ERM, GRC – Page 49 – Maverisk / Étoiles du Nord

Digital Native Schative

A couple of weeks ago, there was this little row (that you may easily have missed) about some recruiter requiring digital nativity (yes.) of candidates (and whether that would be discriminatory since it would exclude ‘old’ folks). As in this here discussion.
Where the point was largely missed that one would indeed not want to hire anyone who would consider themselves qualified on this point…

Considering yourself such a native, or ‘born digital’ or whatever ridiculous phrase one could use, disqualifies you as you have no clue:
Those born in a time when there was already something digital (e.g., like stand-alone PCs), will still have grown up in environments with hardly if any of those devices. Either due to region (PCs were around in the US in the 80s, not so much elsewhere) or class (as if less moneyed classes had PCs in the US, before the 00s). Same / similar for all (sic) other ‘devices’, ‘systems’, and developments, that one could consider to fall under the ‘digital’ class if there were such a thing. If ‘born digital’ is about ‘computers’ having been around: that started in the 60s ..! If it is about pervasive ‘digital’ stuff being around: Those kids are still infants (mentally!), 0-20yrs of age; only some escape this nubness and indeed do understand technology.
So, there’s hardly anyone who could actually claim to be born and raised (sic) digitally. Maybe a handful, possibly placed outside their bio family by authorities as the digital overload would count as child molestation (compared to their peers, playing outside).
And, all the other kids may have actually learned something of the outside world in which one has to live (or be kept (sic) in a basement all their life…). May; apart from those that didn’t properly learn to ride a bike since they were driven around by tiger moms. Still, the ‘born and raised’ digital, would be of no use in the real world due to knowing nothing of it.
The ‘digital’ has in the mean time exploded. Is it about mobile, about social, about devices, about apps, actual applications, programming, security, business deployment, assembler, design (of ‘web’ sites (huh whaddoyoumean ..!?), apps, devices, brands, or ..?), privacy, economics, …, …? No-one can cover them all; some may cover a few but certainly not more. So anyone claiming to master the world because they were ‘born digital’, I show you the Fool. Ecco homo.
So you’d better not hire such worldview-morons.

But then, you could hire me. I was trained to work on mainframes (operations) and early PCs (use, programming down to C and assembler), have learned hardcore HTML (3, 4) back in the day and moved to ‘modern’ applications, and understand the Real World through education and experience (also in the business world), etc.etc.
Your call.

For reference:

[‘Native’ …? Córdoba]

FogAI picture

… Just to put it out there: What has happened to all the thrilling AI initiatives that flew around one after the other at the start of the year ..?
At that time, I even included some stuff in my Predictions, as so many new things were popping up. But now, … not so much. Because what?

Or have all the ‘leaks’ been thumbplugged and is development still going strong in skunk works towards a renaissance explosion sometime soon ..?

Whatev’; for you:
DSCN2101
[Its back being Mont serrat. Or so. ?]

Signalling healthy process

Yet some more cross-over ideas from the IoT world into the administrative bureaucratic office world: Streams of transactions as signals.
Of the health of the process, of course. To be defined, obviously, as the fit to the surroundings. The fit may be off, either intentionally (wanting to let the world adapt to the process, enforcing (?) change) or unintentionally left blank i.e., having to cope with exceptions to what was envisaged as transactions’ content or form.

Now apply yesterday’s first picture of process control.
Now, too, consider what one could do with sampling theory (as a subset of ‘Shannon’, if properly elaborated, possibly skirting with ‘classical’ statistics ..?). Taking 2log(n) samples (where n is the number of transactions ..?? Just a wild guess) and being able to reconstruct the ‘signal’ then taking its integral (discrete transactions … just summing it up ..?) for the total. Or Fourier-transforming it all and … get your basic theory straight before dreaming of moving on so don’t start at the other end as ‘accountant’…! And/or treating exceptions (as e.g., found by the sort of analysis that these girls/guys are so good at; that not even being meant as a cynical qualifier) as noise to the signal. Never fully suppressable, but useful to pick up secondary signals, stacked in their variation of frequencies, amplitudes an wavelet transformations. That all tell you something, if you listen. Whether you want perfect, over-HiFi replay [intermission: Ugh I’m getting old, even knowing that HiFi was a thing…], or lively veracity, actual fullness of music. And take in again the ole’ industrial process control with its recipe / derivative function(s), et al., and be able to better control it all from the ‘dashboard’ in the control room. When all of the routine stuff, the routine 80%, of business is done by … ‘robots’. Humanoid or digital-machines, IDC.

