E RADAR | Smarter business online - Latest Comments

Re: Cyber Info Security Predictions 2014 - E RADAR

E RADAR — Fri, 13 Dec 2013 05:53:18 -0000

E RADAR's Dr Daniel Dresner sets out his cyber security predictions for 2014 and let's us know about the 8 presents he definitely doesn't want for Xmas - but will get anyway!

Re: E RADAR E-crime and Cyber Security Centre

E RADAR — Thu, 12 Dec 2013 20:18:12 -0000

Check out E RADAR's new Cybercrime Centre packed full of e-crime and IT security resources, strategies, compliance, laws, good practice, standards, activities, news alerts, threat alerts, virus alerts, strategic players in Europe, UK, US, key projects, Twitter feeds... the list is endless. All designed to help entrepreneurs, business owners, top managers and information workers stay safe and on the right side of the law

Re: Slander vs Libel: Protect your online reputation and brand

E RADAR — Thu, 12 Dec 2013 06:27:03 -0000

Found out your ex business partner and employees are saying some awful things about you online? How can you protect your brand and personal reputation? Check out E RADAR's latest article on slander and libel!

Re: Intellectual Property News Wall - E RADAR

E RADAR — Wed, 04 Dec 2013 16:22:19 -0000

Tired of social media information overkill? Don't know what to look for? E RADAR's new social media channels sources all the best discussion, debate, and opinion from leading commentators, legal experts, tech geeks and business gurus!

Re: NEWS WALL: Cybercrime and Security

E RADAR — Wed, 27 Nov 2013 09:14:11 -0000

Everything you need to know about e crime and cyber security - all in one place

Re: The Legitimate Concern of Consumers & In-Store Tracking

E RADAR — Thu, 19 Sep 2013 14:24:48 -0000

Don't forget to register for E RADAR's Trust in Mobile Enterprise Event in Manchester on 10th October 2013 http://www.eradar.eu/event/...

Re: Ofcom shake up – should you really kick a regulator scared to do its job?

Br0kenTeleph0n3 — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 17:10:21 -0000

Many thanks for your subtle appreciation of the Br0kenTeleph0n3 blog, Philip. If I may nuance our differences over business rates: I sympathise with the chancellor's search for cash, and I agree that perhaps now is not the time to scrap the business rates tax. However, my uncertainty arises from the apparently general lack of knowledge of how much the government actually raises from it.

I have asked VOA, Treasury and the DCLG, all of whom are in the business rates loop. None appears to know definitively what the figure is, or perhaps they don't want to tell us. Either way, the situation is unacceptable. As we all know, if you can't measure it, you can't manage it. If they truly don't know how much they collect from business rates taxes, we (and the government) don't know if it is collecting the 'right' amount of tax. It could be more or less; no-one can know. If they don't want to tell us, that's a breach of our basic right to know how much we pay in tax and how it is spent.

What we do know for certain is that business rates are a tax on investment - not profit, a barrier to investment and job creation, and that chilling effect has a cost beyond what is paid in tax. The government's bird in the hand chases away the rest of the flock. If Mr Osborne is looking to cut red tape, encourage investment and help SMEs, he could address business rates.

Re: Draft Communication on State aid for films and other audiovisual works

E RADAR — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 17:31:00 -0000

Olswang's response to the consultation. Olswang's view is that the proposals in the Draft Communication relating to territorial restrictions directly undermine the acknowledged need to maintain a critical mass of infrastructure for film production in individual Member States and could, as a result, lead to the withdrawal of film support schemes by such Member States. http://www.olswang.com/arti...

Re: How do we rebuild trust in the on-line world?

Will Roebuck — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 04:57:31 -0000

E RADAR is already supporting Philip's strategy on involving masters students to provide fresh thinking on ID governance and Information Assurance issues. From Autumn 2012, Research Director Dr Daniel Dresner will include EURIM's top questions (recently devised with help from its industry members) in his Joint Masters course with postgraduate students from Manchester Business School and Manchester University's School of Computer Science. E RADAR will continue to provide research support in this area.

Re: Network upgrades boost average broadband speeds

E RADAR — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 12:27:19 -0000

All very nice and certainly necessary for the economic growth but Ofcom should not get complacent. There are still tracts of the country where broadband speeds are below 1 Mbit/s and rural examples where BT will not invest. This is despite the fact that the rural economy is becoming more diverse and doing business online opens up a world of opportunities.

Re: Post Olympic Economic Recovery for Britain: A Six Point Plan

Will Roebuck — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 06:35:26 -0000

You're right. We have to act quickly.

