Cloud Security Alliance UK and Ireland

Good news for those of us involved in cloud security in this part of the world: the UK & Ireland Chapter of the CSA is now up and running. As an executive board member I'm keen to spread the word of course. If you are interested in cloud security, follow this link to the LinkedIn group - it's free to join. Go on - you know you want to :-)

A Software Engineer, a Hardware Engineer and a Departmental Manager ...

A Software Engineer, a Hardware Engineer and a Departmental Manager were on their way to a meeting in Switzerland. They were driving down a steep mountain road when suddenly the brakes on their car failed.

The car careered almost out of control down the road, bouncing off the crash barriers, until it miraculously ground to a halt scraping along the mountainside. The car's occupants, shaken but unhurt, now had a problem: they were stuck halfway down a mountain in a car with no brakes. What were they to do?

"I know", said the Departmental Manager, "Let's have a meeting, propose a Vision, formulate a Mission Statement, define some Goals, and by a process of Continuous Improvement find a solution to the Critical Problems, and we can be on our way."

"No, no", said the Hardware Engineer, "That will take far too long, and besides, that method has never worked before. I've got my Swiss Army knife with me, and in no time at all I can strip down the car's braking system, isolate the fault, fix it, and we can be on our way."

"Well", said the Software Engineer, "before we do anything, I think we should push the car back up the road and see if it happens again."

(With thanks to John Mitchell)

Festive Greetings

Season's greetings dear readers - it been a while, thanks to a combination of overwork and illness, but here at last is a new posting from FPWS. I'll make it simple and festive:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDTjXjQJ75o

Happy New Year to everyone!

Fighting malware in your browser

I've mentioned Team Cymru before. Now I want to draw your attention to their Malware Hash Registry (MHR) project and in particular their add on for Firefox. This must be the simplest and most effective way of ensuring your downloads are free of malware - and it's free. Just check it out. 

Vote for us!

Exciting news for First Base Technologies - we've made the final in the "Security Service Provider of the Year" category of the Computing Security Awards based on volume of on-line nominations.  Voting is now underway.

Please consider voting for us at www.computingsecurityawards.co.uk - use the drop down menu under Security Service Provider of the Year and cast your vote!

Thanks!