Somewhere to write, discuss, reflect, ponder, muse and mull over life, stuff, things and anything that takes my fancy.
Following on from some of my previous posts about personal data safety.
It now seems that the banks that have decided to outsource their customer contact centres oversea are starting have problems with controlling the security of customers data in these centres.
Where is my personal data safe?
Tags: Data Security
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Sometimes I wonder at the thinking behind some of decisions emanating from the NHS. The latest announcement about the outsourcing of the work done by Medical Secretaries seems to me, to be a dangerous decision.
There have been a number of articles in the main press relating to potential disastrous consequences from this decision including a Daily Mail article detailing what could happen.
Yes there is a need to get the NHS budget deficit sorted out, yes there is a need to get all costs sorted out, yes there is a need to be more cost-effective, but the major remit of the NHS surely is to repair and save lives. Any decision based solely on cost saving that has a potential to affect the medical well-being of the patient or the process of care due to the patient is wrong.
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It seems that many heavy IT users are starting to run out of power!
As the need to use more IT increases and the ability to fit more powerful servers into a smaller areas, questions are being raised about the ability for the UK national grids ability to deliver enough power to meet these increasing requirements in critical geographical areas.
Companies increasingly require 24/7 uptime for their IT systems and more power is required to maintain this. One of the rapidly increasing uses of power in IT is for the Air Conditioning to keep all the Data Center computers cool, which of course only adds to the overall strain on the power infrastructure.
According to some recent news articles [1], [2]; it’s not the computing ability of modern day computers that will hold back company expansions, it seems that it will be the ability to turn it on and use it, or not as the case may soon be.
Tags: IT Systems, Data Center, Air Conditioning, National Grid
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Following on from a previous post, here is some information about how the cost of a stolen laptop can spiral out of control…
A laptop (and external hard drive) belonging to the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) was stolen from an VA employees house when he had taken (unauthorised) the laptop home for some weekend work!
To date, the ramifications of that thief are having an increasing cost for the (yes it really does say $15 million! and here, yes it really does say $160 million!!!!) for the US VA and other government departments.
I suspect that the VA organisation wished that they had installed some of the software discussed in the previous post! Or perhaps a copy of this product!
Tags: Department of Veterans Affairs, Laptop Theft
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I had already heard about the Lojack device a few years ago, whereby you are able to have your stolen vehicle (car, truck & motorcycle) tracked by a remotely activated on board radio signal transmitter and hopefully you get your vehicle back intact.
Now the same company has licensed its name to LoJack for Laptops from Absolute software. Based on the remote detection of hidden software installed on your laptop calling home on a regular basis. If stolen, you report this to the authorities and as in the case of Lojack for vehicles, they swing into action and hopefully recover your laptop. The makers claim that this will work even if your hard drive is reformatted! Some laptop manufacturers are also starting to install a licensed version embedded in a recovery chip on their laptop motherboard!
Interesting use of technology I think (I don’t have it, nor am I linked to the companies). There is also some other very interesting software products from Absolute Software including a remote deletion of data product, I suppose in case the laptop can’t be physically located and can only be seen on the Internet! Clever stuff?
Forbes article about software, [1], Blog link [2], interesting forum discussion on +’s & -‘s [3] & [4].
Tags: Laptop theft, Internet
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So the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) made £6m in 2005 from selling access to our name & addresses to private companies (see original story). Another piece of my personal data making someone else money! I wonder what “reasonable cause”(by the way, this is still not defined in law) really means when the DVLA says it will give out our details!
Based on recent posts, I clearly don’t seem to own my personal details!
Tags: DVLA, Personal Data, Data Protection
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Following on from my previous post…
I received a letter yesterday from my credit card company, the letter a pretty much standard mail merge letter informed me that my credit limit had been increased. Well so what, I hear you say, I get those letters as well!
As I worked through my pile of morning post (mostly junk, I have to say) I discovered that I had also received two more identical envelopes from the same credit card company, but addressed to two other individuals at different addresses. Now I can only surmise, as I did not open them, that these additional envelopes also contained letters with similar information that these individuals had had their own credit limit increased as well.
