Archive for the ‘risk’ tag
Words I like: Significant Deficiency & Control Deficiency
The road to/from deficiency
I found the following definition of “significant deficiency” in a GAO report and I liked it. If you are outside of the US or not regulated by US regulations, you can change the reference regulations mentioned in the first sentence:
A significant deficiency is a control deficiency, or combination of control deficiencies, that adversely affects the entity’s ability to initiate, authorize, record, process, or report financial data reliably in accordance with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles such that there is more than a remote likelihood that a misstatement of the entity’s financial statements that is more than inconsequential will not be prevented or detected.
Then, it also explains what a control deficiency is:
A control deficiency exists when the design or operation of a control does not allow management or employees in the normal course of performing their assigned functions to prevent or detect misstatements on a timely basis.
I Didn’t Do It!
The below is a true story. Some of the names were changed to protect the innocent. Yes, there is a moral to this true story, but you’ll have to read all the way…
It was a typical day. Jose Arcadio was at his office in Los Gatos CA, probably planning the next perfect restaurant visit. Consuela Martinez was (as always) at a random hotel. This time it was in Manila, the Philippines, just before bedtime. In Sunnyvale CA Porky Leibowitz was Blackberry-ing .
9:34 AM| Los Gatos CA|Jose: What the heck is wrong with Security Pie – It came up all jumbled.
1:46 AM+1 day | Manila, Philippines |Consuela: Looks fine to me. What exactly do you see, Jose?
9:48 AM |Sunnyvale CA|Porky : See how we see it here in the US: Chrome and FF (screen shoot added )
1:50 AM +1 day |Manila, Philippines |Consuela: Did anyone touch the style or the sidebar plugin recently?
10:51 AM |Sunnyvale CA|Porky : Not me…
10:52: AM |Los Gatos CA|Jose: Ok. So this morning it looked okay. But then I posted my post as a page (by mistake). I then reposted it as a post. It happened somewhere there. But I did not knowingly make any changes anywhere. Just wrote a blog item. But I can hear Silvester saying “did you touch it”? So it was probably me…
1:55 AM +1 day|Manila, Philippines|Consuela : Okay let’s backtrack. What is the sequence of operations that you did, precisely?
10:52: AM |Los Gatos CA|Jose: I think I did the following:
1. Clicked new page.
2. Wrote.
3. Clicked save and then post.
4. Couldn’t find it on front page.
5. Went back, looked around, found Hong Sin’s remark under moderation and allowed it, and then figured out it was a page and not post.
6. Copied the page to a post, named it the same and posted it. It posted corruptly.
7. Deleted the page (but not the post).
2:10 AM +1 day | Manila, Philippines|Consuela: Okay fixed. The culprit was a <div class=”main”> tag that was somehow transferred with your post when you cut and pasted it. It isn’t visible in the “visual” view, only when you switch to “HTML” view. I suggest you style-edit your post, it contains this ugly link in the middle; I think you can have some text instead where the link is just the target.
What’s the moral?
There is always more one bug. There is always something that can go wrong and you can bet your pie that it would. Paraphrasing Assaf, I have interest in PCI section 6.6 (don’t sue me). As I wrote in another place, things will go wrong. The above example takes place every day in different places. Innocent mistakes that can go wrong. This time, nothing serious happened and our man in Manila was able to take care and fix the problem. Is your organization is as lucky as Securitypie ?
The unprecedented use of the term unprecedented in the current crisis is terrifying
‘An unprecedented crisis‘ said Hank Paulson. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0908/13590.html
‘American economy is facing unprecedented challenges‘ added a concerned George W. Bush http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,425261,00.html
“The Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Paulson, will be granted unprecedented authority in the financial bailout plan” http://www.lockergnome.com/forsythe/2008/09/29/unprecedented-authority-granted-to-henry-paulson/
In a series of moves culminating overnight, Washington took an unprecedented step into the financial sector in a bid to steady an ailing housing market and ease a global credit crunch, analysts said. http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24310593-20142,00.html
Tuesday, Paulson is spearheading an unprecedented global change as the Bush administration point man for the proposed $700 billion bailout of the U.S. financial industry as the economy reels from the credit crisis sparked by the national real estate slump and spiraling mortgage failure rates. http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/2008-09-22-paulson-treasury_N.htm
But the $700bn (€480bn, £380bn) bail-out marks an unprecedented test of both the Democratic and Republican leadership in Congress, who are seeking to pass a proposal that they know will be unpopular among voters in an important election year and is opposed for ideological reasons by factions within both political parties. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2c86b58a-89a4-11dd-8371-0000779fd18c.html
Bush: ‘unprecedented challenges‘ call for ‘unprecedented action‘ http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpposted/archive/2008/09/19/bush-unprecedented-challenges-call-for-unprecedented-action.aspx
Why terrifying?
Because after all these exciting ‘unprecedented firsts‘ everything will be ‘precedented seconds’ or, in other words, bland.
Meanwhile, while things are still interesting, have you placed your bets on September Madness?
You Don’t Build A Fence This Way
The Following text is taken from a GAO report on the SBInet (DHS Needs to Address Significant Risks in Delivering Key Technology Investment) that was published yesterday and caught my attention. The title says it all: risk, technology and investment – everything one needs in order to have a good reading). But then, as I go over the text I was very disappointed to learn that the DHS was not learning from the Israeli mistakes when the security fence was built. Judge for yourself. Read the executive summary below:
SBInet, DHS Secure Border system
Just replace some of the names and you feel like your in the Middle East, where projects are known to be delayed, technology is always ahead of what was originally planned and the overall cost is several times higher then originally planned….