climate and comms

Starting in the mid 1990’s Africa underwent a ‘mobile revolution’ whereby from a standing start of below 1% telephone penetration (tele-density) -   the Continent now boasts over 800 million mobile phones.     By skipping the so-called ‘landline’ technologies the mobile operators leapfrogged a technology generation.   These mobile networks, it can be argued, have been a major contributor to the economic upswing the Continent has experienced since the start of the new millennium.     The mobile revolution is now over as growth has moderated and penetration levels started to peak.     However, a new revolution beckons - the Internet revolution.   Africa falls behind the Rest of the World when it comes to broadband with less than 15% penetration, mainly in the cities.    During the last 5 years numerous submarine cables have been installed, connecting Africa to the Globe.   These fibre-opti...

This was the week that Oscar Pistorius went on trial by media.   Forget about the lawyers -  this was ‘crowd sourced’  litigation at its finest;   fed by a torrent of tweets,  Tumblr images,  TV clips and banks of cameras that overwhelmed the tiny South African courtroom.   Opinions,  some informed, but mostly not,  spewed forth on social media proffering words of support and damnation in equal volume.     The tragic story of the horrific death of a beautiful young woman in her prime, the horror of an overcrowded courtroom and the legal sparring  (and this just the bail hearing!)  reveals the extent of modern society’s  collective voyeurism and pornographic  fascination with courtroom - celebrity mash up.     Oscar was a global icon after stepping off the Olympic podium last August in London.  This tragedy of death and fall from grace is one which has captivated the world.   The harsh ex...

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...

My last blog touched on the DropBox hack.   It seems that they have now decided to rectify the situation.  ( DropBox Fix security )  But many clients have been left wondering.  How at risk was I and now am I ?   I wonder how much it has impacted their reputation ?    Do you entrust your personal and/or corporate data to them or to any of the other Cloud services out there.  The better known ones are Google Drive,  Evernote, Box,  YouSendit, Sugarsync,  MS SkyDrive and Egnyte.   If so then you should be concerned.   Why?  Because all of these services rely on you proving who you are merely through the provision of a user name and password.    Why is that so bad?   Because nowadays you can get password breakers off the Internet that will crack most passwords in seconds. ( Password cracker ) .   New sites are being hacked every day with serious consequences for the them and their users (i....

Surely this has got to be the obvious question in light of the tectonic shifts reshaping the Maghreb? Is the end game (of this social media phenomenon),  not the demise of the last autocratic regime of any substance ?   ( there are others that will go – but are they as important ? No.  ) There are so many factors at play in the next scene of this incredible drama.   Saudi Arabia has made an offer to buy Facebook  for the ‘princely’ sum of $150bn and hence remove any threat it may pose to stirring unrest in the country.  (  http://abna.ir/data.asp?lang=3&id=228583 ) ( BIG JOKE !!!)  Seems like an expensive mistake by King Abdullah if Zuckerburg and Co are foolish enough to be bamboozled by Goldman Sachs into accepting the offer.    If he thinks that FB is the only way that revolutions are coordinated then he is being badly advised. You only have to read Bernard Henri Levy’s excellent analysis of what transpired in Egypt leading...

Experts from Gartner have said that the recent 'froth' of M&A activity in the security space does not constitute a 'trend'.   While 'one swallow does not a summer make'  I would contend that this is in fact a trend and that it set to hold for at least another year.   Why? Well first of all the 'froth' was in fact more like a large set of Atlantic rollers breaking on the Cape coast!!!  Consider the number of deals that have taken place in the last 6 months ( see previous blog) crowned by the recent announcement by HP of its acquisition of Arcsight for $1.5bn. "   Hewlett-Packard  has agreed to buy high-end technology security company ArcSight for $1.5bn to profit from its customers’ increasing concerns about  protecting their data from hackers . The cash offer of $43.50 a share for Silicon Valley neighbour ArcSight was more than 50 per cent above where the company was trading before reports last month that it was courting buyers. It value...

So how do you value your privacy in the Facebook age ? Does it matter to you that the calls you make, the emails you send, your credit card transactions, the Internet sites you visit, the images of you travelling to work, your social networking posts are now stored at data centres in the Cloud and retrievable by myriad marketers, Government agencies and companies ? None of whom you ever entrusted with your information in the first place. Your digital footprint is a permanent record of your every move. Data is the pollution of the Information age. Everything we do generates data, and a secondary spin-off of Moores law is that every year it gets cheaper to store and process this data. So rather than sort through our e-mails and delete the ones we don’t need – we just keep them all – it is easier and cheaper to do so. The same thing happens with all of our data now. Most of ‘your’ data actually belongs to someone else. All of your G-mails, everything you ...