Dave McKay

Dave McKay first used computers in the industry when punched paper tape was in vogue and he has been programming ever since. His use of computers pre-dates the birth of the PC and the public release of Unix. He has programmed in everything from 6502 assembly to Lisp, and from Forth to C#.

Don't let his six years at two different Universities fool you. He isn't a theoretical academic sheltered from the stark realities of the modern digital world. He has over 30 years of front-line experience working with IT in demanding business and industrial settings. His first IT technology article was published in Personal Computer World in 1985.

Dave has worked as a freelance programmer, manager of an international software development team, and an IT services project manager. Latterly he was the Data Protection Officer for a managed services provider, responsible for the data protection and regulatory compliance of businesses ranging in size from tens of users up to multiple thousands of users.

He is now a technology journalist and independent Data Protection and Compliance consultant.

Dave is a Linux evangelist, an open-source advocate, and an inveterate tinkerer.

Signal Messenger: Simple Security, Guaranteed Privacy, Great Functionality

In our hyper-connected, always-on world, privacy is in everyone’s thoughts. Instant messaging is the dominant tool for remote conversations. How can we use instant messaging and maintain our privacy?...

What RF Attacks Are and How to Defend Against Them

Firewall and rules are in place, intrusion detection systems are running, and all industry best practices are being followed. Great, but what about Radio Frequency attacks? They nimbly sidestep...

What is Punched Paper Tape, and How to Read It

To most people who can even remember what punched paper tape is, it'll seem like a relic of yesteryear. But as we'll see, that's not strictly the case. What...

What is a Spear Phishing Attack?

Spear phishing is sending illicit emails to someone to make them do something to the threat actor's benefit. What is a spear phishing attack? It's a one-on-one scam, and...

How to Install ZFS and Create a ZFS Pool on Ubuntu

ZFS is a stable, robust, and fault-tolerant file system with built-in RAID-like properties and drive pools. We show you how to create a ZFS drive pool and control access...

Latest posts

Neatly stacked shipping containers

Securing Kuburnetes with StackRox

StackRox integrates with Kubernetes to secure clusters of containers by scanning container images during the creation, deployment, and runtime phases. Real-time alerting, dashboards, and...
QNAP NAS in the initial physical setup process

How to Delete a Folder From File Station on a QNAP NAS

You may occasionally want to do some housekeeping on your QNAP NAS, and deleting folders may be a big part of it. Here's how...
World map with pins and strings connecting cities

ExpressVPN Review: How Does It Perform (and How to Install) on Ubuntu?

ExpressVPN is considered one of the top-tier VPN products. We install it on Ubuntu 21.04 and use it from the command-line and from within...
Diskashur M22

Diskashur M2 Secure SSD Review: IP68, FIPS 140-2 Level 3 (soon) and a Good...

iStorage's Diskashur M2 is stylish, stealthy and a pretty decent bargain as far as secure flash drives are concerned. More importantly, it's a good...
Seagate IronWolf 510

Seagate IronWolf 510 Review: A Long-lived NVMe Caching SSD Specifically for NAS

Seagate's IronWolf 510 NVMe SSD is a fast reader with an excellent endurance rating, but it's a very slow, albeit hyper-steady writer. When I...