Social Networking

Back in February I blogged that UK-based broadband users are being fobbed off with vastly under-performing services - the average speed in the UK at that time was a pitiful 2.95Mbps. A few months on and things haven’t got any better, and there are new figures to prove it.

To rub salt into the wound, it seems we are a nation of ‘speed freaks’. According to broadband comparison site Top 10 Broadband, download speed seems to be the primary factor in deciding broadband customer satisfaction. Based on over 90,000 broadband speed tests captured in March 2008, the top three fastest broadband providers were also the three highest rated.

Using the comapny’s broadband speed test, the team measured the download speed of each user’s broadband connection and asked users to rate their broadband provider out of five at the same time. Customers on faster broadband connections awarded their providers higher customer satisfaction ratings than did those with slower speeds, suggesting a nation of speed-hungry broadband users.

O2 topped the rankings in terms of both speed and customer ratings, with an average speed of 6.41Mbps and customer rating of 3.82 out of 5. Second and third for both speed and rating were Be and Virgin Media respectively. Tesco paled in comparison with a pathetic average download speed of 1.42Mbps and average customer rating of just 2.86 out of 5, making it the slowest ISP in the study.

According to the data collected, the average speed of UK broadband connections is just 3.18Mbps, despite this fact most ISPs advertise speeds of up to 8Mbps and beyond. The report only enforces what I’ve been saying for years - broadband providers need to speed up or face the wrath of disappointed customers. BT’s planned infrastructure upgrade, which will provide super-fast ADSL2+ download speeds across the UK, starts at the end of the month and cannot come soon enough.

Like I said before, broadband providers need to stop misleading us over broadband speeds. Period! It’s quite simple really - instead of stating the maximum broadband speeds that are often only achieved by a very small percentage of subscribers in central London, advertise the average download and upload speeds achieved by your broadband subscribers. Yes, I know the lower numbers won’t excite marketers, but won’t actually delivering on your claims be a more powerful advertising message which you can then build on?

Reality check. The last time I looked people were collaborating and sharing information through a variety of online services using these wonderful new things called computers. You only have to look at the rise in the popularity of Web sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn over the last 12 months to see the impact that Web 2.0 is starting to have.

You would therefore think that this in turn is starting to fundamentally change the way that businesses need to interact with their customers and manage their content now and in the future, as Web 2.0 has raised the bar on the customer’s expectation of their Web experience. Wrong!

According to troublemakers SmoothWall, 73% of enterprises are completely blocking the use of free instant messaging (IM) applications. Fear of data loss, time-wasting, and other misuse apparently outweighs potential productivity benefits. Just 11% of 1000 companies surveyed have a policy in place that allows IM but monitor its use and content. The survey showed that retail and distribution companies are the most likely to completely block access to IM (88%). Financial services companies are the most likely to allow IM tools but monitor their usage (16%).

This is plain crazy, right? Many of the young/smart people who are currently using Web 2.0 technologies are today’s customers, but will also be tomorrow’s workforce. Therefore it is important that businesses embrace them today. A good illustration of how customer expectation will change is the emergence of IM. For example, a user who uses IM to communicate with friends or fellow employees will likely start wanting more ‘immediate’ communication with suppliers and so on. Compared to IM, e-mail will soon be the electronic equivalent of a carrier pigeon! In the same way, many other Web 2.0 technologies will make communication much more ‘real-time’ and dynamic.

I’m sure it’s fair to say that IM tools have been linked both to rises and falls in office productivity by various studies since becoming popular in the late 1990s. And the fear is understandable, but blocking access completely means missing out on all the benefits that IM tools can bring. Simple features like presence monitoring, rapid file transfer, and the ability to get answers to questions very quickly can streamline the working day.

You company should draw up policies on acceptable use of social networking tools at the office and not over react to the problem by completely blocking IM. In the last few years systems to monitor IM traffic have become more widely available, enabling companies to allow access to the tools but control their usage. Have a meeting with your IT bigwigs and agree on a single system to be used company-wide. Then set parameters around when employees can use the system for personal conversations. Ensure that staff know what is appropriate use and enforce policies with a monitoring system, the cost of which can be more than offset by the gains in productivity.

Economic growth in the UK may be as much as 1% lower in 2008 and 2009 as a direct result of the credit crunch, due largely thanks to the U.S.’s sub-prime mortgage sector which specialises in loans to people with poor credit histories or on low incomes.

But let’s put all the doom and gloom behind us and celebrate what could be the largest mass absence from work for a generation. An estimated five million people will not be going to work on Thursday, 15th May. Amazingly, none of them will be calling sickies, skiving or making excuses. In fact, their bosses may even be joining them and taking work home for the day, on National Work from Home Day. And you wonder what is wrong with the British economy!

National Work from Home Day is aimed at highlighting smarter working practices by encouraging companies to give employees a day at home in order to trial better working practises such as flexible working, remote working, and mobile working; all promoting a work-life balance. This sounds fine in practise, but I really can’t see what an employee and employer can possibly hope to achieve in just one day. After all, it’s a special relationship that needs to be nurtured with cups of coffee throughout the day and a quick pint at home time.

Even if Century-old established working cultures and traditions are changing - and there’s very little to suggest they are (outside of the IT industry at least) - there’s little evidence at the moment to suggest that traditional offices are wasteful in terms of resources and time, damaging in terms of the environment and global warming, and unhealthy in terms of worker wellbeing. The only significant downside I can see is traffic congestion and public transport overcrowding. Look, I’m totally in favour of remote working, but the organisation in question needs to be one that can support such and infrastructure - and I don’t see how a special one-day initiative is helpful. By now, you and your boss will already know if it’s feasible for you to work from home, on the road, on a beach, in space etc - anywhere except the office of the company that pays your wages.

