I am privileged in my job to meet many people, in different industries and cultures. Despite having being born in Somaliland and traveled widely in Africa, I had never been to Nigeria. I recently remedied this, on an assignment to develop an information management strategy for a major client there.

I suppose it was not surprising that friends and colleagues greeted me with a lot of raised eyebrows and worried looks at news of this trip: “Nigeria! Isn’t that dangerous?” or “You won’t get me going there!”.  I had to explain I was going to the south west (showing Green on the FCO web-site) not the north east (which is showing Red, and always in the news), and that Nigeria is a large country with a population of 160 million; that is, 20% of Africa’s population. Continue Reading

The UK government identified cyber security as a key area of focus and new investment and in 2011 announced a budget of £650 million to shore up defenses in the UK.  So, after two years let’s examine where it’s been spent?

Here’s some of the good things that have resulted from the investment

-          SOCA took down 36 website domains that sold credit card data – this is probably a very small tip of the iceberg.

-          15,000 fraud websites were suspended

-          GCHQ announced a scheme to help companies deal with cyber attacks and give guidance on response to a compromise

-          8 universities have been given the Academic Centre for Excellence in Cyber Security and Research

-          CISP, the Cyber security Information Sharing Scheme

However, there are areas that need further investment

-          60% of the budget was spent ‘detect and defend’ – We hope that ‘response’ is also a large portion of this investment although it’s not  very clear Continue Reading

I had a great time at the Barbican on Monday last week, speaking at the RSA Security Summit. Art Coviello and Eddie Schwartz led off the day with their usual flair, giving very interesting and cogent talks on the main theme of the summit: “how big data transforms security”. There were great break-out sessions, like the one by RSA’s Matthew Gardiner on security analytics. And there was time for great conversations during breaks and lunch — like one I had with Phillip Hoyer (of Actividentity, now part of HIDGlobal) about mobile security and PKCS #11.

My own session, in the last segment of the day, was on “Breaking the Kill Chain”. We’ve been thinking a lot at RSA about the attack models that enterprises are confronted with these days, especially targeted, stealthy attacks. The “kill chain” described in a paper published by Lockheed-Martin is a very useful tool for modeling APTs and for understanding how to put in place intelligence-driven defenses.

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Lady Backup is pleased to announce that EMC is the winner for the 2^nd year in the V3 Technology Awards.

While EMC was nominated in several categories, readers voted EMC best in “ disaster recovery and business continuity ” solutions.    Also of note is that VFCache was a finalist in the best product of the year.

Check out this video interview with Kelly Brown, filmed from the awards ceremony.   As a small side note, Ms. Brown at times Continue Reading

Sitting in London looking at the television pictures of the storm that is hitting the East Coast of America, makes me realise just how vulnerable we all are to situations we may find ourselves in where we have absolutely no control over the outcome. Floods, fire, power cuts and building damage will take weeks if not months to repair. Then I start to wonder just how many data centers have been affected. A quick “google” tells me that there are at least half a dozen major websites down because of the lost of two major data centres due to power outages and flood. So if we cannot control the weather what can we control?

Data is probably the most valuable asset in a data centre, it’s invisible, contained on thousands of spinning spindles and constantly changing. Power may be restored in days, restoring data may take weeks if at all. However I am suggesting you can control you backups, and you should be able to recover all your lost data.

A recent survey run in Europe and the Middle East however found that three out of four IT administrators did not trust they could recover after a disaster. Technologies such as tape certainly do not help with the levels of confidence, with 80% of these users stating

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It seems whatever industry you are in nowadays we are obliged to shorten or abbreviate our words. Having just spent a few days discussing product roadmaps with our Champion Backup Partners, it seemed every slide we showed used some form of product abbreviation. I do now wonder if our Product Managers are creating new abbreviations so the roadmaps are only understandable with a code book.

So shortening words is not new I hear you say, true. What about then the shortening of the Continue Reading

I was recently invited by Drapers magazine – the retail fashion industry bible – to comment on what UK fashion retailers are doing with mobile technology. To be honest, I struggled to think of genuinely innovative activity that put customers – not the product, brand or retailer –  first, certainly in the UK. If you check out the Neiman Marcus ‘Service’ app   you will see something that genuinely helps customers and staff, delivering a better customer service experience. Let me know if you have seen any ambitious use of mobile technology in current UK fashion retail that actually puts customer need first – all comments welcome”. Please see my article below.

Drapers Mobile Fashion article

I came across this really interesting post this morning. For those of you looking to virtualise your Oracle environment, and looking to get actual insight on Before and After, look no further than EMC’s own journey to virtualisation.

In his post, Darryl Smith gives you detailed information what improvements and efficiencies to expect from going through that journey.

Read the full blog post now: Running Oracle on Virtual Infrastructure Really Pays Off: Save Big on Capital, Operating and License Costs.

If you’re looking to virtualise Oracle and are based in the UK & Ireland, get in touch and take the next step to virtualisation.

There is  a lot of truth in the adage of what I was taught in the RAF and what has stayed with me in the form of the ‘5 Ps’ – previous planning prevents poor performance, and the work over the past 7 years that has gone into delivering and securing the Digital Olympics is a great example.

The core digital infrastructure, much of which was locked down months ago, has been relentlessly tested to ensure it can cope with the huge demand placed on it during the 17 days of the Summer Olympics and 12 days of the Paralympics.  Organisers of the London 2012 games are confident that the investment in testing the vast array of IT infrastructure and equipment deployed across London and the Olympic venues, and recovery processes in the case of a major cyber attack, will pay dividends.

With all this data flashing around the networks it is hard to visualise Continue Reading

The atmosphere in London is euphoric, at times electric and totally surreal as the city has completely embraced the spirit of the Olympics.  Key landmarks such as Horse Guards, Hyde Park, Wimbledon, Wembley, the ExCel and Greenwich have been transformed.  But the key site is the Olympic Park and for me the highlights have been the opening ceremony, the way in which spectators have enjoyed and supported such a fantastic international spectacle and of course the athletes themselves, who are proving that world records can be broken. Continue Reading