Its been a while……

Wow, I didn’t realise its been that long since I blogged.

With Work and Study there’s little time for anything else.

Couple of things I’ve been doing since the last post

1. Started a new job as a Security Consultant

2. Started to lean Linux, with Back-Track Linux of all things !

3. Started playing with Raspberry Pi’s. I now have 3 (XBMC media player, Lapdock and i’m building a small robot using a Gertboard)

4. Learning to Solder……

5. Studying 2 MSc Modules – Computer Security and Smart Cards, Tokens & Applications. Passed Information Security, Cryptography, Network Security & Information Crime so far.

6. Bought shares in a Brewery (Go Brewdog 🙂 )

Must try to post more regularly, if just for my own sanity…..

A Christmas Story

I spent great evening at the Bloomsbury theater watching ” 9 lessons and Carols for Godless People”on Sunday. This is a Christmas show with a difference, Its organized by Robin Ince as an Atheists Christmas celebration.

Its not Anti-Christian, but more of  a Celebration of The Universe, Science and Humanity. Its also an opportunity to see a huge number of acts for very little money !

The acts were (In no order, I had been in a few pubs before the show):

Robin Ince

Josie Long

Simon Singh

Baba Brinkman

Mitch Benn

Jim Bob

Isy Suttie

Chris Addison

Ben Goldacre

Martin White & The Mystery Fax Machine Orchestra

Gavin Osborn

Jo Neary

Marcus Du Sautoy

Matt Parker

Helen Arney

David Armand

Richard Wiseman

Not bad for £25 !

Merry Xmas

“I saw armed cops being deployed against schoolchildren”

I don’t really want to comment on this, but the  simple quote

“I didn’t understand quite how bad things had become in this country until I saw armed cops being deployed against schoolchildren in the middle of Whitehall.”

says it all.

http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/laurie-penny/2010/11/children-police-kettle-protest

And from the Guardian

“police mounted on horses charged at about 1,000 students”

“17 people were treated for injuries in London. Of them, 13 needed hospital treatment”

“some parents arrived at the police cordon pleading for their children to be released”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/nov/24/student-protests-school-children-streets

TEDx Cardiff

I attended the TEDx Cardiff event at the Welsh Millenium Centre last night.

Wow. Outstanding. Fabulous etc.

If you dont know what TED is, go to www.ted.com TEDx events are independantly run events based on TED.

8 Presentations, 2 live Music acts, 4 TED archive videos. All for Free (well, a small donation of £3 or more)

If you get a chance to attend one, drop everything and go. These Ideas worth spreading are life changing !

Employee consent to allow data monitoring

I was at the SC Magazine “Combating the Insider Threat” Conference yesterday, and one of the presentations raised a very interesting point.

Dave Chapman (Forensic Investigations Manager with TNT Express) was giving a presentation on “The Legalities behind monitoring employees to sensitively identify potential internal threats”.

He raised a couple of very interesting points

• Contractual consent to allow monitoring of your email\Internet access is just that, Consent. This can be formally rescinded at any point. Your employer can take action against this (Disciuplinary etc.) but they CAN NOT continue to monitor your information.
• “Fishing” for issues by looking through staff email\Internet traffic will not stand up in court as there needs to be a defined threat under investigation, to remove the possibility of entrapment.
• Most companies contracts or Acceptable Use Policies define that a limited amount of personal use of company resources is allowed. With this in mind, if the company monitors your email\Internet Access they are knowingly potentially viewing personal information without direct consent.  This can be viewed as a breach of privacy. This can be, and has been, legally stated as a breach of Article 8 of the Human Rights Act (the right to respect for private and family life)

None of this necessarily means you can get away with things by arguing the above points, but It does mean that Information Security \ HR have to tread very carefully whilst investigating staff mis-behaviour.

Interesting.