climate and comms

Why build Data Centres in Africa when the rest of the World is better geared for them with power and connectivity and they continue to be built at a rapid pace in these advanced markets?     On the face of it – it makes more sense to continue hosting data and services in North Carolina or in Finland if you are an Africa corporate with data hosting and storage requirements. However things are changing in Africa.   “ Ex Africa semper aliquid novi ”   to quote Pliny the Elder – There’s always something new coming out of Africa.    What now?    Well there have been a few drivers.   Firstly there is now connectivity between Africa and the rest of the World.     Numerous submarine cables provide an instantaneous connection between the various landing points and the World Wide Web (in other words the Internet.)   Secondly there is a large effort to install fiber optic capacity within and between numerous African countr...

1. Computing Everywhere With the continued advancement in smart-phone technology, Gartner assesses that an increased emphasis on serving the needs of the mobile user in diverse contexts and environments, as opposed to focusing on devices alone. Gartner posits that smart-phones and wearable devices are part of a broader computing offering to include connected screens in the workplace and in public spaces. User experience design will be of critical importance.    Health care applications in particular will proliferate. 2. The Internet of Things (IoT) The Internet of Things will continue to expand, propelled by the ubiquity of user-oriented computing. Gartner posits that this will be replicated both in industrial and in operational contexts, as it will be the focus of digital business products and processes. Embedding technology more deeply will create touch points for users everywhere. This will form the foundation of digital business.    There ...

  Live Ensure ® the SAAS  multi-factor authentication solution has spent the last year and a half field trialing the mobile version of the product with a few select customers who have collectively made millions of authentications without a single breach or failure.  Feedback provided valuable input which allowed the product to be further refined and streamlined making the user experience even better while making the solution stronger.   Live Ensure ® is easily integrated into an existing log-in form including SSO solutions like Twitter and Facebook.   This means that sites which allow users to log in e.g. with Twitter can now include a strong authentication layer thereby thwarting ID theft hacks which have become ubiquitous.   Examples are too numerous to mention but the weakness of password log-ins to emails ( Bush Hack )  and social media products (Twitter and Facebook) and their consequent failure are well documented. ...

FIDO or Fast Identity Online was launched last week by a couple of Internet big hitters most notably PayPal.   They clearly have a vested interest in ensuring that their transactions are secure.     FIDO aims to provide specifications or standards to the industry that embody  an approach to authentication which starts to move away from the ‘security by obscurity ‘  or user name/password paradigm prevalent today.   The main reason why the incidence of hacking is sky-rocketing.   [ Twitter Hacked ] FIDO aims to leverage hardware devices such as phones and tablets as well as fingerprint readers, webcams, TPM ( Trusted Platform Module)  chips and tokens into an open-standard whereby there will be inter-operability between different systems but which comply to the standard.   A client/server architecture in combination with some hardware fingerprint starts to approach a much more secure approach th...

I was asked today by a board member to respond to a question from a prospective investor who wanted to know how Live Ensure (our service) differed from two other – lets call them ….the more traditional solutions.  For the sake of this blog we will call them the Old and the New solutions.   Let me describe the Old Co solutions to you briefly.  They both embody technologies which are over a decade old ( think RSA ) such as tokens and servers ( both physical and virtual).  Their solutions rely on the user entering a PIN into a browser and thereby satisfying the ‘something you know ‘ part of strong authentication.   Here it is slightly edited. The biggest weakness of both Old Co solutions are the vulnerability to MITM and MITB attacks. Both require the user to enter a PIN ( something you know ) ie a second factor over and above the user name and password ( the single factor or weak authentication ). The user enters this PIN back into the browser which is...

Mary Meeker informs us that there are now 1.1bn  Smartphones  (17% of all mobile phones) and these are driving Internet growth with a total of 2.4bn people now connected to the Internet. Mary Meeker Internet trends The universe for hackers just grows and grows.    One of the most lethal of these attacks is Zeus (ZITMO) – which is aimed squarely at Smartphones. The Zeus attack is an example of several attacks now being launched that are based wholly on anticipated behavior, especially as it relates to social media, single-sign-on and BYOD. A sophisticated Zeus campaign stole an estimated €36 million, or $47 million, from over 30,000 customers across more than 30 banks in Europe this summer. The Eurograbber campaign, as it has been named, used custom versions of Zeus and Zeus in the mobile (ZITMO) Trojans to bypass the two-factor authentication measures to compromise customer bank accounts, Darrell Burkey, director of IPS products at Check Point Software Te...

