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Would You Risk the Wrath of the Information Commissioner?
2011-05-10 18:00:00
The Information Commissioner's fining of solicitor Andrew Jonathan Crossley is interesting in several respects and contains an important message for many small businesses. The £1,000 fine was announced by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) today in a press release. Mr Crossley was the owner of the law firm ACS Law, which has recently ceased trading. The firm gained widespread exposure for its aggressive pursuit of those alleged to have infringed copyright through peer-to-peer file sharing activities in recent years. It seems that many of those pursued by the firm were probably innocent and I understand that the only successful prosecutions in this matter were won by default when the defendants failed to appear in court. In September 2010, ACS Law's web site was seriously attacked, causing it to crash. In the subsequent aftermath, a backup file containing emails between ACS Law's employees and other parties appeared on the web site, which allowed anyone ...
More About: Security , General , Risk

US Diplomatic ?WikiLeaks? Inevitable
2010-12-03 11:42:00
I was interested in what Sir Christopher Meyer (HM Ambassador to the United States between 1997 and 2003) had to say about WikiLeaks on BBC Question Time last night. I understand from what he was saying that the United States created a massive ‘intranet’ to share intelligence from around the world between their agencies as part of their response to 11th September 2001 attacks. They wanted a clearer picture of the emerging threats to the United States. He suggests that over two and half million people have access to this ‘intranet’ and implies that leaks were inevitable. I feel that there is an important lesson here for any government or commercial enterprise that tries to build massive databases. The more people who have access, the more likely there is to be a leak. This weblog is produced by Revell Research Systems.
More About: General

NHS: Can we trust them with the Patient Summary Care Record Data?
2010-06-02 17:56:00
I find it worrying that the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) reports that the NHS is the United Kingdom’s worst offender in terms of keeping personal data, especially in light of the Patient Summary Care Record scheme, which will eventually hold details from most people’s medical records. The question for me is simple: Can they be trusted to look after computerised medical records? According to a spreadsheet accompanying the ICO’s press release of 28th May 2010, the NHS has reported more breaches than any other body to date. The data shows that these losses have largely been through either lost or stolen data/hardware rather than insecure disposal or accidental disclosure. I agree absolutely with David Smith, the Deputy Commissioner, who said: “The ICO maintains it is essential that the protection of people’s personal information is part of organisations’ culture and DNA.” However, the issue of data protection is clearly...
More About: Security , General , Data , Trust

Thoughts on The Queen's Speech
2010-05-28 22:46:00
I welcome the two IT related bills in the Queen’s Speech. The Freedom (Great Repeal) Bill will limit the amount of time that the DNA profiles of innocent people in England and Wales can be held on the national database and will adopt the Scottish model. This seems to be much more proportionate than holding a blanket database of everyone’s DNA, which was where we seemed to be heading at one point. I believe that this would have led to all sorts of problems in the future. I think that this bill now strikes the right balance between bring criminals to justice and ensuring the privacy and freedom of innocent people. The bill will also tighten the regulations on the use of CCTV cameras, which seem to be springing up everywhere. The United Kingdom already has more surveillance than any other society in the world and we need to be careful about how we are using this technology. In fact, we must become much more wary about using technology in general just because we can with...
More About: General , Thoughts

McAfee Update Causes Windows XP SP3 Machines to Fail Worldwide
2010-04-21 22:34:00
I imagine that 21st April 2010 will be a day that McAfee will remember for sometime to come and probably one they would much prefer to forget! The antivirus vendor issued its daily security update DAT5958 at 06:00 PDT (GMT-7), but by 13:00 BST (GMT+1) the update was wreaking havoc on many corporate networks in the United Kingdom, let alone the rest of the world! The update affected Windows XP machines with Service Pack 3 applied, falsely detecting the svchost.exe file as Win32/wecorl.a. The vendor’s VirusScan product essentially prevented the svchost.exe file from running, causing Windows to endlessly reboot in many cases. McAfee acted fairly quickly by pulling the affected virus definition file (DAT5958) from their download servers, preventing more customers from becoming involved in what must be one of the worst update issues to impact corporate networks for some time. They released DAT5959 to replace the affected virus definition file at around 10:15 PDT (GMT-7). ...
More About: Security , Machines , Update , Worldwide

