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No surprises here; qua attribution

Is anyone surprised that apparently, “there’s traces of North-Korean involvement” in the WannaCry hiccup ..?
As yesterday’s post (below) already noted; no-one cares about WannaCry1.0 anymore hence ‘hiccup’. Has 2.0 come ’round already?
But how much repudiation by the North-Koreans would reach our general news …? So, how easy it is to blame the NKs for anything that goes wrong ..? Like,

Whereas, … Russia did claim it was also ‘hit’ by WC1.0 [oh the abbrev], but no damage ensued because they were able to stop it at the front door. Right. By lack of actual true snippets from 1600 Penn Ave, we now consider anything that comes out of Russia to be tru-er than what comes from DC, just like that ..? Because that would indeed leave ‘North Korea’ the only reasonably believable/unsurprising culprit.
On the other hand, the embedded tweet indicates Russia actually stole something. Until now, wasn’t it that the exploitable was leaked? Quite different … What is Russia’s involvement now, that those that have info of leakage only, don’t have intel on ..?

[Edited pre-press to add: there… ]

Oh, I’ll just leave it for you to ponder. And weep. And:

[Yes from that ridge, Gettysburg…]

Notnews

Remember it’s a two weeks flashback already
Monday morning’s watercooler discussion: Did you hear about this WannaCry attacks all around the world? The sky is falling! And what a hypecycle the ‘solutions’ vendors piled onto it immediately and oh hey look cat pics how cute oh now it’s Friday again how time flies CU on Monday for more cat pics.

So true it’s sobering; appropriately. And:
[Will never learn. NY]

Having a Coboll

Just when you thought that some problems had come and gone to be never heard from again, it turns out that it’s not that easy but big-time help is here.
Got tipped by a peer that flagged one particular company for help. No endorsement outright, no financial or other interest whatsoever [maybe I should, for the odds are with them], just plain ol’Hey Look That’s Interesting.

Because you didn’t get it; they help converting COBOL (and other mummyfied LoC) to New stuff.

On that note, I leave you with
[Images of volcanic activity keep blubbering out of your new systems infra, too; Zuid-As Ams]

GDPR is just a legal attempt at Y2k

Suddenly I realised, as one who profited handsomely (not in money but in perks’ way), that the whole GDPR compliance thingy is becoming quite similar, all too similar, to the hype that was called The Millennium Problem … too bad we now know how that ended, otherwise an illustrative movie could be made of the latter – now only (?) a documentary review is worthwhile, as history writing. Too bad it isn’t out in the open that despite all efforts then made, actually quite a lot of companies ended up having to hire temps to do all sorts of manual corrections in their administrations due to e.g., spreadsheets [the very things the toughest, most important business decisions hinged, and still hinge on!] going heywire over date fields.

To come back to the Issue … Are you not hit by that, almost sudden, avalanche of GDPR compliance warnings lately, like, the past couple of weeks ..? Is it not a warning that you need to do loads of things now, starting with hiring consultants (call to action; they’re Sales messages of course) this time not of the tech kind – engineers that see a problem, craft a solution and we’re done –, but of the legal kind – profiting only from prolongation of your insecurity.

And ah, there’s the snag! Multifaceted it is;

  • One: With some deadline suitably near to instill fear of lurking deadlines but suitably far to be able to still write you up with many, many ticks (per 6 or 3 minutes ..!?) at ridiculous rates, will be written;
  • Two: Unlike the patching that was the core solution (after Inventory – you did keep that in appropriate order in your wide-scope CMDB ever after 31/12/00, right ..? Even with some global outpost in the corner writing that down as 12/31/00. What stupid value loss if you didn’t! We’re only 17 years on! Did you really think legacy problems would have gone away by now …!?), we now see there is no solution but just getting compliant with all sorts of stupidly unprofitable, inefficient (and might we add, ineffective! yes if you are realistic, that’s what it is) good-for-nothing overhead;
  • Three: The good-for-nothing part — maybe not fully nothing, but oh so limitedly good for anything that you should’ve done already long ago not only for any ‘privacy’ compliance but for effective and efficient IT, -security included.

Following on this Lotus list, indeed there’s a lot of work to be done to become compliant … on the Legal side. On the IT side maybe also, but what needs to be done there, is (re)implementation of sound practices that should have been common daily practice anyway, and when implemented as such, ready; done.

The legal side on the other hand, sees all sorts of enduring challenges, like many cultural changes; no leaning back and await questions for advice to be answered out of hand with “It depends…” / “Come with a proposed solution and I’ll tell you whether it may or may not be permissible”, but for once being actively engaged and delivering definitive answers, and designing, implementing, and carrying out your (Legal) selves reams of procedural stuff. Acting on assessments, acting in communications, acting in control(s), etc.

