In this issue:

• Curry-on Curry Club
• DoH tells NHS to dump IE6
• Cloudy outlook on government ICT
• Phishing attack nets 3 million euros of carbon permits
• Digital doomsday: the end of knowledge
• Interpol chief plays down role of scanners

Help me… I must be a victim of something…?

Gordon Brown's alleged bad behaviour has brought bullying to the fore...

Gordon Brown hit by fresh bullying allegations

Establishing one's place in the pecking order is common throughout the animal kingdom... displayed by both young and old... where the strong win any contest where strength is the only criteria...

As intelligent animals some have realised that the old NLP tenet "the one with the most behavioural flexibility is the one most likely to get their outcomes met"... works in a business situation as well as throughout life...

The people who proudly say "what you see is what you get" are the ones setting themselves up as one-trick ponies... and the higher up the tree you get the less excuse there is for bad behaviour... no, it can't be excused and forgiven as passion or determination...

Gayna

DoH tells NHS to dump IE6

From The Register

The Department of Health has told Trusts using Windows 2000 or XP to move to version 7 of Microsoft's browser.

Quicksilva thoughts...

Internet Explorer 6 was first introduced as long ago as August 2001 and has been dogged by security issues to this day.

As of February this year, there are still 24 unpatched vulnerabilities (according to security advisory site Secunia). However, thanks to the IE series’ lack of adherence to web standards over the years, it is unsurprising that it has taken the NHS this long to move away from IE6 – various departments across the organisation are most likely full of web applications that are incompatible with more modern browsers and are too old or too expensive to upgrade or replace.

Once more we can see the benefits of software platforms based on open standards that allow the platform to be kept up-to-date while remaining backwards-compatible with existing applications.

Cloudy outlook on government ICT

From E-Health Insider

The Cabinet Office has published a ten year strategy for government ICT that emphasises the use of cloud computing and greater standardisation across the public sector.

Quicksilva thoughts...

The move to a cloud based structure will bring with it its own challenges, benefits and risks. Security will be of paramount importance as well as managing the public perception of such systems, such as whether personal data will be stored “in the cloud”. One of the biggest challenges will be managing who can access different systems; if a multitude of government systems are to be hosted within a cloud infrastructure then authentication and authorisation will be even more scrutinised. The industry must play its part in adapting to the challenges that arise, shifting focus from the provision of traditional local network-oriented identities.

The introduction of common standards can be good, improving interoperability not only for systems but also for end users as they work increasingly on different IT systems that are often provided by different vendors. It is important though that such standards do not stifle innovation and we should not be afraid to try a new approach to a problem simply because there is a standard way of doing something already. IT systems must be able to evolve to suit the environment within which they exist so that they may continue to deliver benefits to the people that use them.

Phishing attack nets 3 million euros of carbon permits

From BBC News

The international carbon market has been hit by a phishing attack which saw an estimated 250,000 permits worth over 3 million euros stolen this week.

Quicksilva thoughts...

I find it interesting that the internet is still a huge source of income for unscrupulous fraudsters taking advantage of both businesses and individuals through very simple means, even though phishing scams have received widespread publicity.

This story highlights the recent opportunistic attack on companies wishing to buy permits from other companies to emit greenhouse gasses. It seems intriguing after the amount of publicity that phishing scams have received over other forms of fraud that so many people are still taken in by unsolicited emails.

The banking sector has tried to publicise this form of internet fraud widely over the last few years and possibly this is a sign of success given that the fraudsters are looking for new sectors to target.

Other reports this month have also highlighted phishing scams taking advantage of people wishing to give to charities in response to the Haiti disaster appeals. It seems a great shame that there isn’t a better solution to making this faceless crime more obvious to the wider public, as it is obvious that this form of internet crime is still big business.

Digital doomsday: the end of knowledge

From New Scientist

We are generating more information than ever before, and storing it in ever more transient media. Much of what it is being lost is hardly essential - future generations will probably manage fine without all the family photos and videos you lost when your hard drive died - but some is.

Quicksilva thoughts...

Data storage, excluding the human memory, has come on leaps and bounds. From media types like solid state rock in prehistoric times, through parchment and paper, to the current day where we have a choice of hard disks types and sizes, DVD, CD, flash drives and an untold future of exotic ideas involving holograms and quantum physics.

Cave paintings on solid rock exist that are up to 40,000 years old. Tortoise shells have been found which have symbols on them that are over 8000 years old, and of course there is the Rosetta Stone which was made about 200 years BC, and still shows the carved text made up of three translations of a single passage. Paper gave us books which are a mobile and reproducible media type, that have become horded in giant libraries, both physical and digital.

With the digital era, more and more data has become squeezed into formats that are invisible to the naked eye unless presented using technology, which is itself defined within such media. These media types offer great advantages in mobility and capacity but questions remain over longevity of the data stored.

Our modern day data storage strategy is not a well defined one that takes into consideration the moment in time where all knowledge is lost... The Digital Doomsday: the end of knowledge.

Interpol chief plays down role of scanners

From Personal Computer World

The head of Interpol has questioned the amount of resources devoted to implementing body scanning technology in airports, according to an Associated Press report.

Quicksilva thoughts...

Government plans to introduce full body scanners still seems a little vague despite their scheduled roll out in a couple of weeks. It is still unclear what kind of scanning technology will be used and significantly, whether it will be individual airports or the Department for Transport (DfT) that will carry out the testing of the machines. A Gatwick spokeswoman was confused, believing that testing was going to be carried out by the government rather than the airports. She said that Gatwick planned to wait for advice from the DfT on which system to deploy. "They are going to set the standards," she said. Sounds familiar!

Why is it that we always seem to resort to the latest, untried technology as a quick fix to our problems? What is it about politicians that doom them to make the same mistakes that their predecessors made? The customer, in this case, Interpol, wants better intelligence and information sharing. Information Technology can certainly play its part in enabling better information sharing but I can't see how having a full body image is going to help prevent the millions of cases of passport fraud that happen every year...unless of course the city centre photo booths that we are all familiar with change radically!

"Always be wary of the Software Engineer who carries a screwdriver." - Robert Paul

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