Data Protection Act 1998
2010-01-27 17:21:00
I suspect many businesses and probably most members of the general public are unaware that the fees for notification under the Data Protection Act 1998 were changed with effect from 1st October 2009. The change was made through The Data Protection (Notification and Notification Fees) (Amendment) Regulations 2009 Statutory Instrument 2009/1677 laid before Parliament by Michael Willis, Minister of State in the Ministry of Justice, on 6th July 2009. The annual notification fee has been £35 for all data controllers, regardless of their size, since 2000. However, from 1st October 2009, two-tiers of fees have been in force.   Essentially, small and medium sized-organisations with fewer than 250 employees or less than £25.9M turnover continue to pay £35 annually and are now defined as “Tier 1” organisations. All other bodies (including any public authorities defined in the 1998 act) will now fall into “Tier 2” and must pay £500 annual...
More About: General

More on the Exeter University Virus
2010-01-20 22:11:00
Just a quick update to my earlier blog regarding the problems currently being faced by the University of Exeter. It seems the virus is exploiting known flaws in the Microsoft Vista and Microsoft Server 2008 platforms. Zack Whittacker, who blogs for ZDNet, has a source inside the university here in Exeter. Apparently, the virus is mainly targeting Vista SP2 machines and the IT staff at the university are trying to use patch MS09-050 to reduce the attack surface. It is understood that this virus has not been seen outside of the Exeter campus, but clearly demonstrates the disruption that a carefully crafted attack can cause. There is a suggestion in Whittacker's blog that some critical patches had not been applied (using the Microsoft System Update Service). We strongly believe that machines should regularly be checked to ensure that patches that should have been applied, actually have been applied. If the loop is not closed in this manner then these sorts of problem...
More About: Security , Virus

Exeter University Shutdown!
2010-01-20 18:02:00
It seems that the University of Exeter is currently in the middle of a major virus outbreak, which has led to their IT team shutting down the entire campus network, including their telephone system in an attempt to contain the problem. The attack appears to have started on Monday. The campus network was shutdown at around 2:00pm as a direct response to the threat. However, the problems seem to be continuing today (Wednesday). The university’s home page suggests that staff and students are only able to access email externally using home computers and the like. The communications advice issued by the university says that it “is currently experiencing a severe IT incident, and as a precautionary measure we’ve taken much of our network offline. Parts of the University are being brought back online today as soon as it is safe to do so. The University switchboard is online and can accept calls, but we are unable to transfer them to some affected areas ...
More About: Security

IT Professionals must be Assertive!
2009-12-02 18:46:00
I’ve been mulling over Michael Cross’ article of 23rd September 2009 for the Guardian web site for a while now, which was written in response to The British Computer Society rebranding itself as BCS The Chartered Institute for IT and announcing that it was revising its process for Chartered IT Professional (CITP) registration. The article sported the contentious title: “IT can have its professionals, if they don’t get stroppy” with a subtitle of “Government and employers will not recognise IT ‘professionals’ if they are demanding as doctors and lawyers.”  Mr Cross’ article highlights the tight rope that the Chartered Institute for IT walks as it tries to raise the level of professionalism in IT. The government is currently very supportive of the Institute’s moves to raise the bar in the IT profession, but Mr Cross rightly points out that “the trend could swiftly go into reverse if a new government finds ...
More About: General

Rural Payments Agency: More Government Data Loss
2009-10-31 16:01:00
Farmers Weekly has reported that the Rural Payments Agency (RPA) has lost the payment details of every farmer in the United Kingdom that has ever claimed a farm payment. The details include names and addresses, bank details, passwords and security questions and apparently were not encrypted. The number of farmers affected is believed to be around 100,000. The details were leaked to Farmers Weekly by frustrated civil servants working on the single payments system and an external consultant who was advising on the system. The whistle-blowers allege that 39 backup tapes went missing last year when they were transferred from offices in Reading to Newcastle. Thirty-seven tapes have been recovered, but two are still unaccounted for. The whistle-blowers were concerned that the RPA and DEFRA would remain tight-lipped over the incident. According to Farmers Weekly, DEFRA has admitted that tapes went missing, but has told them that the data was not lost in transit and was instead mispla...
More About: Security , Government , Data , Loss