So what does that mean to someone phishing for financial information, well my letter contains, my full addresses details, the name of my credit card company, my credit card limit and the last four digits of my credit card. Can someone work out the rest, I bet they can!
Concerned that I was in position of other peoples’ potential personal financial information, I rang the customer support number in my letter and ended up after the usual automated phone machine with a customer service agent. Telling him about the fact that I had received two envelopes in addition to mine, solicited the reply that this was not his companies fault but an error with the Royal Mail who delivered the letters to my address and I should talk to Royal Mail not him!
Part of me would agree with his comment, but part of me does not, as I assume that the onus is really on the credit card company to ensure that mine and other peoples’ financial information is protected as much as possible and if they are using an agent to deliver letters like the ones that I received, then they have to be sure that the agent is doing their job correctly, which in this case, it was not.
I then asked him a question as to what assurances could he give me that all previous letters addressed to me containing personal financial information had in fact been delivered to me and not to other people – at the end of the day, I am not to know as and when a credit card company will send out mailers like the one I received. He, (representing the credit card company) refused point blank to give me any kind of assurance that my personal financial data was safe when any agent is used to delivery letters to me from the credit company!
Kind of makes you wonder what the Data Protection Act is for, why we have Chip & Pin and what all the discussions are about with regards to protecting ‘your’ personal financial information, when the credit card company, which by the way is CITI cannot give ‘you’ any kind of assurance that it will protect your personal financial data.
Guess I’ll have to quit this credit card company and find another, but there again maybe their all like that!
Tags: Royal Mail, Credit Cards, CITI
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News [2] is breaking about the secret US Treasury Department spying program that is searching through world-wide SWIFT transactions for terrorists money transfers with many of the searches being carried out under secret subpoenas without any knowledge of judges or US Grand Juries.
This news will come as a massive surprise to many world-wide banking official as well as many individuals that use the SWIFT to remit money around the world.
Another example of USA aggressive tactics to tackle terrorism, or perhaps another invasion of our privacy?
Tags: SWIFT, Terrorism, Treasury Department
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At last, an investigation into the rip off surcharges that get loaded onto airline tickets. We all thought that past deregulation would sort this out, but unfortunately not. I have been annoyed about this for years and here is an example of why I think this investigation is overdue.
Two years ago I was doing some work for a client in Paris and over a nine-month period, I visited Paris some 20 times. Because I knew the ‘advance’ dates of many of my trips, I was able to get many advance bookings for very cheap return tickets on scheduled British Airways (BA) flights to/from Paris.
One fare I remember was for a flight cost of UK£25.00, but with surcharges of UK£35.00! (total price UK£60.00). I happened to query this fare and as to how the surcharges were higher than the actual fare. It took me nearly five days to eventually find someone in BA who could advise me what the UK£35.00 covered.
The break down of the surcharges included payments being made to a) British Airports Authority (BAA) for handling charges, b) Paris Airports for handling charges, c) Fuel surcharge, and d) Miscellaneous charges, which I was told included UK government taxes, Insurance and Security surcharges and any other charges! These were still undefined after my follow-up conversations with BA. I also could not get anyone at BA to email or write to me about these questions or to give me a monetary breakdown for each part.
Today BA and some other airlines quote tickets that now include the surcharges within the cost of the overall air fare, so this makes now it more difficult to actually see what percentage of the air fare is down to surcharges, which to me a backwards step, but of course an advantage for the airline. For some current info on what is covered today by such air line ticket surcharges check out this latest list.
I will follow with interest the investigation to see if it does find anything that will in the end really benefit the average ‘flyer’!
Tags: Air Fares, British Airways
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I was given a great book last week “The Bumper Book of Government Waste”. What a great little book, full of many facts and stories of just how much and where your tax money gets wasted, far too many to be listed here.
With potted history of Tax, cartoons that made me laugh, tables of tax data waste that made me angry and some great quotes, this Tax Payers Alliance promoted book is a must read book for anyone that what to know where and how a lot of your tax money is wasted.
Found this great quote in the book by Ronald Reagan, “Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in few short phrases: If it moves tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidise it”.
You can buy the book here:
Tags: Government, Waste, Tax
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Beasley's Place 