For Your Security

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As part of our commitment to service excellence we have been reviewing how best to keep you safe online.

Your mobile phone is now much more than just a simple tool for communicating and allows you to access a wide range of services – read the latest news, shop for the latest fashions and listen to the latest music.

But as your mobile phone becomes more and more powerful and more and more a key part of your daily life, so too do the threats from your use of that phone grow and the risks to your personal information and the security of your finances grow.

As part of our world famousTM commitment to service excellence we want to make your mobile access simpler and safer.

So we are providing you with an additional service at no cost which is designed to protect the safety of you and your family.

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let their hand go for it, grasp it

Sketch for Twitter. See also the author's desc...

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Idea plus execution equals outcome.

Without both parts the outcome cannot be achieved.

An idea can be great but with poor execution it will stall, a poor idea with great execution is simply a waste of time and money.

Even the biggest companies can get it wrong – Google’s troubles with wifi were a poor idea badly executed while Buzz was an ok idea woefully executed.

If the idea is good enough people will tolerate grit in the delivery – Twitter and the fail whale being a classic example.

If the execution is slick enough then people may be dazzled long enough for you to sell them version 1, but they soon arrive at your doorstep with pitchforks and burning torches.

Innovation is often approached by businesses (and yes Virginia, the public sector is a business in this sense) as something both mysterious and highly dangerous.

This conflicted attitude can be seen throughout organizations, from the CEO down.

And I suspect that a lot of it comes down to regarding idea and execution as separate concepts, not as part of a seamless delivery.

Now you may, and rightly, say that this is all obvious. And you would be right.

But if it is obvious why do we all, including some of the biggest and the best, keep getting it wrong?

 

Books I Will Never Write

A history of the Franco-Prussian War told from the perspective of the animals in Paris Zoo.

A guide to implementing ERP in your organization on a ZX Spectrum.

A version of Shakespeare’s Henry V where all the characters are bears, apart from one giraffe.

The Wit and Wisdom of Jar-Jar Binks.

“Yes, I know that bus is red!” – My Struggles With Daltonism

A Practical Guide to Stairs

Cooking for Drummers

How to Forget

Was Biggles Jennings’s Father?

A 400 page exploration of why, if the plural of foot is feet, that the plural of boot is not beet.

Gazing from the crypt 1

There are those who do not believe in mistakes, for them everything happens for a reason. This view is seldom shared by anyone who has asked a bear for directions or a monkey to put up shelves.

It is definitely not shared by anyone who has gazed in puzzlement at the crypt which crowns the very top of the House of Monkeys and the House of Bears.

The reason for this crypt appearing at the top of the building rather than its usual position at the base of the foundations is usually given as an absent minded builder holding the plans upside down but some people claim to have seen a smile cross Red Mamba’s features when the crypt is mentioned and they wonder if she may not have had something to do with the odd placement of the crypt.

But of course no one would be so ill-mannered as to ask someone as gracious and beloved as Red Mamba if the rumours about the smile were correct.

Given that the crypt was there it seemed only proper to put it to some kind of use. The question of what use led to weeks of debates. There was a strong push by a section of the monkeys for the crypt to be given over to lounging, lazing, lying around and other languorous pastimes. However the climb to the roof was long and exhausting so the monkeys decided to lounge around somewhere more convenient.

A leading bear proposed that the crypt be used for cake related experiments to see if little cakes were more or less delicious at high altitudes. This was a serious research project which demanded consideration but the crypt was rather small for a research team of bears and all the little cakes that would be needed.

While the pondering carried on without much progress finally a young bear and even younger monkey proposed that the crypt should be made into an observatory, complete with telescope.

The House of Monkeys and the House of Bears carefully looked over the proposal – the bears decided that cakes could be eaten as part of astronomical viewing so they were happy and the monkeys decided that if anyone wanted to climb all the way up there then good luck to them.

All that was needed now was the telescope … (To be continued)

Castles in the Cloud

Let’s start with a simple question – I give you a pound to look after for me. How much would you spend of your own money on protecting that pound?

Less than a pound? A pound? More than a pound?

You have almost certainly gone for the first option. After all if you lose the pound then the most you will be out is one pound so why pay more?

Ok, but what if you are a bank? You expect to be looking after lots of money so you build vaults, employ guards and build processes. All of this costs significant sums of money but there has to be a chance, small though it may be, that at any moment in time you may just be protecting one pound with all this security and investment.

