Backup Anytime

Stand up laptop thief.

Laptop theft is a serious problem. The guy in this video may come across as being over the top, sanctimonious, threatening, obsessive and well just plain scary. If every laptop theft victim had his attitude it is likely that the incidence of stolen laptops would drop quite significantly. I wouldn’t like to be the target in the class.

The speakers failures however would appear to be in the areas of encryption and data backup. If these two issues were addressed correctly his data would not get in the wrong hands and would be available to him.

Conclusion?

Having the attitude, diction and power of a lecturer and having your target trapped in the room just doesn’t compare in effectiveness with having your data encrypted and backed up.

If he had an account with Backupanytime, not alone would he have his data, we could assist in retrieving his laptop. How can an online backup service provide a stolen laptop retrieval service? See here, http://www.backupanytime.com/blog/2008/10/21/backupanytime-stolen-laptop-retrieval-service/

3 Ireland win national broadband contract.

Three.ie or simply “3″ have won the government contract to provide broadband which will connect the unconnected in Ireland. This is one part of the national broadband scheme. The department of communications reckon that circa 10% of Ireland is outside of any broadband coverage. This does not address however much of the remaining 90% which can avail of broadband of low speed, high contention and very high cost.

The system to be used by “3″ is their own HSDPA 3G solution. There are critics (as with all systems) but my experience of this system (I have limited experience of using it on the move) suggests that while it is obviously inferior to cable it is at worst very usable, not expensive for general browsing and simple to configure to the point of being almost self configuring.

One of the benefits of using the service in isolated areas (where it worked) was the lack of contention due to low user numbers in said areas. This must be a concern as any success in increasing uptake numbers will increase contention.

The communications minister, Eamon Ryan has been quoted as saying broadband availability is ‘central to our economic recovery.’ It is a clear case of fattening the pig the day before the market (maybe even during the bidding) but any progress is welcome. The lack of urgency with which broadband availability, speed and contention has been addressed has been a great cause of confusion amongst business people for some time. Broadband has the power to assist with decentralisation, reducing the rush to under serviced cities and allowing green, sustainable enterprise to flourish in rural areas.

I have looked for information on subsidies, scope and time-lines for this contract but have failed to find anything clear-cut regarding any of these questions. I will add or track-back when further information becomes available.

All in all, this is good news. A plan is in place. A suitable service and provider have been identified and selected. The deciding factors regarding the success of this contract will be the level of service, the strength of support, the extent of the subsidy and the passing on of this subsidy in full to the consumer.

We hope this gets more coverage for all the right reasons.

Twitter backup. How to backup twitter.

Twitter is huge and unlike many things in the world today, it is on the up. If you don’t know what it is you shouldn’t be reading a post on how to backup twitter. So, now that you are still here, lets assume you not alone know what twitter is but you arrived here because you were looking for information on how to backup twitter.

Why would you do this?
The obvious answer is to protect your list of twitter followers and the list of people you are following. Not specifically to protect them personally but to protect the database of contacts you have built up over a prolonged period.

A much less considered but arguably more important reason is the real need to keep an accurate record of what you and those representing your organisation say and what is said to and about them. Why? Your own attitude to free speech and the balance between positive banter and a professional company profile are important. The attitudes of others and the legal interpretation are issues you have no control over and therefore, to protect yourself you need not only to agree on comment type but to retain a record of you tweets.
This may smack of censorship and overbearing monitoring but regardless of your attitude and the level of freedom you attribute to your own tweets, it is hardly a negative approach if you are simply retaining a record of your own communications.

Is this really necessary?
It may not be. Your own attitude however has no bearing on those in your twitter communities. A large twitter community of any type is likely to include litigious individuals who have rights which must be upheld. You are better armed to protect your name and business if you can review and if necessary reproduce content applicable to you  twitter account.

Ideally however you should avoid “bitter tweets”. Many real conversations however both on and offline are bound to contain an element of “tweet and sour” and it is for this reason primarily that you need to protect yourself. Keep in mind that the legal framework is complicated as you followers and those you follow could be from any worldwide jurisdiction. In our case, our leaning towards the legal and ethical behavior guidelines which are commonplace on Irish blogs may offer little relevance to twitter community members from other Countries.

