The plummeting price of stolen personal data

Thursday, February 17th, 2011

How much is your data worth? You may think that the customer database your business has built is priceless, and individuals probably regard their online data as being rather valuable as well. After all, that’s why we put so much effort into securing it. Unfortunately, the basic economic laws of supply and demand exist within the criminal marketplace just as they do elsewhere.

Which means that our perception of value is hugely over-inflated when compared to the reality of the online underground economy. That reality is that as malware production and exploitation has rocketed, and stolen data has flooded the marketplace, so the price has plummeted to pretty unbelievable lows.

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How to physically secure your business hardware

Friday, January 21st, 2011

There seems to be something of a misconception, at the smaller end of the business scale at least, that data security is somehow a terribly complex thing that is also expensive to achieve properly. This myth is no doubt massaged just a little bit by small business consultants with one eye on the invoice.

The truth of the matter is somewhat different, of course, and basic data security is neither difficult nor expensive to achieve. All it takes is a little bit of technical know-how and an awful lot of common sense.

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vBulletin forums hit by reCAPTCHA cracking spam bot

Wednesday, January 12th, 2011

Since the holidays ended, security vendors have been happily telling me that spam levels have dropped dramatically. The spammers, they say, have taken some time off.

That may well have been the case as far as email spam was concerned, but back in the real world — which includes any business running a vBulletin forum for customer support — things have been far from quiet. In fact, there’s something of a spam crisis going on right now as it appears the bad guys have worked out how to crack the reCAPTCHA system that safeguards vBulletin-powered forum registrations from automated bots.

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IT Expert Syndrome: is your data at risk?

Thursday, December 16th, 2010

I don’t consider myself an IT expert. I consider myself to be an enthusiastic user of technology who just happens to know a thing or two about specific IT subjects and has an ability to communicate that knowledge to others. Not everyone is so shy in stepping forward to don the ‘expert’ hat though, and that is causing problems for businesses.

The Urban Dictionary definition of Expert Syndrome is an ailment that is characterised by “the need to expound on a given topic beyond actual knowledge” and that advanced sufferers are “often unaware of the condition, losing the ability to distinguish opinion from fact”. Before you dismiss this right now as being just another of the many somewhat jovial opinion pieces fuelled by an excess of seasonal cheer, there is actually a rather serious side to IT Expert Syndrome. To grasp the seriousness of the problem you first have to appreciate the duality of the learning theory concept of transfer.

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Calculating the real cost of cloud computing

Wednesday, December 8th, 2010

This week I have been getting unpleasantly confused by a pre-Christmas present of cloud computing hype. Take the CEBR 2011 Cloud Dividend report, commissioned by EMC, which joyfully predicts that the cloud will benefit the European economy by as much as £148.9 billion per year by 2015. Other highlights include the creation of 289,000 jobs in the same timeframe, although the UK could apparently lag behind the rest of Europe courtesy of our relatively poor broadband infrastructure.

As regular PC Pro blog readers will know, I’ve already suggested that there is such a thing as free cloud computing for the small business. OK, the free lunch option is restricted to the very small end of the small business scale, and even then we are talking more Google Mail than a fully blown data centre in the cloud, but it’s a start. The smaller your business, the bigger the benefits of the free cloud rings true as far as I am concerned. What’s more, I would contend that it’s a damn site more relevant to most small businesses than reports of some notional global economic value of cloud computing sponsored by a company pushing the cloud as hard as it can.

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Poll suggests third of Android owners really want an iPhone

Sunday, November 14th, 2010

Android is on a wave, it would seem, what with Gartner just announcing that the Google mobile OS has a 25.5% global market share. This puts it in second place behind Symbian on 36.6%, miles ahead of Apple’s iOS on 16.7% and RIM on 14.8%. Indeed, Gartner says that 1.4 million more Android handsets were sold in the third quarter compared to this time last year, taking the total to 20.5 million. However, one piece of polling would suggest that not everyone in the Android camp is a happy bunny.

