So I’m officially on my holidays. I’ve even managed to switch off my blackberry and mobile so I can completely relax.
I tend to find the holiday period quite boring to be honest. Yes, the kids are off school, but its so cold that you’re stuck indoors with them most of the days and there’s only [...]

Large corporations and governments are slow. Very slow. Even with all their ‘blue sky thinking’ and ‘forward planning’ it takes them a lifetime to get anything done. Naturally information security being one of the casualties of corporate inertia.
Smaller ‘dynamic’ companies are so much easier to influence and make positive changes to. You need anything done [...]

Like many men, I rarely throw anything away. Especially anything with wires, batteries, or made of wood ends up in the garage. Just in case some day, like the A-team my house gets stormed by a bunch of no-good generic villains with scars, eye patches and dodgy accents. They’d probably lock me up in my [...]

Living in London, there are a few things you notice about van drivers when out on the road. Well other than the fact that they have a tabloid newspaper rolled up on the dashboard, they resemble an escaped convict and drive with no manners and as if the police were chasing them, which sometimes they [...]

Going to the cinema is always a nice experience. Even if the film isn’t any good you always know that the trailers will be enjoyable. Trailers are so good, they can condense a 3 hour dribble of drama into 90 seconds of anticipation which make the hair on the back of your neck stand on [...]

According to the register http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/10/dell_self_encrypting_laptop/, Dell is producting self-encrypting laptops with Seagate encrypting drives and McAfee security software.
Finally it appears to be a step in the right direction. Quite scary actually, almost as if someone has had a sudden bout of common sense.
Of course some of the more geeky consumers will probably complain about how [...]

Back in the day when cavemen formed their own start-up companies they exchanged spiked clubs for women. As they developed and grew, mergers and acquisitions took place and they ended up with large companies with larger numbers of spiked clubs, lots of women and ‘employees’.
Now the problem with employee’s is that they always believe they’re [...]

During my career in infosec and my lifetime of professional cynicism, I’ve been on the receiving end of much abuse and managerial mis-management.
I’ve lost count the number of times someone has asked for an infosec opinion in a meeting and then promptly cut me off mid-sentence suggesting that it would probably be better if I [...]

The leisure and tourism industry is a strange one. I always thought people visited London to see Buckingham palace, Big Ben, Black Cabs, the architecture and history. So you can imagine how confused I was when I saw an advert in a holiday magazine advertising how multi-cultural London is.
So I began thinking about it. Yes, [...]

Usually when someone mentions information security or the data protection act what do you think of? Is it something that is only of concern to big corporates and governments?
Clearly, it does not concern anyone else. Its not like we go around losing gazillions of records every day in the same vein as our banks. So [...]

Like most people who haven’t been to a college or university for many years, I am saddened to see year on year the continual decline in the educational standards. It beggars belief how living in Britain, one of the most prosperous nations on the planet we have young adults leaving schools not being able to [...]

Like most semi-young men trying to hold onto the last strands of their youth, I do occasionally indulge in a bit of ‘boys toys’ retail therapy. What normally catch my eye are smart little gadgets and like most I succumb to the fancy advert on TV or on the billboard. However, its not until I’ve [...]

Age is the silent assasin. Actually, its more than an assasin, it’s an expert torturer who brings even the mighty to their knees. One minute you’re playing Sunday league football in your prime, keeping up with the fastest boy in the squad. Then before you realise it, your 3 year old daughter is outrunning you [...]

A friend of mine is training to be a driving instructor. Naturally, being a friend I was happy for him, until we went out for a drive with me in the driving seat.
“oooh I see you didn’t check your mirrors there mate”
“tut tut, you let the steering wheel slide, you should remain in total control [...]

For any company these days who suffer from a data loss incident of some sort, the blame can never lie with the company or indeed government. There is a formula as to how the blame is distributed.
Small losses blame contractor, else, blame outsourced 3rd party!
There, its as simple as that.
Phew, OK, with damage control out [...]

Whilst playing some online scrabble the other day, I was quite proud of a word using 5 letters and scoring me 24 points. Until some smarty pants came up with this word ‘Abnegation’ and that’s when I simply closed down the application. Which of course is the online equivalent of tipping over the board, stomping [...]

I’ve been laid up at home for 4 consecutive days with a terrible pain which runs from my neck down the left of my back and occasionally shoots down my left arm. Its not pretty and I’ve been very miserable. Being a male, I can honestly tell you, the pain I’ve been suffering from is [...]

There comes a time in most peoples lives where one day they are happily going about their daily routine where they suddenly have a moment of self-actualisation and their whole life seems pointless. Yes, I’m talking about a mid-life crisis.
Speaking to a good friend of mine who’s spent many a year in the medical profession, [...]

I’m pretty sure now that I posses the ability to predict the future. At first I thought it was just a series coincidences, but I have now come to realise that if not now, in many years to come people will view me in the same way they regard Nostradamus.
I mean, I predicted for years [...]