How do you do this?
Thankfully there are a number of applications and services which can assist you. You may depending on personal preference and infrastructure to run with twitter online backup or twitter off line backup
I like twittersafe which is in Beta release at present but does what it sais on the tin and promises more on the twitter safe beta release page.
Another solution is to do it your self as advised on tweetcrunch.

Given the popularity of twitter and it’s increased uptake and heavy per user usage you will see more and more such solutions being released. If you know of one please comment so the information can be shared.

Data security for dummies

There is much misunderstanding of data data security. This applies not just at end user level but also quite generally at overall small business level. Much of this is attributable to an ever growing and widely misused information technology vocabulary. Much of this vocabulary is brought about by intended use of trade and company names by interested parties  when producing instructions, guides and white papers.

For this reason, an understanding of data security may only be obtained by reducing the factors affecting and important to information security to micro or atom level. This has been approached by many. Here we are interested in the work of third party academics and not interested business parties.

Three classic data security components are Confidentiality, integrity and availability.
They are known as the CIA triad. CIA being the combined first letters of the three terms and triad being linguistically synonymous with the number three. The CIA triad was later added to in what is now known as the Parkerian hexad. Parkerian because it was proposed by Donn B. Parker and hexad because the number of elements was increased to six.

The six elements of information security (in our case, data security) according to the Parkerian hexad are as follows.

1. Confidentiality
2. Possession or Control
3. Integrity
4. Authenticity
5. Availability
6. Utility

A list can serve to prompt incorrect assumptions so lets take a closer look at these data security principles. You may not want to get in to the academics but someone in or representing your organisation needs to have  a clear insight so you can actively avoid data breach as against simply protect against data loss.

First off, why these six elements? Surely there are thousands of terms applicable to information. These six elements are widely agreed among data academics as being at micro or atomic level. They are considered to be essential and non overlapping from the point of view of information security.
Confidentiality deals with the who in data. Information which is available to nobody is essentially useless and it is therefore agreed that no matter the level of confidentiality required that there must be a default exception list with at least one entry. The confidentiality of data is therefore measured by comparing the required access with the actual access allowed.

Possession and control may seem to an extent to represent an overlap with confidentiality but it is agreed to be a component in it’s own right. An example would be a letter addressed to you arriving to someone else. They may not open it but regardless possession and control have been breached.

Integrity of data deals with state of data and the effect on it of any modification intended or otherwise. Integrity therefore not only applies with point in time condition but potential modifications by users, software and incidents.

 
Data authenticity is not only different to integrity but has a broader focus. Authenticity deals with labeling data. This applies not only to intended managed data store but data introduced to the organisation through communications. An example would be a communication which is received from party claiming to be from an origin different from the actual one. If this is ignored, the recipient may not be the victim of any intended crime but in real terms, just not knowing of the intention regardless of the failure or the perpetrator is in itself a breach. Another more innocent example would be a form filled out incorrectly in which an applicant or respondent accidentally places an email address in a name input box. Any failure to validate this is a data authenticity issue. 
Data availability deals not only with the possibility of accessing required information but any time lag in availing of information in normal and data outage circumstances. Nanosecond delays in normal circumstances may be a technical availability issue but not a concern such as that brought about by an hours delay, a full day delay or total outage scenario. 

Utility of data deals with the practical area of the benefits of data stored. How useful is the data? This applies also to the ability to read the data in so far as to the format it is stored in and any conversions applied or required to read. Even encryption can be said to affect the utility of data due to any time required to decrypt before reading. This is not to say that encryption is not recommended. Encryption is absolutely necessary in most business environments. Utility can be confused with availability. It is however quite distinct from availability. An example highlighting this would be data converted to generate a graphic display. Despite how well matched mathematically and helpful from a human viewpoint a visual display may be, this represents a utility modification.

In summary

Data security represents a process not a task. Data security is never 100% certain. Innocent  parties may suffer a breach despite the best will of the data administrator concerned. All this said, risk reduction is a clear responsibility for which clear steps must be taken. The consequences for everyone should business not make acceptable efforts are also clear as is the distinction between those who tool action to protect data and those who did not.