BCS Rebranded: The Future isn't just Green!
2009-09-21 22:29:00
The British Computer Society (BCS) launched its new branding over the weekend and it is clearly setting an ambitious course. The changes clearly run far deeper than just the corporate colour change from blue to green. Firstly, it is obvious from the web site that it wants to fulfil a more global role rather than just one confined to the United Kingdom. It has conspicuously stopped calling itself The British Computer Society in favour of referring to itself simply as the BCS. It has obviously seen the globalising trends within information technology and realised that the IT profession is not only rapidly starting to mature, but also rapidly becoming global itself. Many more practitioners are working on projects across the globe and there certainly needs to be some sort of international standard. The BCS clearly intends to provide that standard. The BCS has also added the strap-line “The Chartered Institute for IT” to its logo, which makes it very clear that i...
More About: Future , Green , The Future

Bletchley Park
2008-09-23 12:29:00
I was pleased to hear recently that both IBM and PGP have between them made a grant of £57,000 towards the upkeep of Bletchley Park . The BBC has reported that the “donation will help curate and restore exhibits at the National Museum of Computing in Bletchley Park, Bucks”. However, I suspect a good deal more is needed to keep the museum going.   A group of 100 eminent scientists, lead by Dr Sue Black, head of the computer science department at the University of Westminster wrote to The Times in July 2008 to condemn the neglect of the museum. She visited Bletchley earlier in the summer and was so moved by its sorry state that she wrote to her fellow heads of department at universities around the United Kingdom. She was surprised by the level of support she received, which led directly to the letter being written.   I agree with her comments that it is a “national disgrace” that such an historic site is being allowed to fall into decay...
More About: Security , General

Do Young IT Professionals Deserve a Career Track?
2008-09-10 19:46:00
I think one of the long term problems that faces the IT profession is how we train new entrants to our profession. Established professions, such as law and surveying, have long had well-defined routes that graduates can take to become qualified. For instance, in England and Wales, aspirant solicitors have a formal route in to the legal profession by first studying an appropriate degree, then completing a legal practice course followed by a two-year training contract with a legal practice before becoming fully qualified. Law is a completely regulated profession in England and Wales, which cannot be practiced unless you have a current practice certificate. Surveying is not totally regulated in the United Kingdom, but there is still a fairly well-defined route into that profession. Budding chartered surveyors usually must complete an appropriate degree, which is often followed by a training contract with an established practice while working towards the Assessment of P...
More About: Career , Young , Track , Professionals

Microsoft: What does the future hold?
2008-06-30 21:29:00
I suspect that at some point in the future, today may well be seen to be very significant! Why? Simply because today was the first day that Microsoft moved forward without its founder at the helm. (Bill Gates retired from Microsoft as an executive last Friday, although he still remains its non-executive chairman). Changes in strategic leader nearly always are accompanied by big changes in direction, not necessarily immediately, but often relatively soon afterwards. This is even more evident when the strategic leader has been the organisation’s founder. Microsoft is clearly very keen to play down any hint of a change and I doubt there are any plans to be different at this stage, but I suspect when we look back at some point in the future, the big changes will seem to have sprung from this period. Obviously, the direction and stance that Microsoft takes will have a profound influence on the computing industry and business at large. It will be interesting to see how Microsoft...
More About: General , Future , The Future , Hold

Web Compliance? It is often simply unbelievable!
2008-05-31 16:56:00
I can’t believe just how many web designers claim that their web sites are compliant with the standards when they are demonstrably not!   I’m talking in particular about the World Wide Web (W3C) consortium’s standards for HTML and XHTML. You’ve probably seen their compliance logos proudly displayed on web sites that claim to comply. The standards are exacting and very unforgiving on slips in the code. A particular page either complies or it does not, but this is nothing particularly challenging for a professional discipline that is used to such binary situations.   The standards are important for all sorts of reasons, not least because there is a greater chance that more browsers will render the sites as intended, that search engines are more likely to index them properly and that people using less popular browsers because of their disabilities are more likely to be able to access them.   There are standards in many different professions ...
More About: Web Design , Simply , Unbelievable , Compliance