So what about cloud computing? I put a “pound’s” worth of data into the cloud. How much are you going to spend protecting my data?

People sometimes pitch to me that they are like “a bank for data based in the cloud”. And then I ask them what they do to prevent bank robberies…

So your data is in the cloud, and that is nice, it is accessible from anywhere, it is transparently backed up. Everything is wonderful, and then the bank goes out of business. What happens to your data then?

I once had someone telling me about their wonderful cloud based data bank service which lots of people had bought. I asked them what would happen if they went out of business. Oh, they said, no one has ever asked us that question before.

If your organization has a contract for cloud based data storage – back up, live use, whatever – I strongly suggest you find out the answer to that question if you do not already know!

So your data is in the cloud and you have proper governance arrangements in place in case the supplier goes bust. All is fine. Until suddenly someone mentions aggregation.

Aggregation is the principle that the more of something you have then the bigger a target it becomes and the greater the consequences are of loss.

Back to money again, if I put a million pounds in the bank vault then the Willy Sutton principle applies. If I leave my million pounds scattered in piles of one hundred then the risk to me is that I lose at most one hundred pounds, if the vault is raided then I lose all one million.

The same with data, finding data in most organizations is usually a matter of luck. It is hidden in emails, shared folders, private folders, EDRM systems, databases etc. Data loss or theft tends to be of individual documents and any sensible risk management policy segregates data access to minimise the threat of some one person having access to all the pieces.

But now we are putting them all into the cloud, all in one place. Ah, hello Mr Sutton.

Part of the problem is that our security model remains essentially medieval. We build a vault, we put our treasure in the vault, we post guards around it. We need a different model in the cloud age, one where security is embedded into the individual atoms of information.

And atoms of information is a good way of thinking about the potential implications of bringing some of these individually innocuous but collectively explosive nuggets of data. People may recall in the early days of chip and pin some tills would print out the last 4 digits of your debit card number, some would print out the first 4 digits, and some the middle digits. Individually, each piece was of little threat, collectively… Hello empty bank acount!!

You might just want to spend some time going through your last bank statement…

The Cassandra Complex

I made a mistake today, I wrote an email while tetchy and sent it before I had a chance for proper reflection. Don’t get me wrong, the views I expressed in the email remain my views, I just should have taken a deep breath or three before sending.

What was the email about? Well, I will not go into details. Suffice to say I had been sent a paper on professionalism which was well written, strongly argued and had a clearly defined aim. Unfortunately I disagreed with every part of it.

Whether I am right or wrong is another issue for another place and another time. And another audience.

But I continue to muse on professionalism and the notion of a “Profession”.

What is a “Profession”? It is more than just a set of people with the same skills else doctors and vets would count as one profession.

It is more than just a set of people with the same knowledge else police and criminals would count as one profession.

Is a “Profession” a licence to operate in that sphere? That is true for many professions – lawyer, doctor, accountant – but not all – hatter, footballer, religious leader.

Can you be professional without belonging to a “profession”? Of course, just compare good service with bad.

So what is the model for the “IT profession”? Do we learn from the existing professions and build a similar model to theirs with gatekeepers and qualifications etc? Or do we start from scratch to build a new style 21st century profession?

And what is it that we want out of an “IT profession”? The respect of others? Some kind of parity of standing? People who behave professionally? To raise the standards in IT by having a cadre of skilled professionals?

And then there is the question of scope. Let’s say I start the “Bear profession” which is open to all ursines in good standing. We have brown bears, black bears, grizzly bears, polar bears… What about pandas?

Pandas are, I was brought up to believe, just raccoons with pretensions. So do we let pandas into the “Bear profession”? And if we let in giant pandas then why not red pandas?

So perhaps we have an entrance exam, one involving little cakes and honey. But what does that tell us? Solely that someone has passed an exam, which may or may not have any relevance to the actual life of bears.

So I find myself coming back to the same questions

What do we want from a profession? Is it about a profession or professionalism? Can we scope who is in and who is out? What fundamental difference will it make? What does a profession look like in the emerging world?

I have no answers yet, just vague shapes evolving at the back of my mind.