You get it — the GDPR brings many problems for many organisations, the biggest of the problems being how to manage back the (Legal) consultancy fees… Remember, when data leakage isn’t preventable (as some dunces might still believe, many on the Legal side of GDPR compliance among them – hey they even think pseudonymisation amounts to anything), bad things are bound to happen. When (not if) not already via the avalanche of information requests …

I rest my case now, for you to have time to process the above, get it, and leave you with:

Your GDPR compliance looks much, much worse (this is actually quite good!); Toronto]

One 000

Yes, celebrations … The one-thousandestest post on this blog… [Excluding the two cross-posts by others…]

Do I regret any of them ..? Nope. [Rounded down]
Do I regret having been early with signalling many developments ..? Nope. At worst, sometimes I may have been too early, with the post(s) having slid from memory (ah, shallows you are) when finally the world came ’round to see the point as pointed out by some random stranger top-notch journalist or guru.
Non, je ne regrette rien.

OK, yes, I’ll keep on truckin’ for a while.
On everything from metaphilosophical discussions down to bitwise details on phenomena of Information, Society, IoT, Privacy, Information Security (#ditchcyber) Oxford, and gadgetry. Plus:
[The allusion to ‘reflection’ (of the old in the new etc.) is purely accidental, of course; London a decade ago]

Een pagina’tje met wat verzamelde links over/voor/inzake auditors/accountants

Gewoon, omdat het anders zo’n zoekwerk is met van die vervelend lange URLs…

Als de basiservaring niet meer kan worden opgedaan, dan …
Achterhaaldheid, v.v. veranderbereidheid
DACs en auditkantoren
Overbodigheid, achterhaaldheid weer
Assurance levels
AI, robots en auditwerk
Zucht, ja, blockchain
Process health
De markt
Multi-content assurance
XML-mogelijkheden
Direct reporting door accountants

GoTo Statement Considered Political

Bear with me; this is a mindstretcher.

Desperately few (still alive) have ever really fully read The Original (no, not that one).
And now I realise It (not it) was, and is, very valid today, as the opposite – at a meta(?)physical, quasi(?)(in)formal-logic level of abstraction – of what latter-day politicking looks like, in so many places around the world. Dangerous, that is, the latter.

Where the danger of GoTo is in its contextless jumping, ripping away the checks and balances that govern it, keep the oversight. In BASIC and others (JMP anyone?), at least there’s a form of kernel ‘hyperviser’/BIOS sort-a function, as underpinning foundation or supervisor to fall back to in last resort. [Yeah, I know one could program to wreck that but that’s not the point, and often disallowed by technical cast-in-concrete barriers.]
Where the danger of presidentiality-, morality- and common decency-less lies and alternative fact mumbo jumbo, is in its destruction of the checks and balances that govern that, keep the oversight. In reality, there’s no over/underpinning control mechanisms. They get destroyed.

’nuff said. And:
[Looks so real it’s ridiculous! But Fake!; Barça]

Golden Oldie Pic of the Day

Yet again …:

[Yes I, this refers to your infosec arrangements – wouldn’t deride the terms ‘management system’ or ‘practices’ by attaching them to what you do…]
[Yes II I did not include a dropcap style in his post on purpose. Thanks you noticed.]

Decision time for informational priv

When discussing Privacy, a lot of attention goes to informational privacy, easily tautologised with person-possibly-indentifying data.
If that reads mixed-up, it’s because it is.
But that’s for another session series. Of series.

What today’s post title is about, is the distinction between the two sides of the house; informational privacy (which is about information about you, or which you generate) versus decisional privacy (commonly defined in terms of your right to freely decide over your body’s integrity). As you read that, clearly the latter needs an update; a heck of a long KBxyzuvw article attached.
Because both the

  • Outright choice limitation through covert or overt profiling and covert or overt automated decision making, sometimes limiting your choice to none when you get rejected (from the ability to even decide) for something, or get no service proposition at all, a.k.a. the Hobson’s choice of socmed,
  • Covert choice limitation through filter bubbles – which would more accurately be called filter fish-trap,

can result from a lack of informational privacy. But both aren’t well covered in the definition of decisional priv whereas that infamous thing with The Freedom of the Pursuit of Happiness or whatsitcalled I don’t care you get it, Freedom, should be guaranteed.
So tightly coupled with all sorts of metaphysics, ontology, and topology of Privacy. Like, the feeling and understanding y’all have when you hear that word. It’s not only ‘bugger off nothing of your interest here’ privacy but also ‘get off my back‘ privacy; no weighing down.

Oh well. This being among my interests but not really my training, so I’ll go read up the latest qua this all. Pointers appreciated. And:
[For no reason whatsoever, totally unconnected; Riga Jugendstil]

Maverisk / Étoiles du Nord