Interesting, I wonder what comes next?
Hippo at Richards Bay
Hi, blog readers. Thought I’d share with you that I have family in South Africa, and look what turned up on their local beach the other day!
A hippo….cool picture…
New Privacy Services
A couple of new companies helping the trend geared to protecting your online reputation and your privacy.
Online reputation and Offline reputation
Hi, here is an example that has received significant publicity in Canada on how your reputation in your physical life can been influenced by your online activities. Online activities in this article are in Facebook, and the people concerned are recruits to become Border Control Guards. What is interesting is that this may have passed by unnoticed if it wasn’t for some data-mining done by a Border Guard (who worked only temporarily) who was passed over for a permanent post by these young cheaper recruits.
The Storm Superworm
Hej! I enjoyed reading Bruce’s essay on this potent new breed of worm that I thought to share with my blog readers.
Centralisation of health records
Lauren is discussing the US trend for the centralisation of medical records, but of course it is not just the US who are on this journey. The UK is there, and Sweden has been there for some time. The debates going on in the UK are pretty hot!
As a Swedish resident I can vouch that the advantages are realised immediately and I can say -somewhat reluctantly and against my better self- is much to my personal advantage. Moreover patients will illnesses such as diabetes, epilepsy would probably be strong supporters of this because centralisation of patient data would give them more freedom, as it wouldn’t matter where they were they can feel assured of being treated correctly and hence safely. The effectiveness of -for example- Verichips technologies RFID implants are dependent upon centralisation of patient data in their healthcare vertical focus. Take a look at the video they have on their home page to see how they are marketing their concepts.
When I lived in France and Switzerland I was responsible for my own patient data. I carried it around with me. In Swtizerland they even have a practice of destroying xrays/scans etc., after a certain period of time. Hence it is up to the patient to take ownership for themselves.
This brings some thoughts to mind and that is: Is this not in-line with that we as citizens need to be responsible for our lives, work and future. There is no job for life any longer, so what’s the difference in doing the same with our medical records? Clearly those that have medical conditions can chose to have their personal information centralised, but why should we all have to do this? My doctor can have my personal health records, how this is distributed should be with my approval.
As you probably have guessed as a security practitioner I am NOT enthusiastic on the centralisation of my personal data. Although assurances are made today on the ‘non abuse’ of this information we can NEVER be assured of how governments, trends and social attitudes will change in the future.
Volunteer Fire Fighter and Cyberterrorist!
lol take a look at this for some fun. Cyberterrorism is not only on the increase as in going up… but also taking on some new interesting aspects -can we say 😉
New job in HP
I know it has been a bit quiet here in September. However it has been a pretty exciting time in my real physical life. After less than a year since I joined HP I have changed job from Senior Information Security Consultant to Security Solution Architect sitting in the International Expertise Team (IET). I am pretty excited about this change as it means that I am now working across different countries in HP.
Young people and privacy
Do you believe that young people, are less concerned with maintaining privacy than older people? It is an interesting thought and one that has been growing on me for some time now. Lauren discusses this and provides some interesting links.
Expect your adventures in 2life to be preserved for future generations…..
Look what my college Kjell came across and was kind enough to send me….
“RIT Joins Library of Congress Partnership to Preserve Online Games and Virtual Worlds Rochester Institute of Technology (09/19/07) Researchers from the Rochester Institute of Technology will participate in an initiative to develop standards for preserving virtual worlds and online games. The Preserving Virtual Worlds project, which the Library of Congress will administer under the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIPP), will focus on basic standards for metadata and content representation, and also use archiving case studies of video games, electronic literature, and the Second Life virtual world to study preservation issues. “This is incredibly important work because the worlds we are playing with today will be gone in a flash, with no recordable way of recreating them for future generations,” says Andrew Phelps, director of game design and development and RIT’s principal investigator on the project. “Virtual worlds are affecting millions of people in their daily lives and while we can record and store some of the social commentary that happens about them from the outside, it seems almost silly that we in fact can’t store the original work beyond a scant number of years.” RIT’s Christopher Egert, assistant professor of IT, and Elizabeth Lawley, director of the Laboratory for Social Computing in the Center for Advancing the Study of Cyberinfrastructure, will also be involved in the project. They will join researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Stanford University, the University of Maryland, and Linden Lab on the project, which has received a $590,000 grant from the Library of Congress.”