Welcome to the reality of cyber warfare

As current events have shown, not taking security of digital systems can have drastic consequence

as was reported back in 2009? that a vulnerability within DNS can be exploited to increase overall range of DDoS attacks. As we have seen recently with the ongoing attacks and counter attacks from a spam service and one alleged spam blacklisting company, the consequence which is increased of traffic which has the effect of clogging the bandwidth, thus dramatically slowing down the response

Developers and producers should not provide the minimum of security levels any more

the situation now calls on some form of legislation to increase RNA standard from say level 3 to around level 6

We here in the western world are under increased outside attacks to raid, steal, compromised and damage our infrastructure, business, research and finance. As in other fields if we are under attack then measures should be taken to represent a war footing

Which in my opinion we have been in this state for at least 5/6 years.

The important fact is this: The data stored on our system, is now who and what we are, it is also our currency our actual business, our realm our domain which we jointly live in. We do not allow anyone to just walk into our government buildings, military bases, offices, and our homes and allow anyone to just take what they want and then let them go? no we have laws and legislation to guard such conduct. To bring up another recent example, the comments currently going around about the recent and probably repeated attacks on several South Korean infrastructures (power station, Tv station, bank etc) maybe an  preliminary  test for a future full-scale shutdown.  The scenario i’m suggesting is not a question of probable, it is an inevitability!. the more reliance we are to a digital lifestyle, the weaker we are to an actual attack to close such a structure down. I’ll give an old military example from late in the cold war. Shortly after the weaponisation of nuclear devices, research was conducted into the other effects that are caused after detonation. Primary of these was high yield high intensity short lifespan radiation effects which were conducted for the neutron bomb and  the effect of high atmosphere detonations to produce an EMP over the targeted area. (Electro Magnetic pulse) to disable the enemy.

The effect of an EMP cause the shortening and overload of electrical devices. Such an attack on an unprepared foe would have the effect of sending back to the dark ages.

The american solutions to protect their military assets was to harden their electrical components in the event of an EMP attack, then they will still be able to function.

During this period, the Western forces managed to acquire the soviets new main line tank of the time, but were baffled with why it was fitted with value based electrical equipment.

After further study they shockingly discovered why. values based systems have a higher resilience to EMP effects. As was and still is the former soviet forces to find a cheap and simple solution to a high tech problem. And this highlights my point. An over reliance to high-tech systems with no recovery plan is a catastrophe waiting to happen. We talk about risk assessment and risk management, but still fail to apply this method on the grounds that such things are way to expensive. So we sit here waiting for such an action to take place. By the time it does it will be already too late. I for one do not want to return to a candlelight existence,  do you?

Agile development and Agile Project Management

This new methodology trend has its roots in small development systems and works quite well as the overall staff have to do multiple duties which crosses many areas. For most small business this is probably a good way to manage their overall day to day practice of business.

For big businesses and governments this is not the ideal method to choose

It is seen a a method to get more out of less. Another in a long line of cost saving exercises which will inevitably lead to failure. The reason, more eliminations of quality from the overall output. If your expecting something that is functional and effect from tight deadlines, then a price will have to paid.

In this case quality is the most likely candidate. This is because people don’t see quality as an equal partner in the trimative of project management and development so it is usually the area which gets trimmed until you have garbage. Its doesn’t work but at least its delivered on time and within budget.

“We can always fix/patch/modify it later” is the current trend in all areas of western business models.  If this ideal keeps up, then nothing will function and then will lead to a total collapse. I suggest you actually listen to reason, common sense and reality. Decent effective research and analysis, reasonable expectations, effective and professional training is the only way to go to make such ideal methods to work to your benefit. If you start with great quality at the start, then your more than likely to end up with a effective and decent delivery. If not, then prepare for excessive gaming to meet targets and a deluge of failed and poor quality deliveries.

Project management: an observation..

In the UK, there seems to be a cultural trend to stick to rules, boundaries and guidelines as if they are written in stone.

In truth this is not the true case for such things. Every day in the courts around the country, they argue, prove, counter argue the interpretation of the law and how it actually apply in the case that they are all involved. In other words, its flexible.

