Merry Christmas

Here's wishing you all a happy, safe and peaceful Christmas this year. I hope all of your Christmas cards arrived at the right address and on time ;)

All the best,

Richard

Who is driving your data management?

There was a time when all businesses really cared about was profit and process. We adhered to process, ticked the right boxes, kept the costs down, and collected our pay cheques at the end of the month. The customer was largely ignored and left to their own devices. Then as customers started selecting the best customer service, and as business management techniques improved, the customer became king. Delighting the customer was a mantra that pushed us on. But now something truly interesting is happening.

Our customers are becoming tech savvy.

First, it was businesses who insisted that we communicated electronically. But slowly the general public have become more and more knowledgeable about what computers are truly capable of. Now, almost everyone has a computer. The common user makes daily decisions about managing the applications and data on their personal smart phone, and whether they need cloud storage and backup strategies.

I have an application on my iPhone that allows me to match and merge duplicate contacts in the contacts application - all simply at the touch of a button.

We have all become data managers.

So these new tech savvy customers will naturally expect high standards of data management from the organisations that they do business with. We need to be ready. We need to know our data lineage, so we can plan and execute change successfully and swiftly. We need to optimise our data in every aspect of our business, so we can wring the last drop of value and opportunity from it. We need to know that "Jon Smith" who bought one product from us is the same person as "John Smith" who holds several more products.

Customer ignorance is no protection to businesses any more. Data accuracy and value needs to be the new mantra - because now our customers expect it.

Big data - a conceptual example

I recently took my children on a trip to Jodrell Bank. For those who do not know, it is a very old radio telescope observatory in Cheshire that was build by Sir Bernard Lovell.

Although Jodrell Bank is getting very old, and is being overtaken by space based telescopes like Hubble, it is still a shining example of ingenuity and science in action, and it still has a vital role, gathering information about pulsars around the galaxy.

If we consider that science is the collection of data, it is surely best to acquire the greatest amount of data possible. This is why telescopes got larger and larger - to catch more data. 

But science wants to collect so much more data than just one conventional telescope can manage. So what they have done is to stop building large telescopes like the Lovell telescope at Jodrell Bank, and instead build arrays of smaller dishes.

An array is a set of radio telescopes that are controlled together and pointed at the same part of the sky. The information is collected from all of them and put together. Modern Big Data works like an array - because one large computer is just not good enough any more. Data has become too large, varied and complicated for it.

Big data solutions are arrays of computers that are joined together to process very large and complex data sets. They employ special hardware and software to ensure all of the work is shared across the computers in the array. The end result is that huge, complex data sets can be processed much quicker than before.

Tips on how to get on in Tech

You may be surprised to hear that I did not originally want to work in data or technology. In fact the idea of sitting at a desk for any length of time used to fill me with terror. When I did find myself working in an office, I gravitated towards technical roles because they interested me. Some people are not so lucky, and may find themselves having to do something they find difficult. Here are some tips to get you more proficient in the technical aspects of your role:

1.  The internet is your friend.

Believe it or not, whatever piece of technical equipment you may need to operate, there are forums somewhere on the internet, dedicated to people sharing knowledge. Join up and share your problems. There is a wealth of support out there.

2.  Cultivate a strong sense of curiosity

The great thing about tech people is they like to share their knowledge. If you have colleagues who are technically proficient, swallow your pride and ask them. Don't forget - there is no such thing as a stupid question. Ask, then shut up and let them tell you.

3.  Apply practically
An idea or concept is useless unless it can be put into practice. So if you learn something, look for ways in which it can be applied and implement them - before you forget it altogether.

4.  Don't be precious about your methods
You've learned a programming language or a package. It's a great sense of achievement. But technology is always on the move. New things come along all the time. Sometimes that means we need to discard old ways of doing things to improve. Tying yourself to one package may give you problems when industry changes direction. 

When moving is a problem

Mobility of staff within an organisation can be perceived as a good thing - a result of an efficient HR department and a company that likes to remain agile. However, this causes an often neglected flaw in many companies and how they administer the system access of their employees and the resultant authorisation.