A Contentious Lunchtime Thought?
2008-03-18 16:40:00
I came across an interesting article by Bruce Lawson on The Web Standards Project web site about the UK Government Accessibility Consultation that was held by the Cabinet Office last November. The consultation clearly aimed at looking at ways of making .gov.uk web sites more accessible to people with disabilities. It proposed making it mandatory for government web sites to achieve World Wide Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) AA-level compliance (presumably to meet European objectives for inclusive e-government). The bit that caught my eye was the proposal that government web sites should face withdrawal from the .gov.uk domain if they failed to comply. It occurred to me that a similar approach could be very effective at ensuring commercial .uk web sites comply with existing UK legislation (such as the Companies Act 2006 and the Disability Discrimination Act 2005). What if the Internet domains publishing web sites that failed to comply with UK legi...
More About: General , Thought

EMail: The Beginning of the End?
2008-03-07 15:32:00
I was interested to read Ben Limberg's article on the BBC News web site this morning about how stressful email is becoming. It highlighted for me that spam continues to grow and it reminded me of my earlier article on this blog about the need to start tackling the phenomenon rather than hiding it. The BBC article suggests that around two million emails are sent every minute in the United Kingdom. The majority of reports I read suggest that spam currently accounts for around 95% of all email in circulation, so the BBC statement implies that an amazing 1,900,000 junk emails are sent every minute in Britain! Certainly, my own consulting practice's email logs have doubled in the last six months and I am pretty confident we are not getting that much more real email. The growth of spam seems to be as exponential as ever. In fact, what I used to think was a pretty cool feature - the pop up facility in Microsoft Outlook that notifies you of new email - has started to ...
More About: Email , General , The Beginning of the End

Internet Attacks: It Won?t Happen to Us?
2008-02-11 22:35:00
The lack of understanding of IT-related security issues in many small-to-medium sized businesses that I encounter as a management and technology consultant often worries me. There seems to be a mindset amongst senior managers (often at partner and director level) that security breaches are only perpetrated by external human hackers and that their firms are not sufficiently important enough to attract attention. These senior managers miss the fact that almost all initial external attacks are automated and that although many of these attacks may be unsuccessful in compromising their organisation’s data security, they may nonetheless seriously damage their internal infrastructure, resulting in significant costs in order to rectify the damage. It would be a lucky organisation indeed that did not have its Internet defences probed at least once every couple of minutes. The most recent log I inspected for a small organisation was receiving an attack per minute in what appe...
More About: Security , Attacks

Personal Details of 25M People Compromised by UK Government
2007-11-20 22:28:00
I suspect the loss of 25 million child benefit records by HM Government in the United Kingdom will have considerable, long-term ramifications. I understand that the compromised data represents the details of all the recipients of Child Benefit in the United Kingdom and includes names, addresses, dates of birth, national insurance numbers and, in many cases, the banking details of the parents or guardians involved. According to a BBC news report, HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) sent a couple of CDs with this highly sensitive data to the National Audit Office on 18th October 2007, but didn’t discover the information was missing until 24th October 2007. Apparently, the CDs were sent by internal mail without being registered or recorded in any way. It was clearly an accident waiting to happen. Worse still, when they didn’t turn up, it seems from the statement made to the House of Commons by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling MP, that a further copy ...
More About: Personal , Security , People , General

Do You Have a Good Web Site?
2007-11-05 18:43:00
What is the minimum for a good web site? I am often asked to give an opinion on whether a web site is good or not. I normally start by assessing whether the web site complies with relevant law and technical standards, since these are easy and objective tests to apply. It seems sensible to me to say that all good web sites, at the very minimum, will comply with these. I am, of course, aware that good web sites will also have well-written copy and excellent graphics, be informative and easy to navigate, but these are much more subjective than the bare minimum requirements above and consequently far more open to opinion. However, I do believe that it is reasonable to assert that any site that fails these basic fundamentals cannot realistically be called a good web site, so it is pretty easy to assess whether a particular site is not good. So what laws and standards are applicable? Legally, web sites built for operation in the United Kingdom should comply with the Companies Ac...
More About: Web Design , Site , Good , Web site

