Monthly Archives: February 2014

Greetings all!

Punta Arenas – Sandy Point in English – is right at the very bottom end of Chile. It’s on a bank of the Strait of Magellan, across from the Tierra del Fuego archipelago. In other words, quite literally, the middle of nowhere. Unless, one day, you might fancy flying down to Antarctica… then it’d be where you’d want to be in the middle of, as flights down there leave from here. Actually, you’d need to be a little to the south of Punta Arenas, not in the middle of it, but that wouldn’t have given me the pseudo-witty play on words.

Read on: This was not my first time in Punta Arenas…

Olá folks!

As you’ll have gathered from the title, I’m writing this in the capital of Brazil – the South American upcoming powerhouse with a burgeoning economy. It’s a city of 2.6 million, but there’s no traffic congestion here. You find this with some capitals of large countries, just not often. But here’s a +1 of such capitals visited for me – Brasília, the capital of the republic of soccer, Cachaça, Samba and carnivals…

You didn’t believe me?

Read on: an alternative way of getting to Brazil…

Hi folks!

Some time in early February every year we put on three of our most important events – all in one place, one after the other, back to back:

• A conference for IT analysts;
• Our North American Partner Conference;
• The Security Analyst Summit (SAS) – the annual pow-wow bringing together top security experts from around the globe.

This year the triathlon lasted a week and a half. Non-stop presentations, discussions, negotiations and other meetings. The all-in-one-place idea is to avoid excessive globetrotting by the hundreds who attend. So it’s like three vultures (see below) with one stone. That’s all very well, but such an Ironman multi-conference… well, it’s pretty intense keeping it up that long. Mercifully, three perennial lifesavers here make up for that: beautiful turquoise sea, clear blue sky, and perfect beaches. Phew.

Read on: Paradisiacal funky stuff…

Hi folks!

Strolling about London’s West End several weeks ago, on the recommendation of an art collector friend of mine we dropped by New Bond Street, the spot where the capital’s zillion year-old auction houses are situated. The timing was just right I think, as a few days earlier we’d been at the Tate Modern, and I was all child-in-a-sweet-shop and in the mood for getting hold of a small Rothko or some other such crazy modern art masterpiece for the office. Which is surprising, especially to me, as it’s not like I usually splash out – on anything – as normally doing so is just to show off.

And then I saw it – the bright, shiny, emerald colored… elephant! With a golden angel on its back blowing a horn! It was big, it was elegant, it was cast out of bronze. It heralds hope for the future – “a future promising great fortune”! It’s also the kind of piece that’s truly very aesthetically satisfying to look at – unlike some of the completely mad modern kunst exhibits over in the Tate. I fell in love with it immediately.

Still, what made this piece in particular stand out for me most of all was its color – British racing green KL green! We’ve used green and only green for just about everything KL for years – product boxes, our logo, fonts, mascots… even furniture and fittings in our offices around the world. Yet another factor I’m sure was attracting me to namely this modern artwork was that it was created by a surrealist I’ve always really admired. He’s just so unique with an unmistakable style all of his own. And down the years I’ve been checking out and rechecking many of his works all over the globe – particularly in the museums dedicated to him in Catalonia and Florida. You guessed who yet?

So, to summarize, the equation of my thoughts about this funky green elephant the first time I saw it several weeks ago went something like this:

KL Green + aesthetic delight + genius artist I’m a true fan of + a future so bright we’ve gotta blow a horn = must have!

Read on: Fast forward to a few days ago…

How can you locate and destroy ALL the maliciousness hiding in the sleeping jungles of your computer?

In particular, the extra nasty maliciousness that’s never ever been seen before, which also happens to have a mega-high malevolent-IQ (and is often state sponsored)?

Easy. The answer’s simple: you can’t.

Well, you can at least have a good go at it; but to find the proverbial black malware cat in a pitch black room you need a handful of top-notch pros to do the task manually: expensive. But to do it automatically with a boxed antivirus product – that’s a whole different matter altogether: you normally just get as far as getting on to the scent of super sophisticated infections, but that’s about it. That is, at least, using the old-school AV approach that uses classic antivirus signatures and file scanners.

So what’s the solution?

Again, simple: put some mega brains to hard work – to automate sophisticated-infection seek-and-destroy functions in an AV product.

Read on: So how we do that?…