Many organisations have processes that involve multiple people. This is often for good reason, to spread risk and introduce checks and balances to prevent fraud or human error. Imagine that an employee starts off in a role within the organisation in the front office, answering phone calls. Let's call him Bob.... 

Bob has a set of screens that allow him to request functions for the back office to complete. Perhaps one of these functions is requesting refunds for defective products for the back office to process.

Then Bob gets a promotion that allows him to work in the back office, printing the same refund cheques that he used to request while he was in the front office. Most organisations will add the new functions, but they will rarely take away the old redundant authorisation.

Bob now has access to both front and back office functions that enable him to request and print cheques without scrutiny from the rest of the organisation.

So I would ask - how many of your colleagues have been put in this position? Are they even aware that they are exposed to fraud and excessive operational risk? Conduct an audit. See for yourself. You may be surprised by the results.

How secure are your passwords?

In this non-stop, always-on digital world, it's not unusual for the general public to have a large number of user ID's and passwords for various web sites.  Many sites like Amazon, Ebay and Paypal also hold your credit card details for convenience.

Take this into the business world, and a user can have access to many technical areas on servers all over the place:

• Databases
• Platforms/servers
• Web applications
• Secure FTP areas
• Personal computers
• Mainframe applications

User authentication is extremely important to make sure the right people can conveniently access their systems and services, while preventing unauthorised exploitation.

Companies may choose to give their users a generic user ID that can be used for all of their systems. General public websites often ask users to use their email addresses as user ID's. This puts increased importance on the security of the password for each system. We can use Entropy (my favourite nerd term) to measure of the effectiveness of a password.

Entropy is the level of disorganisation within a collection of related objects or components of a system. So in a password situation, Entropy is used to measure the level of unpredictability between each character of a password. The higher the entropy, the more secure your password is.

There are a few different ways to find out the correct password:

• Stealing
• Social engineering (misleading you into divulging your password)
• Guesswork
• Brute force

A high entropy sequence of characters will make your password impervious to guesswork and more difficult to gain access through brute force.

Guesswork involves using knowledge of popular passwords, like '1234', 'admin', '9999' etc.

Brute force involves the use of a piece of software that bombards the application with multiple passwords until it finally hits the correct one. So the higher the Entropy of your password, the longer it will take for the program to discover your password.

There are many precautions we can take to secure our information from hackers, governments and thieves. This is the first in a number of articles in which I intent to raise awareness of information security for the normal user, and why we all need to be vigilant in the workplace.

Corporate laughs

Is business intelligence a contradiction in terms? How come so many smart people can often come together to mess things up so badly? Applying cold, hard logic to spontaneous communication can be hilarious. Here are some of my favourite corporate faux pas:

“As of tomorrow, employees will only be able to access the building using individual security cards. Pictures will be taken next Wednesday, and employees will receive their cards in two weeks.”
(Microsoft Corp. in Redmond WA)

“What I need is an exact list of specific unknown problems we might encounter.”
(Lykes Lines Shipping)

“E-mail is not to be used to pass on information or data. It should be used only for company business.”
(Accounting manager, Electric Boat Company)

“This project is so important we can’t let things that are more important interfere with it.”
(Advertising/Marketing manager, United Parcel Service)

“Doing it right is no excuse for not meeting the schedule.”
(Plant Manager, Delco Corporation)

“No one will believe you solved this problem in one day! We’ve been working on it for months. Now go act busy for a few weeks and I’ll let you know when it’s time to tell them.”
(R&D supervisor, Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing/3M Corp.)

Quote from the Boss: “Teamwork is a lot of people doing what I say.”
(Marketing executive, Citrix Corporation)

My sister passed away and her funeral was scheduled for Monday. When I told my Boss, he said she died on purpose so that I would have to miss work on the busiest day of the year. He then asked if we could change her burial to Friday. He said, “That would be better for me.”(Shipping executive, FTD Florists)

“We know that communication is a problem, but the company is not going to discuss it with the employees.”
(Switching supervisor, AT&T Long Lines Division)

 Have a great day.