Category: Information Risk Management

Books, over ebooks

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[Once new, new york]

Was challenged about the virtues of the old-style paper books over eBooks. Just give you this hint (warning: if you’re one of these victims, you may not be interested). #3 in particular is one which is often overlooked. See, e.g., the first lines of the quote in this piece. There was even some scientific proof somewhere a couple of months ago about how touchable books were more like landscapes to the brain, enticing to explore the full meaning of the text in all its non-linear relations, whereas ebooks only appealed to the most dumbed-down rational functions of character processing with only a thin line to semantics extraction. Link requested.

Which is similar to what Bruce Schneier indicated (see under Privacy, anonymity, authentication in this summary) about human interaction.

So, for the uninterested traveller who wants to travel light and is bored by not caring to really look around and learn from the environment, ebooks may be handy. For those interested in preserving elements of high culture, caring about good print (and other physical quality aspects), and caring for one’s books, is a quality of the person. If you want flat info, join the Shallows. Your identity will be lost after the Singularity moment has functionally passed. If you’re enthousiastic about anything new that dumbs you down even further, do not assume everyone will want to join or everyone wants to be dumbed down to your levels just for the sake of keeping up. There’s many that don’t rush head over heels into destruction or disruption before it has been established to bring improvement and only after some little time find out somethings irrecoverable were lost!

Battles; aren’t we over them?

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[Yes that actually is a watch – well, sundial but still]

Hmmm, just when I thought that manufacturer battles had gone out of style (would’ve been something for these lists), here we go again: Wired’s take on the next one.

Mehhh Practice

Mehhhdrid
[Mehhhdrid?]

This appeared:

Nicely summing up a widespread complaint. E.g., against ISO 2700x. One should be forbidden to call those ‘Best’, as they are average, at best.
Because they’re adopted by the ones with no imagination of their own so implementations will fall short of average, thus in mass lowering the average even further.

And Best has never been Best in the first place. ‘tWas a compromise, as it had to cover so much, over so many contributors at its inception already. Remember, BS7799 ..!? And on and on in review rounds, committees decided over changes. A camel is a horse designed by a committee. And it all had to be applicable to as many industries as you can dream up. Another flattener par excellence. Standards work, where there is little variation required. Here, much variation, tailoring to each and every implementation over and over again, is a prerequisite for any success. I might continue.

Luckily for you, the new ISO27001:2013 of last October, is a huge improvement…. To the panic of the knights of busywork, one cannot anymore rely on following the herd as described, prescribed, because, at last, the prescription tends to Use Your Own Brain. Principle-based at last ..! For some elements. Tuning required, not by the (C)ISO (office) (only), but by the Business itself. Oh dear! The implementation efforts… Consultants’ dreams.

Well, get the lowdown of this, from experts [disclaimer: don’t own anything of them]. Just wanted to post the tweet and my take on it.

The librarian wave

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[Had this as my cubicle, a long time ago]

There seems to be a silent undercurrent wave of librarians entering our (not) field of information processing. If you think their thinking might be stale, think again. This here piece, for example, is clear and bright in its contributions towards better …, well, calling it flatly what it is, ‘data’ management. Flatly, as that’s what one gets by approaching it from the IT side only. ‘Processes’ add only so much. I.e., so little.

Just one pic from that blog post to demonstrate the clarity of thought:
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How’zat for clarity ..?

I’ll pick this one up in full, later, when extending the stuff on ‘information’ in light of the one overarching Book on it all that I still have as a plan, if only I had the time to work on it full-time …!

Stumbling over yourself, in the retreat

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[Utreg]

Remember the good ol’ Boston Consulting matrix ..?

Among the puerilely [that is a word] shallow startup business, apparently not many do. They’re only chasing the next, even more questionable question marks, ‘knowing for sure’ (not) to turn those into stars without fail. Current stars exist only to set the example and to be beaten.
Dogs, of course, are what they are. And cash cows are also dogs. As they aren’t fast enough. Sure. But where startup managers believe to have found the ultimate question mark will turn into star certainty, and VCs just spending off their (or Other Peoples’ Money ..!) lifetime earnings as lottery tickets, the cash cows prod along quite happily, getting only half of the world’s attention for delivering … 95% of the world’s goods and services (mostly, from the bottom up Maslow’s pyramid).