No Go the Flow

The concept of “flow” has come up a number of times in recent conversations. “Flow” is one of those things which is hard to describe but easy to recognise, those moments when we are so completely aligned with what we are doing that everything just seems to fall into place. It can be chopping wood, dealing with customers, cutting code or writing text; it can last but a few moments or it can last hours. We come out of it elated and having been vastly more productive than normal. “Flow” leaves us inspired and hungry for more such moments of clarity and productiveness.

So why do organizations make “flow” so hard to achieve? Our offices seem deliberately designed to ensure that “flow” is minimised and interruptions are maximised. Similarly we build vast processes which disrupt flow and seek to reduce the human to some Taylorite automaton, incapable of creativity and “flow”.

Given that we are never more productive, never happier, never more creative than when in “flow”, why do we seem to actively seek to ensure that we banish the possibility of “flow” from our organizations? Is “flow” such a great threat?

If not, if we are supposed to be encouraging productivity, happiness and creativity then why are we not seeking to maximise “flow”?

A Bear Faced Liar

Some time back I blogged about the paw twitching appeal of the infinite library but implied that I would be strong and would resist its appeal.

Yet now I write these words with a Kindle III beside me.

So what happened to change my mind?

Simple, the notion of being able to carry up to 3,500 books anywhere I go is just too appealing to resist.

Initial Thoughts

It is light, just about light enough to be unnoticeable and the device is easy to hold. It feels like a rubberised version of the chalk slate I used as a cub.

The screen still does that annoying white – black – white inverse refresh when you turn a page. But it is almost fast enough to be non-annoying even to a person like me.

The screen is excellent in good light and rubbish any other time.

Line images look fine but colour photographs are pants.

The battery life is exceptional, they claim a month for the wifi version and based on my use I can believe it.

The experimental webbrowser is er experimental. You can use it in a pinch but to frank they would be better off with Lynx.

I have had no odd looks reading it on buses or trains, even in my transpontine realm. I have ordered the frankly overpriced cover for it as I worry about the screen scratching. Oh and the illuminated cover is like some odd Roncomatic idea.

Tips

You can send PDFs to the Kindle by email – each Kindle has its own unique address. They come out readable but you can convert them to Kindle’s MOBI format by putting Convert in the email subject line.

You need to add your address to allowed email addresses as to prevent spam the Kindle will only accept email from preregistered addresses. Just go to your Amazon account to configure the list of allowed addresses.

It does not do email other than that which I think is a lost opportunity – I would buy the 3G version for my mother tomorrow if it came with an email client.

Dreams

Dreams have always intrigued mankind. For some they are a window into the deepest recesses of the human soul, to others they are a source of obscure portents and signs, and for some they are just noise – the sleeping mind seeking to make sense of stray synapses firing at random.

Often dreams have been associated with mystical or religious experiences, so closely linked with visions are they.

During Tsarist times Siberia was first used as a place of internal exile. The surviving Decembrists and many others were sent east into the eternal taiga.

Over time communities of the exiles mixed with the native inhabitants of Siberia and through a process of syncretism Christianity and the shamanism of the natives at times blurred and odd new heresies and beliefs were born.

Someway north of Irkutsk one such community, isolated by distance and winter, became lost in dream.

An innocent question started it; “Did Adam and Eve dream?” The people of the community had little to do while winter gripped their world other than to sleep and talk. So they considered this issue while doing the slow things that occupied the winter such as stoking the fire or making cups of birch bark tea.

In Genesis, Adam did not sleep until the Lord put him into a deep sleep to remove his rib to create Eve. So Adam neither slept or dreamt.

But we sleep, we dream. Then sleep is something that must have come with the Fall, and so dreams too must be a result of that Original Sin.

One group proposed that dreams were sent by God to remind us of what we had lost. Others, quoting nightmares and dreams of lust, said that dreams must be sent by the Devil to tempt and taunt us.

The debate might have remained a winter fancy had not a child dreamed of gold.

In the dream, the child had been deep in the taiga. There, under a white sky in a white landscape it had met a white fox and the fox had told the child that there was gold buried near the village.

The adults smiled and ignored the child. Until the next morning when another child spoke of the fox and its message about the buried gold. People shook their heads, laughing softly but in their eyes a question was forming.

No one spoke of the dreams but adults started to seem to seek out sleep. Gradually more and more of the villagers spent their time asleep, seeking the fox.

To speak of such a thing would seem ludicrous, so people kept their own counsel. Even within families no one would admit to the dream hunt so over time the word “fox” began to disappear from conversation.