The UK is showing real grit and determination to get out of this recession - but I worry that the wheels of bureaucracy don't turn quickly enough to meet today's challenges. It's absolutely right (and not before time) that the public sector is facing this massive shake up because 'MONEY DOESN'T GROW ON TREES'. A well-funded, efficient public sector is not a bottomless pit or a civil service gravy train, but it usually takes a recession to provide the catalyst for reform.

The public perception is that civil servants generally appear detached from the realities of economic supply and demand or having to go out and earn money (rather than being given a budget to spend it). I know this not to be true in all cases, but public sector does have some cultural challenges to deal with around economic efficiency. Politicians also need to find ways to get closer to business issues and find mechanisms for feeding back concerns quickly to decision-makers in government. Those decision-makers need to be able to make their decisions much quicker because we've all now had enough of recession and want to move on.

Re: The Surveillance Commissioner warns “Be very careful what you wish for”

E RADAR — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 09:16:58 -0000

I remember this saga very well with a lot of shuffling behind the scenes to set up a meeting with the Information Commissioner which finally took place October/November 2000 - hosted by the Alliance for Electronic Business (AEB) at e-centre. I was impressed in this meeting with the way the ICO had taken time to understand business concerns. AEB and EURIM members subsequently playing their parts in helping to draft what became the UK's Data Protection Employment Codes of Practice. It was a shame that the CBI decided not to continue as AEB members shortly afterwards because the group was progressive in bringing organisations together (in collaboration rather than competition) to focus on electronic supply chain issues.

12 years later and similar problems remain (as you have pointed out). There still remains the need for an AEB-type organisation to take up this cross business focus. The EU's own statistics reveal that 95% of invoices are still paper based, 60 per cent of EU e-commerce cross border transactions are failing (a scandal for UK online business), and one major bank tells me that it cannot enforce 20 per cent of its contracts because they are lost in the 'digital ether' - i.e. they lack an evidential trail that is legally admissible in a court of law.

Makes me wonder how many other organisations are having similar problems because I think we have only just scratched the surface.

Re: Tax problems linked to cross-border venture capital investment

John Sneed — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 07:19:44 -0000

Blackhawk differentiates itself from other private equity firms in that
investments are normally offered individually to very affluent family
offices on a deal-by-deal basis - a model that reflects our preferences
for investment discretion, where many high-net-worth investors are
hands-on business owners themselves.

Thanks
ziad abdelnour

Re: Government wants your social media information?

E RADAR — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 03:42:31 -0000

More people are saying stupid things using social media and law enforcement will need to protect people's rights

Re: LIBOR Scandal – Is 27001 to blame for the fiasco?

Dr Daniel G. Dresner — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 07:20:34 -0000

Blaming ISO/IEC 27001 for skulduggery surrounding LIBOR is
rather like blaming my neat little plastic card for my driving ability. In much
the same way that other neat little plastic cards were going to save us from international
terrorism. The problem with standards is not that there are so many choose from
(reference your comments sometime back mentioning the Matelot’s prayer) but
rather the bipolar situation of the following of a standard’s clauses in the
expectation that following instructions abrogates responsibility (I was only
obeying orders) or that it removes the need for expertise in the matter at
hand. As I said a few weeks ago (in a blog near you) when the IASME Consortium
set out the information security standard for small businesses as a route map
to get them towards ISO/IEC 27001, it was bound to feel a bit like 27001
itself. The concepts they encompass so basic any good model of security is
indistinguishable from the set of controls that we are all hoping we won't
need. (In much the same way that Messrs Pratchett and Gaiman suggest that any
tape left in a car for long enough will turn into Queen's greatest hits.) The
inherent risk in risk management is that if we don't get the trust model right
(Ahem! Lead me not into temptation…) then the risk treatment decisions fit a
less than honest assessment. When I hear words such as ‘based on 27001’ I would
reach for my gun if I had one. It is the word ‘culture’ that would ensure that
I kept it holstered. It's never just a people problem but the culture of the
organisation or the community tells all. The benevolent security standard is
based on the logic that risks, threats, and vulnerabilities must be treated by
controls. But ’logic... allows one to be wrong authority’ (Holmes). How much
more so the logic is skewed by personal ambition and desire? You need both the
spirit and the letter applied in the right balance of appetite and attitude to
risk. In this sea of complexity, the standards and their checklists are still
signposts to the right behaviours (see ‘The Checklist Manifesto’ by Atul
Gawande). Please don't sully good work by those who misappropriate it to hide
or justify their behaviour.