And hey, while we’re at it, why not throw in attempts to include in bookkeeping not only discrete numbers (arbitrarily rounded to hunderds, of random currencies) but Real numbers or even Complex numbers as well ..? The latter, e.g., to indicate VAT surcharges, etc.; leading to tuples-as-single-‘numbers’ in bookkeeping. Maybe somewhat harder to track that all is booked correctly, but also maybe powerful in capturing singular transactions and some processing rules/logic, and controls, in one tuple (‘record’).

Where AI may then be applied to do sanity checks. Not on this author; no AGI or ASI would suffice…

OK, for now:

[“What a shoe box” but yes that *is* the Bata shoe museum, Toronto]

ICShape

Doing some pondering, digging and backtracking on the issue of IoTA. But, … already got stuck when considering how to (best?) model the architecture at lower levels. Would a classical picture, or a somewhat-less classical picture work best to gain understanding of the risk areas ..? As in:
Industrial control cycle
[Own pic]
Or
open-standards
[Plucked, adapted from the site linked below]
Where the former is from the industrial, process-oriented engineering world, and the latter from the digital networking world.

Yes I’d really like your advice on how to ‘marry’ both to be able to optimally visualise where the risks are; the potential, intentional or not, noise on the signal, or the wrong signals altogether. What might cause that, how to protect against that, etc.
Yes, taking into account the work already done here – which is impressive, but somewhat (?) protocols-oriented, not architecture-/risk-oriented. Yet. Something like
SCADASmartGridEfficacy_Page_2_Image_0002
[plucked off a simple search] is what I’m after.

But the other work, too. All, to overlay with risk lists on all surfaces at all levels… Then, to see how to protect that all against the (generic?) risks, and how one would audit sufficient (?) protection is in place. Not ‘controls’ – those are the losers’ weak retreats, the “didn’t want a cookie anyway” fig leaves. Taking into account this breakthrough though.
But for now, again already, leaving you with:
DSCN2075
[Life in stead of straight angles, Barça]

UnEllsberging your change

Somehow it only recently, and suddenly, struck me that the resistance to change that we see so pervasively in ‘organisations’ is indeed due to people’s very human resistance to change as one might loose some things held dear – for whatever reason.
The latter, obvisouly often stated in terms of losing something Known for replacement with Uncertainty even if prospects and rational risk calculations might indicate huge improvements achievable.

The crucial point being: the risk calculations may be rational but apparently aren’t emotional. The striking thing mentioned above, being that we need to integrate Ellsberg’s Paradox much better into our change approaches and programs… Indeed, rational calculations will not work in a world where humans function like described. The ‘future’, uncertain world must be described in terms of the same absolute certainties as the world we experience in the now/past [as the now of now is the past in an instant], just as perfectly credible also in the completeness of its pro and con arguments. Since not only do we exactly know the devil (our, e.g., work environment) we know because we have experienced it in full, hands-on, but also because we have quite a rosy picture of that devil when our brains forget nasty stuff easier than friendly bits.

Now go study all of the linked wiki – it has tons of good info, both explanatory and as pointers to slurp it all up into practical solutions.

And, for a glimpse of a better future:

[They’ll come when the (grossly overstated) benefits are high enough and/or the left-behind is dismal enough; NY]

Overabsolute Majority Report

On this sad day (in NL), only a hint of a mer à boire on our future that will be – not so happy. Possibly.
Where the dystopian future scenarios are more right than the on the surface by and large generic tending-to-rosy robot movies predict. With Ex Machina having some interesting thoughts (again) on AI and what it is to be human but in the end also falling back to common standards. And with the similalry common flaw of expecting ‘robots’ to become near-human possibly to the point of indistinguishability [nice word] – that will then operate in a world where ‘individuals’ would be the unit of existence-currency. With no ‘government’ in sight, at least not in today’s sense where even the largest governments (agencies) are still made up of human elements. There is something, but it doesn’t matter too much for the discourse. Where the dystopian worlds we’ll live in (big question marks all around) may have quite a different set of physical media, e.g., all-digital.

Which makes it possible to see today’s (supra-)governments, the largest of them in particular and including the globally biggest private companies, where ‘company’ isn’t between a platoon and battalion of men anymore, as supra-national organisation forms in the abstract.

This already causes problems when one would want to get redress from e.g., the ‘financial industry’ and before, to tackle the military-industrial complexes that were (are?). This will cause problems now that the complexes are informational-industrial-military, with the middle part in the driver’s seat and the two others as wingman, protecting.