Sweeping Spam under the Carpet
2007-10-05 20:43:00
Unless I am greatly mistaken, there has been yet another surge in spam in the last few weeks. Like many firms, Revell Research Systems uses a fairly sophisticated anti-spam system, which generally performs pretty well. It occasionally needs tweaking to improve its detection rate, but on the whole, it does its job well. However, I am acutely aware just how much spam is actually chucked into our email system on a daily basis. It is literally huge. There is the spam that is sent to our active email accounts and then there is the massive amount sent to random addresses in the hope that something might strike lucky! Worse still, spam is increasingly being sent with large attachments, which eats away at our bandwidth. I believe that the majority of Internet users are blissfully unaware of just how much spam is actually in circulation (although they know that they receive an unreasonable amount). The problem is that much of it is sent to non-existent people and is handled in the...
More About: Spam , Carpet , The Car , Sweep

Plymouth University's Best Computing Graduate Receives Recognition
2007-10-04 00:04:00
I'm pleased to announce that Darren Rees, from Llantwit Major in South Wales, formally received the 2007 Revell Research Systems Prize at the University of Plymouth at a small ceremony in Exeter this afternoon. It was the first time I've actually met Darren, who is interested in pursuing a career in the highly competitive games industry. He is obviously a very able programmer and Dr Nigel Barlow, his tutor while at Plymouth, was clearly impressed with his final year project. The prize (which we established last year to mark our 21st year in business) is awarded annually to the best final year student on the university's BSc(Hons) Computing programme. Essentially, Darren is the best computing graduate from the university this year. Although he intends to take some time out to discover New Zealand, he would be a catch for any company looking for a young and talented C++/Java programmer with an interest in gaming. More details about the prize are available at http://pri...
More About: Graduate , General , Recognition

Northern Rock Not So Sturdy for Online Customers
2007-09-16 13:53:00
I?ve just read the BBC News report about the problems Northern Rock ?s online savers are having in accessing their funds. Like many online accounts, it appears that Northern Rock?s online account holders can only access their funds online in accordance with their terms and conditions. This is clearly both frustrating and alarming to the bank?s online customers, who like many of their offline counter-parts, are trying to withdraw their money quickly, since they all perceive their investments as being far from safe. I can?t help but wonder whether this will have an impact on the public?s perception of online banking as a whole. I think people may conclude that online-only accounts are inherently less secure than traditional accounts. It seems to be certainly true that the bank?s traditional customers have received better service when they?ve eventually managed to get inside their branch than their online counter-parts. The traditional customer has obviously had to queue for ages,...
More About: General , Customers , Online

Do Bloggers Prefer FireFox or Internet Explorer?
2007-09-13 19:33:00
Hans-Eric Grönlund has an interesting article on the popularity of FireFox (FF) on his blog, entitled "The Firefox Domination" which you should read. Frank Carr has also remarked on Hans-Eric's blog that he has also noticed a high ratio of FireFox users compared with those using Internet Explorer (IE), which he finds particularly interesting because his site is about all things .NET, which he supposes would attract a more pro-Microsoft audience. This trend is something that I've noticed on my blog here, although we don't see the marked contrast that Hans-Eric sees. However, it is very clear that those actively subscribing to my blog or being referred from other blogs (etc) are far more likely to be FF users. Interestingly, our analytic software suggests that overall IE users out number FF users by something like 7-8:1, but this figure is probably skewed heavily in favour of IE because many spiders declare themselves as being based on IE. The demographics of this i...
More About: Web Design , Internet Explorer , General

Backwards IT Thinking?
2007-09-12 22:50:00
I was interested to read Martin Atherton's article 'Boots, House of Fraser not renewing IT director posts poses some interesting questions' on his blog at IT-Analysis.com, which ponders the somewhat odd move by Boots and the House of Fraser not to re-appoint new IT directors when their current incumbents leave. This certainly does pose some interesting questions...! Although, I broadly agree with Martin Atherton's maturity model for IT governance, I am very uneasy about the idea of a board without an IT director (or at least some representation at the top table)! While I certainly agree that the most mature model is where the IT function is completely integrated across the organisation and is seen to be (and actually is) integral to the whole operation of the business; I can only see an IT department without board level representation as a rudderless vehicle (even if the IT department is only managing out-source...
More About: Thinking , Backwards