Adopting a modern day approach to our working lives has the potential to increase business productivity and competitiveness, reduce transport congestion and pollution, improve health by reducing stress, assist disadvantaged groups and harmonise our work and family commitments - but only if done correctly and with the right IT infrastructure. Of course, remote working also gives employers the added advantage of recruiting talented individuals from anywhere in the country instead of just around their local office. But again, not having physical contact between employee and employer, or even employee and employee, can be a logistical nightmare and totally unproductive - trust me, I’ve seen it from both sides...

Research shows that there are already around 3.1 million people working from home in the UK and this is expected to double by 2012. The notion of nine to five might even gradually vanish, with staff working ad-hoc hours around their home commitments, but that just can’t happen to traditional businesses that deal with the public or clients who have a life outside work. The idea that offices will disappear and mini business centres will spring up near satellite offices is too far-fetched. Look, there’s no doubt that people will increasingly work from home as organisations cut down their overheads on office space, just don’t expect this business model to work for all types of organisations - nor will it happen overnight.

Earlier today - in between my Crunchy Nuts and smoked bacon sandwich - I read a few reports which indicate that personal data about members of the public has been lost or wrongly revealed by thirteen London councils in the last year. It was almost enough to make me lose my appetite ...

I don’t live in London anymore so I’m not really bothered, by what is worrying is that the same half-soaked approach to our personal data could be lost by other councils across the nation. And couldn’t the same errors be made by online businesses we give our personal details to?

Incidents involving a loss of sensitive personal data shows that UK local authorities are still struggling to build essential data security standards based on effective security frameworks, tools which remove the ‘human error’, and the continual education and motivation of their staff. This is disappointing because the foundations are clearly laid out in proven security frameworks such as ISO 27001 and ISO 27002, so it only takes one bright spark to read up in his/her lunch break and then pass the message on.

There’s no doubt that local authority personnel at all levels are clearly under growing pressure to improve efficiency and build services around the citizen, but they must nevertheless follow agreed security processes that first, categorise the critical data assets held, second, properly identify different categories - employees, partner organisations and citizens - and third, determine the appropriate level of data access needed for different groups to properly perform their daily job functions. This applies as much as to paper documents related to a specific case as it does to a large electronic database containing residents’ details.

Critically too, all local government staff have to be constantly educated and motivated about security risks surrounding sensitive data and policies, a goal which sadly, many departments are still falling short of. Those authorities that find new and rigorous ways to motivate their staff on security risks - and the procedures will avoid them - should successfully minimise incidents and reduce the ‘human element’ that surrounds so many of the security breaches that we are seeing.

Moreover, local authorities’ IT infrastructures must be better organised to give automated controls across the organisation that further minimise the scope for data loss. IT systems should provide strong, repeatable processes to manage all ID lifecycles and continual enforcement of user registration and de-registration, backed by audits of employees’ identity and access rights.

Panda Security, best known for its anti-malware software, has thrown its hat into the online payment arena.

However, unlike the increasing number of e-cash payments services such as PayPal, Nochex and WorldPay, 'Panda Security for Internet Transactions' is specifically an anti-ifraud service for online transactions to protect against identity theft targeting online banks, pay platforms and e-commerce.

What’s particularly interesting about the service - and I’d like to say at this point that I haven’t tested it - is that it apparently warns site owners when there is a targeted attack through malware and offers the tools to identify and block affected users, thereby reducing the possibility of online fraud.

Panda Security says the service is a response to a dramatic increase in online fraud. Today, more than 40% of new malware is designed for online fraud, and according to a recent study conducted by Gartner, phishing attacks caused only in U.S. alone losses to consumers of $3.2bn (£1.6bn) in 2007.

The new solution enables businesses with e-commerce services to take additional steps in order to ensure that their customers’ transactions on their Web sites are not infected by any malicious code that affects their service. E-commerce owners can see the security status of their users and effectively manage the risk involved in online transactions.

This is also the only service on the market offering information about the security status of clients. This can be used by your company to create risk profiles, meaning the service can be configured to restrict the permission to carry out transactions to those clients that meet pre-determined security requirements.

Currently, when users discover that someone has been operating fraudulently using their identity, they claim against the bank or company involved. Consequently, the bank or company is responsible for the loss and associated costs (compensation, insurance etc), and has to ensure that the attack is not further exploited to steal from other users.

They have to find the malware responsible for the attack, discover how to block its effects and implement the strategy, and finally, calculate the impact it has had on its users and its business. This usually takes a minimum of 48 hours; sufficient time for the amount of money lost to increase considerably. Panda Security for Internet Transactions should block the attempted fraud in real time.

Panda Security for Internet Transactions leverages the benefits of Collective Intelligence, a security model developed by Panda Security. Just like anti-malware software, the system is based on the collection of information concerning malware from the Internet community and the automated processing of this data in new, purpose-built data centers. As the knowledge is accumulated on Panda servers and not on clients’ computers, clients’ bandwidth usage and resource consumption is minimised.

Regardless of whether it’s effective or not (again, I’d like to point out that I haven’t tested it), it’s great to see a company offering a service which does not just benefit just online organisations but also their clients - us! Only when companies start taking security seriously will customers’ confidence in online payment systems return.