In the future further out, the global complex may be beyond the Singularity (negative view), about which I posted quite a bit before. How will we approach such overlord(s) when completely abstracted, sublimated ..? Hm, gotta read up on Negri&Hardt a bit more…

But for now:

[When centres/seats of power were only this big; Madrid]

Unpersonal AI

… a trope worth extending: How we still (apparently want to ..!?) see the future of AI and robotics merged into android (no capital) forms… As in Ex Machina and many others: ‘Intelligent’ (like linked here) human-shaped robots taking over, or not.
Whereas of course ASI will strike us through its supra-individual form it already almost has. Not as the military-industrial complex that was already a common-form supra-individual thing, but as a really medium-/materialisation-independent form. With room to spare for all sorts of ‘dysfunctional’ behaviour and ‘thoughts’, and still hands(?) down being our overlords and usurpers that undo us in a blink.
Or maybe we’re halfway there already. With maybe still some select group at the wheel, behind some veil, pulling off some shady trickery with constitutions (multiple). To off themselves, by a glitch.

Dystopian, eh? Well, for now, there’s:
DSCN6248
[’cause we love the quaint, old … Strasbourg or so]

Ack or ook ..?

Yes, there we are again, on the subject of ‘Ethical’ hacking.
Because I came across such a ‘Certified Ethical’ Hacker once again. Which made me think (again…) about the allure of that. And then it struck me: It’s just a matter of replacing ack with ook and we’re all set!

Think about it; and ook does for money what others do for fun and ulterior motives… So does an ack. An ook can be certified (licensed) and get government-controlled medical/physical check-ups, by another bodily-educated professional. An ack can be and get the same; through permanent education requirements and peer review.

But what an ook can’t get, is the Ethical label that the ack has – for no apparent reason and it should be the other way around: Where the ook has proven her (majority; unless some ladies in the readership have sufficient experience to validly claim the opposite) role in society since the dawn of time/mankind/human society, the ack dabbles in what somewhat similar but short by aeons, is a crook’s business.

So, CEH better refer to the ooks out there. For now:

[It’s … Name That City time again!]

Grendel’s mother

When the short summary doesn’t do justice to the core of the problem… Where the core is both a misreading of the depth and a misreading of its intentions.
As this here few little paragraphs have. There’s no light way of putting this: Go read the … thing in its entirety and then, do understand it in all of its cultural superiority to today’s news accounts.

Yes, for the simplest of minds it may read like just a story. Hero, this, that, done. But to the slightest of more careful reader, it is overwhelmingly clear: The book contains so much profundity on the core of politics, societies, and clashes of war. Then you see that it’s not about slaying Grendel and some afterthought. It is about slaying the symptom, the fed, and only then can you get to fighting the real cause that (literally) both birthed and feeds the symptoms, the Mother of Evil. Pointing, too, at the continuity through generations of that concept.

Oh and did it mention anything about brothers or (maybe even worse ..?) sisters ..? Opening up all sorts of options for prolongation through the ages of this tension between what one (sic) could regard as Good and another (sic) as Evil? Mother doesn’t see Evil, she sees her pride, her son displaying the most beautiful (s)he can imagine. Yo don’t even know which side you’re on! Etc.

Yes indeed. It is simply not simple. It is The World As We Know It, and Man cannot change much about it…

For the latter, see how Western ‘powers’ led by the one, try to meekly and halfheartedly subdue Grendel in the Middle East; just enough to safeguard their own interests. Where they don’t see the full depth of mother’s lair, nor her issues. For those less ‘sues’, read this and see the eternity of the problem.

For now, this:

[Ah, bull fighting (at Sevilla no less): Another such eternal struggle between Good and Evil, order and reason against pure force of nature – so often completely mistaken for simple ‘sports’. Cruel, to the Weak (sic) but not to those that value its depiction of life itself; that have experienced and/or seen much worse in human life, in person.]

Oh hey, quoted (at a distance)

Oh hey, I got quoted (almost … I mean at an enormous distance) by some reputable (?) institution.
Where that body did jump to all sorts of conclusions (see my next Monday 27 April post squared with my 3 April post against (?) those), but in the passing mentioned an arms’ race known to modern man already for decades as if it were something new. In this here piece.

What’s the aim, then? To have all sorts revert to Flipping ..?

To leave you with:
DSCN3994
[Still? against intruders, Trier]