A survey conducted by a mobile phone comparison website called MyPhoneDeals reckons that many Android owners would much rather have an iPhone, truth be told. Interestingly, the reverse is not true. MyPhoneDeals found Android owners some four times more likely to covet an iPhone than iPhone owners were to desire an Android handset. Apparently a third of the Android-owning folk asked said they wanted an iPhone, and 7% of iPhone owners actually said they would prefer an Android model thank you very much.

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Android and Apple iOS will not beat BlackBerry

Sunday, November 7th, 2010

Fanboys had better sit down before continuing, as I have some bad news for you, unless your particular tech obsession of choice is CrackBerry or Windows flavoured. Neither Apple iOS nor Android will beat BlackBerry or Microsoft as a mobile business platform any time soon, according to the latest market research.

But more of that later, first let’s start with some confusing jargon. A newly published study conducted by Plantronics reinforces what I already know, namely that more and more people are working outside of the traditional office environment these days.

Well, actually, that’s being a little disingenuous as in reality it confused me greatly by suggesting that people increasingly work in ‘transitional spaces’ and, to be honest, I had no idea what that really meant.  Delving a little deeper, it would appear that it means ‘public spaces used while in transit’ according to Plantronics. Translated into normal-speak I think what the survey was actually trying to say is that people are doing more work while on the bus, train or plane. And in hotel rooms, airport lounges or coffee shops for that matter. Anywhere outside of the office, other than the home environment in other words.

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The £100 billion question: is the cloud good for British business?

Wednesday, October 27th, 2010

Here’s an interesting question to ponder: is the cloud good for your small business but bad for employee relations? The question started to form some weeks back after I penned a piece here entitled free cloud computing for your small business in which I concluded that the smaller your business, the bigger the benefits of the free cloud.

I was somewhat taken to task for making this assumption, both publicly and particularly in private via email where, using language that would shock an Irish builder, it was explained in no uncertain terms that I was talking out of my posterior again. The main argument being that free cloud services suck because free service support always sucks on the one hand and any business which entrusts its data to the cloud, free or otherwise, is bereft of common sense. I disagreed then, and still do now. The cloud is, inherently, good for business. Period. But whether it is good for staff relations could well be another matter.

A newly published Populus Poll, commissioned by cloud service provider Keboko, which suggests that cloud computing could save UK businesses a staggering £104 billion per year. This research, consisting of interviews with 1,117 adults, calculated that with the average UK worker tied to their desk for 37 days a year just to carry out basic admin tasks and an average hourly wage of £13.04 multiplied by some 29.02 million people in employment that the cost of ‘red tape’ was £104 billion a year.

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Building a business website: why you should (mostly) avoid the DIY option

Monday, October 25th, 2010

Creating a business website requires specialist design skills and technical knowledge: neither of which are necessarily in the toolkit of the average business owner. And yet having a professional website is increasingly a matter of necessity rather than choice. Stir in a measure of financial restraint and the traditional choice of hiring a web design firm for a four-figure fee is simply not a viable option.

So what are we left with? PC Pro reader Grahame Berney got in touch regarding this very dilemma. As a designer himself, Grahame is constantly being asked by small businesses how they can have a professional web presence without breaking the bank. (more…)

A message to Steve Jobs: Shut The Fanboy Up!

Wednesday, October 20th, 2010

October has been a month of ‘Fanboy FAIL’ as far as sensible smartphone market analysis is concerned. First there was Steve Jobs bigging up iOS, iPhones and the iPad while dissing Android and RIM. Then there was the inevitable fanboy fracas from all sides that followed, including Jim Balsillie throwing some RIM soundbytes into the mix. This has truly been the month that common sense was finally shot in the head.

If you need further proof of this, then take a look at the Good Technology Device Activation Report for the 3rd quarter of 2010. At first glance, this report would appear to suggest that both Apple iOS and Google Android platforms are being rapidly adopted within the enterprise sector, while BlackBerry has vanished from the business market altogether.

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