seeks to educate individuals and organizations about...

/ October 1, 2021
Tech Time Warp: Swen worm poses as security patch

Tech Time Warp: Swen worm poses as security patch

The hits for network admins kept coming in late summer/early fall 2003. Just weeks after the Blaster-Welchia-SoBig.F triple punch, the Swen worm wriggled its way onto at least 1.5 million computers. Like so many other pieces of malware, Swen exploited...

/ September 24, 2021
Tech Time Warp: The first FORTRAN program runs

Tech Time Warp: The first FORTRAN program runs

Although FORTRAN was not commercially released until 1957, the date September 20, 1954, is also significant in the history of the groundbreaking computer language. That’s when the first FORTRAN program successfully ran while in development at IBM. John Backus worked...

/ September 17, 2021 / 1 Comment
Pioneers in Tech: Luis von Ahn turns everyone into a crowdsourcer

Pioneers in Tech: Luis von Ahn turns everyone into a crowdsourcer

Depending on your point of view, a CAPTCHA or a reCAPTCHA is either an annoyance (who can read those fuzzy letters, anyway?) or a boon to security, preventing fake account creation, spam commenting, fraudulent transactions, and more. But did you...

/ September 10, 2021 / 1 Comment