Whether in the 'real' world or the Cyber world there are real threats and dangers and there are perceived threats and dangers.   Sandy has just taught us about the reality of the force of nature when an extreme event occurs.    Destruction has been wrought on an unprecedented scale.  While we know that physical harm can be effected through  cyber-terrorism/war such as Stuxnet – the reality is that the hype about Cyber war is just that – hype.   These events, like Sandy, are rare.   I contend that the sources of much of the scare-mongering  (about the ‘threat’ of Cyberwar )  are more often than not , entities/organizations/newspapers / journals that have a vested interest in the proliferation of FUD about the weakness of our Cyber defences.    Don’t get me wrong – I am just as concerned as the next guy about cyber security – all I am saying is – lets get some perspective on the matter.   The defences that were put up again...

Not a good week for NatWest innovative banking services.  NatWest Get Cash fraud   ( Get Cash Pulled ) A combination of a simple phishing attack and a fundamentally insecure service led to many users of the Get Cash service ( a sub set of the NatWest mobile banking app – powered by Monitise) being defrauded of cash from their accounts.    The system allows users to get cash from an ATM by keying in a ‘secure cash code’ into the terminal.    The assumption is that once you have logged in to your app you are legit and so you ping the system for the code.   A user name and password level of security – that’s it!.   No better than 99% of all apps on the Net today.    Needless to say the service was shut down once the fraud started becoming rampant.    Does the drive for customer convenience completely outweigh basic security rules. ?   The problem with this kind of solution and others that rely on the presentation ...

The sheer volume of reportage on hacking is overwhelming.   The sites being hit are the ones that you and I use every day.   Some provide useful information, some, valuable services and others perhaps just news or trivia.   We use them multiple times a day – sometimes without even being fully aware that we are,  like DropBox.   We use these sites  to store personal and business information, to connect us with potential clients, employers and employees, to help us choose insurance providers, to send us our groceries and some, to just play on.   Dropbox allows us to seamlessly log in by re-referencing a cookie they have planted on our computer to ‘verify’ our identity.   LinkedIn also uses the same technique when we log in.    A user name and password.  How secure is that ?    Well,  not very,  given that both of these sites have been hacked and your and my perso...

You would be forgiven for thinking that perhaps most people have become somewhat nonchalant about online security and that the prevalence of hacks has made most of us somewhat immune to the dangers.    Indeed I would say that some sites have become almost cavalier about their attitude to their member’s security.  The recent hacking of LinkedIn certainly did not elicit the kind of response I would have expected, indeed hoped for,  as a member.   I get the impression that it was something of an irritant that they hope won't come again – and are certainly not bothering with beefing up security.  Far too much hassle.   So is their reaction reflective of their members lack of interest – I think not,  as one of their members has tried to sue them for failing to provide adequate security.  ( http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jun/21/business/la-fi-tn-linkedin-5-million-hack-20120621 )   LinkedIn have said that they will salt their passwords...

Trust /trəst/   :   Firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something. The foundations of the working of human society are built on trust.  This has been so since the beginning of recorded history.   As our communities evolved from hunter gatherer groups into agricultural chiefdoms, and ultimately modern states their operation, increasing complexity and success relied not only upon our cultural evolution as posited by Robert Wright in Non-Zero ( Non Zero )  but also upon trust.   Trust is integral to our ‘culture.’  The birth of capitalism and the rapid economic and technological growth of the last five centuries began with the pooling of capital used by investors to underwrite a ships trading expedition called the ‘ contratto di commenda ’ .  Such ventures could not have happened without the inherent trust that the investors had - that the expedition’s captain would return the profits to the investors....

You have all heard of the Magic Quadrant.  An industry benchmark by which the, mostly, established players like to measure themselves against each other.    To quote Wikipedia (that repository of all Internet wisdom ;-)) “ the Magic Quadrant aims to provide a qualitative analysis into a market and its direction, maturity and participants, thus possibly enabling a company to be a stronger competitor for that market. ”   The axes of the ‘Quadrant’ are ‘ability to execute’ and ‘completeness of vision’ and the methodology used to apply the ranking remains a closely guarded secret (or mystery depending on how you look at it.)   The MQ applies to many niches in the tech sector.  I want to consider the  User Authentication MQ.  Notably because the space is getting much media attention these days.   Hackers !  Wikipedia says that the aim of the analysis it is to  “ . .enable a company to be a stronger competitor for that market “ ...