Quote of the day

What a blessing it would be if we could open and shut our ears as easily as we open and shut our eyes! - Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Podcasts: The new media form with commercial prospects

With the increasing popularity of podcasts, advertisers are considering these as viable avenues to promote their products and brand. The prime benefit is better impact on audience as Ads are reaching to a target class and it leverages on audiences’ loyalty and trust to the podcast.

Following are some of the most downloaded podcasts in my list. Two of these have already started generating tangible revenues. Others such as Financial Times and The Economists podcasts may not be directly generating revenue (directly) however these are for sure helping to attract new customers and retaining the existing ones in case they want to take a short credit crunch break  

Information Technology (IT)

• Security Now (with Steve Gibson) – Weekly (Getting plenty of sponsership, from companies including Ford, Audible, Winamp, Cachefly etc.)

Language

• Business English Pod – Weekly (Promotes paid content through the podcast)
• 6 Minutes English (BBC world service) – Weekly

News (General):

• Newspod (BBC world service) – Daily (weekdays)

Finance:

• Wake up to Money! (BBC Radio 5) – Daily (weekdays)
• Banking Weekly (Financial Times)
• The Economist

Quote of the day:
You probably wouldn't worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they do. - Olin Miller

Technorati Tags: BBC,Financial Times,Podcasts,Economist,Steve Gibson,Security Now,BEP

Rise of iTunes, Fall of HMV

It’s sad that HMV is financially struggling to survive. However, its difficult to digest why any music store require so many high street showrooms.

• its not clothing business where people need to come and try
• its not furniture business where real look and feel maters and online catalogues don't give you comfort
• its not technology or automobile business where you need to showcase latest gadgets and models

In case of Music people don’t need an in-store trial or demo. They already know what they are buying, through TV or FM.

Instead of wasting money on high street stores what HMV should be doing is

• invest on innovation for anti-piracy technologies (don’t place reliance on ISPs for anti-piracy, they will never risk their unlimited download revenues for your benefit) 
• Make Content cheaper (Netflix, Lovefilm, Moser Baer, rajshri.com are great examples)
• THINK ONLINE!
• Very few people want MUSIC, same old way (in CD format), for them join with coffee shops, libraries, Airports, Art galleries, Museums and have CD stores in their premise and share the cost.

Anyways in UK, Council Libraries are struggling after austerity cuts. This is a great opportunity to join them and run CD store/Waterstone from the same premise, share the cost and give heavy discounts on HMV products. A win-win for both. 

The NEXT iDesign for PCs and Laptops

Think of a laptop (or PC) similar to Nintendo DS design. On top you have a normal LED monitor (or may be 3D monitor) and at bottom instead of having a keyboard you have a touchscreen that can be used as a mouse pad, keyboard, handwriting recognition notebook, piano keyboard for apps similar to GarageBand and whatever else you can think of.

Benefits:

• You are not restricted to just a noisy and heavy keyboard. change it as per your application. for example a hand written to-do list or letter to someone you love , piano, drawing board, fingerprint reader for your next palmistry application, a document scanner and what not
• Already there are desktops with touch screen monitors, however personally i prefer less touching on monitor (so that i don't need to sit close to monitor and affect my eyesight). My preference is more touching, and multi touching on keyboard and mouse pad.
• So far we have seen just the beginning of touch applications. Touch apps have a long way to go from here and am sure touch keypads will increase the momentum

 

What’s  NEXT+1?

     Just a PC monitor with kinnect sort of  sensor. Sensor projects the hologram image of keypad on your desk. A projection on lap would be uneven and may be no laptop version for this design or a laptop that can be used only on even surfaces such as desk

I recall i have seen images of projected keyboards somewhere on Google, hence for sure someone out there is working on this concept. My best wishes and hope to see these new designs soon in the market….before ipads takeover half the PC market share!    

