Security Pie

At the end of every quarter, there’s this magical moment: its best time. If you are working in a sales or sales support position, you are probably connected to your mobile email device working 24×7 on getting this next deal… Lots of adrenalin in the air. It’s fun time. Unfortunately, RIM’s Blackberry network is down. In other words, no-mail-for-you…

Some BlackBerry customers in the Americas are experiencing delays in message delivery,” RIM said in a statement. “Technical teams are actively working to resolve the issue for those impacted. RIM apologizes for any inconvenience experienced by customers.”

The outage is the second for RIM in that past five days. For several hours on Thursday, users were once again not able to receive or send e-mail messages. RIM did not provide any details on what caused the outages on Thursday or Tuesday night.

Googling around, you’ll find several outage reports. Few are during this time… while it’s clear that it is only a coincidence it proves again that there’s never a good time for an outage…

So in an effort to better understand the future by reading about the past, and out of respect for Uma, I am reading a famous handbook for Samurai swords by John M. Yumoto.

In the book, Mr. Yumoto discusses the issue of counterfeiting, which apparantly rampant througout Japan at the time the swords were made. “Smiths often used friends’ names; apprentices used masters’ names and sons would use their fathers’ names.”

He quotes a legend from the smiths of Bizen Province:

The village in Osafune, in Bizen province, was known for its swordsmiths. One day Kanemitsu (金光), one of the town’s leading smiths, was enjoying a moment of rest in his shop. He suddenly found himself listening intently to the sound of the chisel of his neighbor in the shop next door.

Angrily he arose, dashed next door, and seized the sword on which the other smith had been chiseling a name.
“You were putting my name on that sword,” said Kanemitsu.

The other smith admitted that he had been doing so and apologized. “How did you know?” The guilty one asked. “Were you watching?”

“No” answered Konemitsu, “but I was listening. You used a greater number of strokes than was necessary if you had been writing your own name”.

Real Samurai use real Kanemitsu swords

A few weeks ago I gave a talk at an ISSA webcast about the importance of monitoring for data security. The Bizen province legend is a great example of monitoring data usage. Somehow, it is oddly comforting to know that data monitoring would have been as important to 14th century swordmakers as to modern day business owners.

/al

Finally a real reason to go through the headache of switching a phone company, get new apps and test ‘em. The folks at JVC developing VHS understood that. Sony did not get it at first

There is a claim that adult content was not available on Betamax (possibly because Sony would not allow it) while it was becoming readily available on VHS. Whether or not this was really a factor is a contentious topic….

(read the sotry how VHS format won here)

But then they did…  The folks at mikandi get it for sure. The killer application of all times – porn, now at a screen next to you.

There are still some open positions at the company. But beware, if you are self-righteous, ignorant and/or annoying please do not apply.