Straight Back to Google!
2007-09-06 19:55:00
I'm constantly surprised by web sites that still have some form of doorway page. I've always felt that such designs probably allude to the designer's origins in print media, where one might argue that the book cover has to sell the book. The cover has to attract the casual browser in the bookshop to engage them in the sales process. Designers with this sort of background (and naive web site buyers who accept their advice) presumably feel that web sites must have some sort of "cover" in order to attract visitors, which I presume leads to the concept of a doorway page. In fact, our terminology of "having a home page" probably doesn't help matters!! I'm not keen on doorway pages because if the user does approach the site via the home page, these often actually just serve as a barrier to the real content. It requires the user to make one further click with the risk that they will return instead to the search engine results page that got them there in the first place. (Note...
More About: Google , Web Design , Back , Straight , Googl

Nostalgia for Turbo Pascal
2007-09-04 10:26:00
I was interested in Hans-Eric Grönlund's post on the decline of Delphi and (implicitly) its predecessor Turbo Pascal . I used Turbo Pascal extensively in the late 1980s and early 1990s, particularly versions 4.0 and 5.5, and then later Turbo Pascal for Windows 1.0 and 1.5. Version 5.5 introduced me to objected-oriented programming (OOP) in practical terms and I fondly remember the OOP guide that was part of the documentation for version 5.5. I stopped using Turbo Pascal for Windows in favour of Visual Basic and never really adopted Delphi, which I always thought would have faired better if it had been called Visual Pascal. A considerable amount of my original code library built in Pascal survives today as part of the internal Revell Research Systems code library, having been ported to the .NET Framework. Indeed, much of my thinking around bannering emerged while writing code in Turbo Pascal and 6502 Assembly and was much influenced by Lance Leventhal's approach to docume...
More About: Nostalgia , Coding

Banner Blindness
2007-08-23 23:19:00
I've just read an interesting article by Jakob Nielsen (who is an expert on web site usability) on useit.com, which reports on their research into banner blindness - the well-known effect whereby web site visitors manage to completely ignore banner advertising. I found the article interesting and was reminded of Seth Godin's views on interruption marketing and how he believes that people are becoming immune to this form of marketing. This weblog is produced by Revell Research Systems.
More About: Web Design , Banner , Blindness

Language Convergence
2007-08-22 13:54:00
I've just read an article on Hans-Eric Grönlund's blog, which discusses how close Java and C# are as languages. He concludes that "C#.NET is the best platform for Windows based systems since it was in fact designed for it. Java on the other hand is the only option for systems that are targeting other operating systems." I would agree that Java is probably the only realistic option for systems targeting non-Windows environments. However, I would be reluctant to assert that C# was the best language for Windows development, although I would certainly agree that .NET is now the best platform for it. The issue is that on this front we are discussing three levels: the language, the platform and the operating system. The only language supported by the "Java" platform is Java, but it targets multiple operating systems; whereas .NET supports multiple languages and mainly targets the Windows operating system (although as Hans-Eric mentions the Mono project widens this base a little...
More About: Language , Coding , Convergence

Comparison of UK and French Wifi Charges
2007-08-20 20:33:00
I've recently been working from France and have often had to rely on wifi hotspots operated by Orange. I consider the charges made by this firm to be very reasonable and one that encourages casual wifi use. I was being offered 10 hours of broadband access for 15 euros directly from the hotspot's web site. 15 euros is around £10 sterling, which works out to be around £1 per hour. Furthermore, the 10 hours was available for 30 days at any hotspot from first login, which provides additional and valuable flexibility. Orange also offers shorter periods of access down to 1 hour for 4.50 euros (approximately £3 per hour). Naturally, I consider the Orange Wifi offering to be excellent and it certainly encouraged me to remain connected for longer. I've just compared this with BT OpenZone, which is no where near as flexible. I have generally been looking for enough connection time to economically read and reply to my emails; browse for current news and to c...
More About: French , General , Comparison , Char