The same should be in the case of Project management and managerial tasks and activities. The bottom line in these en devours is not a fixed formula or program conducted by robots, it is performed by other human beings for human beings and human beings are not fixed static predictable organisms. Human beings ARE NOT ROBOTS!!!.

With this in mind, Project management is basically managing chaos. This means it must be flexible to the needs of the client and overall objective of the project and not the users or instigators  of the proposed project.

There is a major difference between the original analysis, risk assessment and risk management and when the actual project goes live.

In a lot of cases unexpected or unconsidered objectives and incidents  become the priority, but then Project managers try and force these factors to fit their original plan, rather than change their plan to fit the needs of the new criteria and client (s).

This then leads to projects failing to meet its targets, an overrun in costs, time constraints to appear and become unrealistic and a very low level quality.

The other factors is that this leads to stress, bullying, no compromises, conflict, increased costs, long hours and other negative effects on the workforce and client as a whole.

Therefore I suggest that you embrace the idea that things will change and therefore include and change your plans to fit rather than force them through, because then you will end up with a more successful outcome with additional income and a reputation of being a first class provider with a lot of return business.

BYOD is it really a good idea?

BYOD or Bring Your Own Device, is one of the many popular trends in IT

The reason for this is many but the mains reasons in my opinion is as follows

the overall technical improvements made to mobile devices from being a phone and texting communication device to being a mini computer

running a modified Linux operation system running embedded HTML and Java scripts. this means they are true multimedia and programmable computers, but currently not true multitasking.

The overall cost effect of BYOD  is making implementation a popular choice, the reason is that instead of a organisation, company etc paying for such devices, they have moved the costs onto their users/ employees who are very eager to take this one due to the convenience and time saving and just sheer enjoyment for such devices.

This freedom of movement means you are no longer chained to your desk or desktop device to access,  use and complete your tasks. This can be done from anywhere you choose as long there is some sort of access point to connect to the internet

But this brings a whole host of problems for the INFOSEC professionals

As per usual, such schemes have not considered the security, as their intrinsic design is all about ease and freedom of access. A design trend that is dated to back in the early days of commercial  computing around the 1970s on-wards

This is the heart of all the current problems associated with the security aspect IT

Therefore solutions are usually in the form of an afterthought or tokenism until a major breach occurs.

some of the main problems is not just the lack of proper security in these new devices, also cross contamination of data stored, theft of said devices, protection of sensitiveness data stored and tracking records of activity on them as well.

Most of the companies that produce these products have stored data of activity, location where these took place and what they actually did.

All of this info can be very useful to then plan a decisive attack on the main network servers/cloud that most companies have in place today.

The current thought is all around cost saving, but no real long term planning or effective risk assessment. Even though the real risk outlined can cost a company far more than they think they are saving.

Now add the ignorance of their employees of even basic INFOSEC procedures and we have disastrous situation just waiting to happen

Until the mindsets of decision makers truly take onboard  proper security measures before something actually occurs then the worst these situations will get.

Digital printing, medicine and the future

After last week surprising announcement of a man in the US having 75% of his skull replaced with a modified digital print, we are now on the verge of the birth of the true human cyborg

even though there is still no news on the unknown patient condition,

but something like this latest update is a major breakthrough

Last month channel 4 had a documentary showing how far prostecstics have come in the last few years the idea of a bio mechanical immortality is no longer just a dream

I cannot forget the sequence from the film 5th element, when leeloo is being reconstructed

The technique used was very similar to how digital printing works

The images shown as they constructed her layer by layer is from

who donated his body to be sliced layer by layer to help with the advancement of medical science

Now the question stands. Is this a good thing or is it a sign of a more troubled future for all of us who can not afford such medical procedures.

The trouble with us the Human race, is that we usually choose the selfish or survivalist path,

We cannot help it, its our nature, and even though we have created mechanisms to control such urges, in our current world, our primitive lizard brain is winning

I do hope this does not cause an even greater divide between the haves and the have nots as violence severe disruption are just around the corner

Lets pray for all our sakes that for a change, the right decision is made.