Triplesourced

I was invited to the cinema yesterday. Unfortunately, (or fortunately for the benefit of my girlfriend) the invite wasn’t romantically motivated, actually it was about as far as you can get from popcorn and cuddling on the back row. Fortify, an enterprise security company has backed a documentary called: The New Face of Cybercrime - and it was being screened in London yesterday.

I couldn’t make it along in the end but apparently the film was produced by Academy Award®-nominated filmmaker Frederic Golding (a quick search on Google fails to reveal what he was nominated for?).

Some of the talking heads interviewed for the film include:

Matthew Devost, CEO, The Terrorism Research Center
James Routh, CISO, The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation
Lt. Col. Jeff Salyards, USAF, Director, Defense Computer Forensics Laboratory
Mike Ullman, Chairman and CEO, JC Penney Company, Inc.

They’ve hosted a clip on YouTube for anyone who’s looking for a more accurate depiction of the threat of cybercrime than Hollywood’s recent efforts such as Die Hard 4.0 and Harrison Ford’s Firewall - which shouldn't be hard.

It’s a good job that the majority of our press releases arrive by email these days as if we were still back in the times when snail mail predominated then the sheer volume of missives detailing the latest green innovations by tech companies would suck up trees faster than a rotten branch through a well-greased wood-chipper.

The latest example of financial frugality dressed in the green robes of energy efficiency comes courtesy of managed network provide Easynet. The company claims to be salving the consciences of its customer base with the purchase of some new HP virtualisation kit which will make it a dramatically more efficient operation.

Easynet boasts that the new hardware will “increase IT utilisation to 85% whilst boosting energy efficiency by up to 30% and reducing the load on servers by between 30 and 60%”. The company also claims to be ‘carbon neutral’ which is an interesting assertion but one that seems unfathomably difficult to calculate. I wonder if that includes the company’s involvement with a motor-sport event – Easynet is the official networking and hosting company of the FIA World Rally Championship, as the last sentence of the press release announcing its green credentials states. Exactly how much do you have to improve your server utilisation rates by to off-set a Subaru Impreza going 90mph around a Welsh forest for a week?

I jest of course but there is a real shortage of green metrics available with which to really scrutinise the claims of tech companies hoping to be cash-in on energy efficiency. We looked into the issue recently and you can find the article here:

Crunching the numbers on data-centre efficiency

Meanwhile, Easynet’s strategy does make sense. At a time when businesses are under pressure to cut costs and be seen to be green, outsourcing the whole problem to a company which claims to be able to save you money, and save some planet, could work. (Actually the whole saving the planet thing is a bit of a misnomer. Life on earth managed to spring up despite a toxic atmosphere and not much else to go on, so it’s not the planet we should be worrying about, it can look after itself.)

It’s too late to sign-up unfortunately, but I am sure IT charity Computer Aid would bite hands off for more donations for its annual charity cycle ride which kicks off next month. Last year’s event was in Kenya (it's shocking to see that much of the violence in that country at the moment is in the areas around Kisumu where our cycle challenge finished) but the venue for this years challenge is Cuba.



I was lucky enough to take part in the Kenya challenge and have to say that it was one of the most rewarding trips I have ever made despite the heat, hills and saddle sores. The chance to visit some of the remote schools who have benefited from the donation of unwanted PCs from UK organisations was truly rewarding – a machine at the end of its life here, still has a lot to give in Africa.

You can find more information about Computer Aid and the Cuba cycle challenge here .

I can’t quite believe this but it seems that the sh*t-storm that followed the loss of millions of individuals details by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs last year – didn’t get through to the UK’s Ministry of Justice (or one of its partners). It’s emerged today that the organisation may have lost four CDs of personal data – sent out on December 15 – a few weeks after all the massive debacle that was HMRC. It wasn’t a story that could pass you by – even if you were really absorbed by Christmas shopping.

We’ll keep you posted as more details of high-level ineptitude emerge.

Ministry of Justice loses four CDs of personal data
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