Thus, two economies result; the one being much more dependent on the other than usually considered, with the other not being old and decrepid, to be done away with, but a core, a solid basis for long-term alignment or else one keeps on floating in the sky until one evaporates. The other way around is not quite as necessary as believed..!
Which also leads to those of the stable kind, trying to get into the action of the fluid kind, to stumble while they try to retreat into some fluid future. They lose the stability, and cannot catch up with the road runner(s) for sheer secondness and ballast of the old. Cash cows are big, required and necessary, and should be left alone to innovate not to disrupt. Disruptors, may be loosely tied to cash cows, but certainly not with the intention to later integrate the latter back into the former. That will lead to failure throughout; the horse already left the barn and you wouldn’t have wanted to close the gate but now have had a kick in the teeth; i.e., the slow just missing the grasp and ending up on the rails, grappling their teeth together, while the train ever speeding up will have left the station. This form of retreat (that’s what it is, retreat as leader, T Rex trying to regain initiative by outpacing and outsmarting the Velociraptors in their teamwork) will lead to pathetic stumbling.

Conclusion: Don’t do it. Not in the me-too way. Dare to decide what you are, be proud of that ..! Just innovate, not disrupt yourself internally only, and be strong … survival of the fattest and fittest. Don’t be a lightweight, you’ll fall like Icarus – after you have learned not to fly too low …!

Bias Time (9 of 9)

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[To round off brain ‘governance’]

Yes, it’s bias time again. The last of the series of biases that you, yes you, have. Even if you are aware of these, and even if you consciously try to correct for them to be, heh, ‘objective’, as in what e.g. auditors pursue, you will fail.

Red herring fallacies

  • Ad hominem: attacking the person instead of the argument. A form of this is reductio ad Hitlerum.
  • Argumentum ad baculum (“appeal to the stick” or “appeal to force”): where an argument is made through coercion or threats of force towards an opposing party
  • Argumentum ad populum (“appeal to belief”, “appeal to the majority”, “appeal to the people”): where a proposition is claimed to be true solely because many people believe it to be true
  • Association fallacy (guilt by association)
  • Appeal to authority: where an assertion is deemed true because of the position or authority of the person asserting it
  • Appeal to consequences: a specific type of appeal to emotion where an argument concludes that a premise is either true or false based on whether the premise leads to desirable or undesirable consequences for a particular party
  • Appeal to emotion: where an argument is made due to the manipulation of emotions, rather than the use of valid reasoning Continue reading “Bias Time (9 of 9)”

TL;DR on TLD (or 5LD)

Ah, yes, let’s not forget to add the biggest Quod Non of the decade to our list of subjects for the redevelopment of information security / information risk management / risk management / management of risks / management ‘book’ forthcoming.
Indeed, three lines of ‘defense’ will be in. As well as the extension to five lines of defense. Which will all not work, and will all just add to the culpability of those proposing them, as they must know better or declare their incompetence at an even broader scale and abstraction layer.

Because, and here I repeat myself, and many others, how can something help defend when it’s not between a threat and a vulnerability ..!?

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[Dee An Bee]

Because I already discussed this in the past (way back, couple of months ago (final one)), and will discuss in all detail in the overall Book (white paper) on the above subjects, I’ll leave it here. For the believers in the idea: Full speed ahead into the blind alley …!

Silent SOx Shutdown

As Fortune Magazine reported last week, suddenly everyone realises that the dreaded (dreadful?) Sarbanes-Oxley act has hardly any sway anymore over business affairs. And some senators are calling for its repeal.

First, a pic for your viewing pleasure:
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[Barça, near the Olympic (remember?) village]

Can we assume this a sign of the waning of Compliance ..? Hopefully. What we’re left with, is a decade of misery for all but the compliabullies. How can we force them to pony up the compensation for financial and immaterial damages they caused ..?
They’re probably too blind (numb) to see that they did, massively, without any improvement in overall management, or viability, of the organisations involved. On the contrary, all the efforts were so misdirected that initiatives that might actually have helped, were thwarted. Innovation initiatives were demolished, economies destroyed. The only escape vent was in the financial industry, where wizardry escaped the numb compliabullies. What a bubble blew out…
And think of all the (actual, positive) creativity and careers that didnt take flight, or were culled. How to restore all the joy of years of productive careers, not as a second wind because that always sourly reminds of the lost years, the irrevokably lost life ..? If all that can be done is destroy the compliabullies’ lives and memories, then maybe that’s all that can and should be done. Not preferable, but if, then.

Maverisk / Étoiles du Nord