Windows Live Writer

Great news for bloggers that Microsoft has now embedded blogging client into their new Windows Live Essential suite…..I hope it will be less pain than the web based blogging clients that blogspot and wordpress have and it will motivate people who left blogging and moved to tweeting to return.

Happy Blogging!

Compliance : One Step at a Time

When I was a teenage a Gym instructor told me that if I workout 1hour everyday for 3 months I can certainly build a healthy and well shaped body. However, he also warned me not to overdo exercises. He clearly warned me that if I start doing workout for 5-6 hours per day for (say) 15 days it’s only going to harm my body.

Point taken and I am sure most of us will agree with this piece of advice.

I wish management executives understand this wisdom and start applying the same in IT Security and risk management projects, more specifically in compliance projects.

Time has come when at least large organizations are under pressure to meet the compliance & regulatory requirements. Certainly it’s a long awaited milestone and will have significant impact in developing a positive security posture. However conventional style of project execution involving pushing your team members hard to reach targets ASAP may easily lead to frequent failures and finally loss of this long awaited opportunity.

Reaching compliance levels is not a 2-3 months job (unless and until organization/team is very small). We may have such short duration projects for planning and preparation of external certifications such as ISO27001 or PCI (Though not recommended). Still to have a sustainable and secure environment we will have to have a plan extending in years not just months. Not to forget that, even if you have received external certifications in 2-3 months you are bound to go for regular reviews which will require a sustainable security posture.

To succeed in forthcoming reviews and become really resilient to IT Security Risks, your employees and process owners must dissolve the policy, process and procedures in their day to day working. Just attending security awareness trainings and then signing attendance sheet will not solve the purpose. I have seen many cases where employees have gone through a lot of security trainings or quizzes but still they don’t understand the basics of their company’s security procedures.

Organizations will have to realize that attaining a sustainable security posture is a gradual process and may easily take years and multiple reviews. Have patience and work with your employees. Let it become part of your organization’s work culture and gradually cost of security projects will start coming down system administrators as well as end users will become proactive. Reporting of security incidents will not be considered as a time wastage activity and Information Security Managers will no more be considered as police man.

Physical Security: Tailgating

Few years back when Smart Access Cards were introduced as a solution to unauthorized physical access, Information Security Managers (ISM) felt very relieved. Even in Information Technology organizations, Physical Security breaches were more prevalent and damaging than the network based attacks and hence their relief was justified. However, soon they realized that Access Card based access control wasn’t successful due to tailgating. Social Engineering attackers were easily able to bypass this access control by following an authenticated user. Soon most of the ISMs felt that it’s a technical limitation and either they will have to live with tailgating or else deploy a full time security guard (defeating the purpose and wasting the money invested on Access Card and readers) at premise entrances. I have seen organization (and some of these are among top 20 IT organizations of the world) where Security professionals had deployed a full time guard at all entrances to combat tailgating.

Solution:
Good news for security professionals that there is an effective solution to control tailgating. You may call it an enhancement over the current smart card based access card systems. Of course the cost of control is going to increase, so be ready to convince finance guys with an ROI calculation. The solution is as follows:

Install a one-way turnstile in front of entrances and current access cards will permit access to premise through the turnstile. When a user presents her access card in front of access card reader, turnstile will allow only one person at a time to enter in the premise.

Additionally, a buzzer can be installed to alarm in case a deactivated/fraud card is presented.

Notice, that above mentioned turnstile is one-way, hence for exit you will have to have a separate door with conventional access control. You would agree that tailgating is a problem at the time of entering the premise rather than exiting.

Limitations:
1) This solution will not work if a user presents her access card three times, (intentionally) to allow two other users to pass along with her. However, this abnormal activity can easily be noticed by fellow employees or nearby guards.

2) Due to additional cost, it may not be practical to install turnstiles at every door. Hence, risk managers’ help may be required to identify suitable areas. In my opinion, this solution must be implemented at
a) building perimeter and
b) highly restricted areas such as server rooms, data center and highly restricted project areas.