Simon on: What's your dirty little tech secret?

The news that Volkswagen fitted millions of its vehicles with a software-based cheating system made me think about the fact that a lot of us have dirty little tech secrets hidden in the closet.

Someone at Volkswagen did it deliberately but the CEO who resigned said he wasn’t aware of any wrongdoing but he probably should have been aware! The most important aspect of this story for me is that these secrets can burn your house down because people become complacent.

When it comes conferences, actively looking at what you should and shouldn’t be doing is the key approach rather than waiting for something to happen which forces you to take stock of everything.

It’s no secret that online security is a gripe of mine, but for many it is just another thing on the to do list that continues to be put off until something goes wrong.

That’s the main lesson for me. Don’t put these technological issues off. Sort out your back-ups, ensure your passwords are stored correctly, and keep your data secure, because although everything may look great from the outside, those dirty inside secrets have a habit of biting you when you least expect it.

Originally published in Conference News

Simon on: The importance of online security

News of the Carphone Warehouse and Ashley Madison hacking incidents has confirmed that online security is still coming up short - something that was further proved by a recent study, which found that the data scrambling systems used by millions of web servers are much weaker than they should be.

But continuous occurrences like these only highlight what the key message is here – make sure security is reviewed by people who know what they’re doing rather than just accepting that it’s okay.

This on-going issue of online security is unfortunately just an afterthought to almost everyone, from consumers to major companies and even whole industries.

I believe that one of the main factors in this problem is that companies tend to have a team of developers who are usually managed by people who just don’t know enough about security.

Of course something like ISO27001:2013 show which companies are taking data security more seriously. As we hear more about the breaching of businesses who handle our data, I think security standards such as these are a must have.

At the very least, I think it’s high time people take an informed interest in online security and make the conscious effort to actually protect their data properly by asking some basic questions of suppliers and systems.

Originally published in Conference News