climate and comms

Cloud security is a big challenge because the big vendors have made us believe it is so. In reality it is not a big challenge.  There are solutions out there that solve the problem. Remember that cloud security is really about securing the access points – the doors (and windows if applicable) to your house (of data). The walls are obviously secure and impenetrable but if your front (or back door for that matter) is secured with nothing more than a ‘standard’ lock then any thief can quickly pick the lock and get in. For "standard lock" read – "user name and password."  And the reality is that most applications that are accessed via a standard user name and password ‘lock’ are hosted in the Cloud.     So what is needed is something much stronger but which is easy to implement and easy to scale. It helps not to use a  two-factor authentication  (2FA)  solution that requires you to carry around a dongle – because it just cannot scale ec...

The breach at RSA just goes to show that security by obscurity never works. And you are probably wondering just what is ‘security by obscurity’ ? Lets use a simple metaphor that is familiar to us all to help explain the concept. We have all at one time or another left a spare key under the doormat, just in case we are locked out of the house, or we leave it for someone else to use to get in.   Well,  simply put, that is - security through obscurity. The theoretical security vulnerability is that anybody could break into the house by unlocking the door using the spare key from under the mat.    Add to that scenario the reality that any burglar worth his salt will check out the most obvious hiding places, and so we, the house owner, run a  greater risk of a burglary by hiding the key in this way, since the effort of finding the key is likely to be less effort to the burglar than breaking in by another means. We have in effect added a vulnerability  (...

So how do you value your privacy in the Facebook age ?  I was reviewing some of my old blogs from last year and found this one I did in July last year.  It is even more relevant now than it was then.  So if you did not read it before then please check it out.    Next blog will be on gaming - watch this space. 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 ...

Who would have predicted that a social networking site called Facebook would pick up 600m users in 7 years?   Who would have imagined that mobile phones would become such a core part of our daily lives in both  rich and poor countries.? To try and make some sense of the statistics here are a few simple graphs based on information from a variety of sources that in general corroborate each other. GLOBAL POPULATION:  This is projected to grow from the current 6.8bn to about 7.2bn during the next five years.   The majority of growth to take place in EMERGING markets. MOBILE PHONE PENETRATION :  The huge growth experienced over the last 15 years is set to continue,  in EMERGING markets in particular ( while in mature markets where penetration is over 100%  - older generation phones are being replaced by Smart-phones).    Current mobile phone users number in the order of 4.9bn people  ( or 72% penetration of the global population ...

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...

What is mobile commerce you may well ask?   Well mobile payments comprise two categories – 1) payments for digital (virtual) goods usually done online and 2)  payments for physical goods usually done at a POS.   The latter usually being of larger transaction value.   So  when will we use our mobiles (in any real number) to make these day to day payments and also use them for online banking ?    My view is that this will be driven by both;  1) the adoption of  technologies like NFC by the handset manufacturers and the POS manufacturers and the merchants;  and 2)  the acceptance by users of these new technologies .    I suspect that the latter will take longer  - as people are naturally cautious about adopting new  technologies particularly when money is involved. The major handset manufacturers have started building NFC chips into their handsets as the GSMA have finalized the specifica...

So last year Intel splash out almost $8bn on (one of their largest ever acquisitions) on   McAfee  in their quest to keep abreast of the rapidly moving Internet security market.    One of their motivations was : “ But Intel will take it one step further. The McAfee deal will see the integration of security into hardware, into the chips powering much of our computer-driven world. It also bolsters Intel's attempts to become more than a chip maker as it develops its own consumer devices and offering of IT services . “   (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11025866) And yet today they announce : “ Phishers are getting so good and so numerous that even the most technically adept of online bankers should think twice before typing in that password. Even if it's a legit site, databases can be infiltrated and passwords can be cracked. Time for something more, then. Intel is working on it, teaming up with Symantec and Vasco on what's being broadly termed Identity Pr...