And while I'm at it, I feel duty bound to point out that although
we may mourn the thickness of the standards catalogues (after all what is a
standards body but a publishing house), if you approach the problem with the
half-empty breakout box, you'll suffer the same fate as those who go it alone
during risk discovery: missing the right tools for the job. So when we look at
the risk management standard 27001, we must remember that it's a standard for information
security and needs to be held aloft with (for example) ISO/IEC 38500 for IT Governance
(splendid, short, neat, and truthful) and the wider philosophy of BS 31100 for Risk Management. They are all explicit
codifications of knowledge which need to be released back into the sociotechnical
and economic framework by the idiosyncrasies that make us prefer one
organisation over another. Trust (Sasse et al.) is simply that positive
expectation that our vulnerabilities will not be exploited. Let's divorce the bad
behaviours from the guidance of standards and keep those standards up to date
with what works.

Re: Why did the French (Minitel) not conquer the on-line world ?

E RADAR — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 08:55:42 -0000

In the summer of 1981, I sheltered from a rainstorm in a farmer's cottage high upin the Cevennes. The farmer was hunched over his Minitel ordering winter food stuffs. I was impressed. On my return to England I found I had been made redundant. On a visit to a computer exhibition in Earls' Court, I noticed a Minitel stand, and asked whether they would be interested in somebody to open up the UK market. They invited me to Paris for an interview. But they then decided that the UK was not ready for such an advanced technology. So I didn't get a job. Richard Sarson.

Re: ICO won’t fine websites for UK cookies violations

E RADAR — Sun, 20 May 2012 05:51:56 -0000

Join in the debate at the Federation of Small Businesses' Discussion Forum http://forum.fsb.org.uk/sho.... We want to find out how much of an issue the cookies law is for UK based businesses

Re: Cookies deadline approaching

E RADAR — Sun, 20 May 2012 05:47:03 -0000

Please check out the cookies forum at the Federation of Small Businesses (http://forum.fsb.org.uk/sho.... We want to find out how much of an issue this is to businesses across the UK

Re: E-commerce and ICT activity 2010

E RADAR — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 05:25:09 -0000

It has been pointed out that these figures are quite misleading.

1. "86.5 percent of businesses used the Internet to interact with public authorities" - HMRC requires you to file tax returns on line - does this mean that 13.5 businesses don't file tax returns?

2. I interpreted (from the report) "website sales" to mean sales made wholly over a website whereas "e-commerce sales" include Electronic Data Interchange. I think this is very misleading - I understand e-commerce to be a website based transaction whereas EDI comes under the definition of electronic business.

Re: Transforming Regulatory Enforcement: Discussion Paper

admin — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 12:06:32 -0000

It has already come to our attention that the Health and Safety Executive is setting out a new costs recovery regime (see: http://www.healthandsafetya...

""The government has agreed that it is right that those who break the law should pay their fair share of the costs to put things right - and not the public purse,â said Gordon MacDonald, the HSE's programme director.

âThese proposals provide a further incentive for people to operate within the law, levelling the playing field between those who comply and those who don't. Compliant firms will not pay a penny in intervention fees.â

Re: Web Law: E-commerce Tips and Tricks

admin — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 15:03:50 -0000

Thanks Danny, we want to keep things simple for businesses

Re: Web Law: E-commerce Tips and Tricks

ddresner — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 13:27:14 -0000

These are precisely the pithy points businesses need. 'All the rest is commentary' (Hillel). Well done.

Re: Defamation Bill

admin — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 14:35:09 -0000

Defamation Bill published on Ministry of Justice website

Re: What is the Cloud? The Law and Cloud Computing

admin — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 08:21:05 -0000

Are there criminals hiding in the cloud?

Rogue cloud service providers based in countries with lax cybercrime laws can provide confidential hosting and data storage services.

[This] facilitates the storage and distribution of criminal data, avoiding detection by law enforcement agencies.

Click here to read more (BBC Click)

Re: Contempt of Court Act 1981

admin — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 13:04:24 -0000

Juror admits contempt of court over facebook contact.

A juror, who contacted a defendant via Facebook, has admitted contempt of court in the first case of its kind in the UK involving the internet. She has been sentenced to 8 months imprisonment.

Fraill admitted she had made online contact with Ms Sewart and discussed the case with her while the juryâs deliberations were continuing.

She also admitted revealing details of the jury’s deliberations during that online conversation – contrary to Contempt of Court Act 1981 – and conducting internet research into a defendant whose case she was trying as a juror during the trial.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/u...