Then one night, a dreamer found themselves out in the taiga, and there about them were other villagers. Were they just figures in a dream or were they too after the fox?

Sheepishly at first, people began to sleep with tools. Perhaps with some distant part of the mind they rationalised that to hold a shovel in your sleep might mean that you held a shovel in your dreams.

Slowly, imperceptibly the balance of life began to shift. Dream became the priority, the waking hours were an imposition. The winter had always been a quiet time and so no one remarked on the gradual transition.

Some years back, I found myself deep in Siberia in the deep winter. I had left Irkutsk and was heading to Khabarovsk. Having time to spare and being awestruck by the deep silence and beauty of the taiga I broke my journey to explore the landscape.

One day I found myself in a long abandoned village. The houses were derelict, quite literally frozen in time. Possessions were still on shelves, wood neatly piled by doors. The village was here but the people were gone.

As I walked away, a flicker of movement caught my eye. I stopped and looked across the village to the edge of the trees.

It was a fox.

The House of Monkeys and the House of Bears

At the very heart of the forest stands a vast stone building. It has 3 towers, a belfry, several dozen turrets, more crenellations than you could count and, because a builder held the plans upside down, at the very top of the building is a crypt.

The building is on the bank of the wide, slow river that dawdles through the forest and which is home to fish and the fearsome crocogator. Few people have ever seen a crocogator but all agree that their seeming non-existence just makes them all the more fearsome.

Carved into the stone arch above the entrance to the building are the words “The House of Monkeys and the House of Bears”. They are inlaid with gold leaf, or if not gold leaf, then at least something that sparkles nicely in the sun.

There are two tall, imposing doors at the entrance. The one on the right has the figure of a monkey carved on it, whilst the one on the left has a bear. The face of the monkey seems to be smiling whilst the face of the bear looks almost quizzical.

Once through the doors you find yourself in a large lobby, light streams through narrow windows high in the walls illuminating a polished stone floor and walls hung with tapestries.

The tapestries depict famous events in the history of the forest such as the discovery of the first banana tree, the invention of the scratching stick and the signing of the treaty between the monkeys and the bears.

A few potted plants and some uncomfortable looking wooden benches make up the remainder of the contents of the lobby.

On the right-hand side of the lobby is an archway painted in bright vibrant colours and decorated with images of plants and animals. On the left-hand side is another archway, identical in size and shape, but painted a subtle shade of blue and decorated with abstract figures that seem to invoke memories of dreams, music and, oddly enough, cakes.

There is also a small door directly between the two archways. Made of plain but richly polished wood, it bears a small sign “No entry unless on official business – Red Mamba”. And there is a door handle shaped like a snake, made from red gold.

The House of Monkeys

If you walk through the right-hand door you will find yourself in a large chamber, filled with light from a large glass canopy that covers the space.

Along each side of the chamber are rows of strange objects that look like someone tried to draw a chair, a tree, a hammock and ladder all at the same time. In the middle of the chamber is a long table with a line of coconuts along the length of it and a large wooden box at one end.

The wooden box is richly polished, with an ornate carving of bananas on the lid. At the moment the lid is ajar revealing a plain wooden interior which smells faintly of ginger and bananas.

At the far end of the table is an imposing seat. It stands at least 4 metres tall and over a metre wide with a bright yellow, very comfortable looking, cushion covering the broad seat. The seat has a light green linen canopy which filters the light from the glass roof, so if you sit in the seat it is like being bathed in the forest itself.

The House of Bears

If you walk through the left-hand door you find yourself in a high ceilinged room whose walls are a faint blue grey in colour. For some reason everyone who sees the walls for the first time seems to catch a faint smell of the sea.

Hung about the walls are a number of long thin banners which descend from the high ceiling almost to the floor. These banners are rich, deep greens, browns and blues with subtle patterns.

At the far end a very dark blue, nearly black banner hangs down, decorated with the stars of the night sky and with a full moon right in the centre.

A long table, similar to that in the other chamber, runs down the centre of the room. There appear to be teeth marks in one corner of the table which someone has tried to cover up.

The table is empty save for a large bowl of flowers and a forgotten pencil.

Along both sides of the table are long, low benches scattered with comfortable cushions.

At the far end, beneath the banner of the moon, is a smaller bench, slightly higher than the others and with a pillow at one end.

(Work in progress)