Nota Bene

During the course of a business trip, I tend to meet a lot of people. These can be anyone to people in the street to conference attendees to reporters or partners of the company. In meeting this many people, I also get asked a lot of interesting questions.

Most times I am able to give quick answers or offer some insight into the state of cybersecurity, what airports to avoid or best places in the world to spend a holiday. But there are also times where I have to be quick and head to the next meeting or connecting flight.

When you add up the years that I have spent travelling and growing the business over the last 20 years, these missed connections start to add up. So many people left with burning questions.

If you are one of these people that have missed your chance in the past, I have got some good news for you. On Thursday May 11th at 9:00 am EDT, you can literally ask me anything.

Seriously, this is not a joke boys and girls. I will be hopping on Reddit for a 2-hour Ask Me Anything where you can ask anything that you want and I will answer as many as I can. We will also be sharing the link to the AMA a bit before on our social media channels in case you can’t make the chat.

So what will you ask me?

Since I’m writing this post in the wee small hours of a London night, I can wish the bulk of my usual readers:

A good morning and good day!

As well as good evening, good night, sweet dreams! And then once again it’s onwards and upwards to new achievements in your personal and community activities. In other words, as yours truly is wont to say: “get back to work guys!”

Frankfurt is next up on my agenda. It’s a familiar situation – I’ve actually been here many times, but not in the city itself, just at the airport for connecting flights. I’ve never seen this large and very important city as a tourist! This time, too, Frankfurt has managed to fly past me, leaving a sort of “impressionistic” picture in the memory.

All the same, is there anything from Germany’s landscapes that I can offer you to exercise your mind? Are you ready to rack your brains?

Read on: A small introduction to cities of the world…

I have a very high opinion of Schindler, the world’s leading manufacturer of elevators and escalators. (Next time you use these modes of transport, take note of the manufacturer’s logo.) In my view, this company deserves lots of respect and its business practices are worthy of study and emulation. However, when I see the company’s booth at an exhibition, replete with slogans like this, it sends a shiver down my spine, I start feeling uncomfortable about the world around me, and my left eye starts to twitch. Why?

There were three slogans that I had a particular problem with:

– How can I turn my elevator into a digital native?
– What is your elevator doing while you sleep?
– Can you meet your elevator online?

If you take a closer look, you can see them in this photo:

It may not bother everyone, but it makes me a little apprehensive. Of course, you understand… An elevator in the Internet is not as dangerous as the Internet in an elevator! OK, that’s tonight’s nightmares taken care of. No, I’m not trying to scare you. And I certainly wouldn’t want anyone to dream about the elevator from this cartoon!

The venue is Hannover Messe, the yearly mega-exhibition of industrial solutions. It’s all about automation, manufacturing, the energy industry, all sorts of robots, the rarest spare parts and other types of modern industrial magic.

Read on: Pretty interesting!…

Last fall, in our domestic market we turned to the Federal Antimonopoly Service with a complaint against Microsoft regarding its anti-trust legislation violations.

Despite the long silence on the airwaves, the matter was in fact slowly but surely being addressed. And don’t pay any attention to inaccurate reports about not filing similar claims with the EU Commission: that was off the back of an interview I gave in Germany in which it looks like a fact or two went astray – perhaps lost in translation. We are definitely not planning on ‘temporarily backing off’ filing our competition complaint with the EU Commission.

And anyway, instead of reading reports it’s always better hearing it from the horse’s mouth, as they say… So here I am with real news and confirmed details and plans that I can share at the moment compromising neither ethical nor legal norms.

Ok. Let’s begin…

First off, as was expected, Microsoft disagrees with our claims. ‘We did not create conditions…’, ‘we have not infringed…’, and even: ‘we do not dominate…’ But facts are stubborn things, and despite the formal denials, Microsoft has, in fact, taken a few crucial steps toward rectifying the situation. And it looks like our actions might have helped encourage Microsoft to do so. Of course, there’s still more that needs to be done, but this is at least a good start toward ensuring that consumers have the chance to choose the best cybersecurity solution for them specifically.

It appears Microsoft took a two-pronged approach: (i) formal denials (which is logical); and (ii) specific (although small) practical steps to meet both users and independent software developers half-way.

I’ll leave out the formal denials here, but in this post I want to tell you a bit about those ‘practical steps’ that were recently taken by Microsoft. Let’s have a look at three notable examples thereof:

Example No. 1: The Alarming Windows Defender PC Status Page.

One of the claims we made against Microsoft regarded the misleading Windows Defender PC status page, pictured below:

The good news is that Microsoft has changed the previously displayed status page in a recent update, addressing several of the confusing and misleading elements we described.

So, what was the original status page for and what were our objections?

Read on: the right direction…

Such is the way Homo Sapiens are: we’re constantly – even recklessly – looking to the future to try and work out what it might hold for us. Many say we should all live in the present – after all, the future never comes – but, well, that doesn’t work for everyone, and most of us do need to make at least some plans for our futures.

But there are different approaches to looking ahead.

There’s belief in fate, pure guessing, flipping a coin, and so on. There’s also not thinking about the future at all. But there’s a far superior, science-based approach too. This is doing the eastern spirituality thing a bit – not quite being in the present but carefully analyzing the present instead – to be able to predict the future as accurately as possible. And this is exactly what is done to predict the cyber-future; in particular – the security of the cyber-future. And that’s what we do – little by little every day, but also broadly and deeply and especially – and merrily – every year, when we bring together the world’s cybersecurity elite for a week-long pow-wow in a tropical seaside resort, which pow-wow we call the Security Analyst Summit (SAS):

Oops – wrong vid. Here u go…:

Dough! Nope. This one:

I don’t know quite how it’s done but every single year SAS just gets better. I mean, it’s always been GReAT, but the GReATness just keeps going up and up: more experts, better quality content, better and more original ideas, slicker, cooler, and more and more world scoops and exclusive material.

And it’s exclusive material that I’ll be writing about in this here post. Specifically, my Top-5 favorite presentations from SAS-2017. I’m not saying the others were no good or just so-so, it’s just I wasn’t physically able to see them all as they were running simultaneously in different halls. Also – everyone has their own taste; well here’s a guide to mine!…

Off we go!…

Read on: A Maze for a Penguin Under the Moonlight…

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, somewhere in London – quite possibly in the British Museum – I recall beholding a painting called something like ‘The Market on the Thames’. ‘Whoah!’ I thought to myself, naturally. The River Thames completely freezing over to the extent that not only could you walk around on its surface, but also have a large winter marketplace on it too?! Crikey, as they say in London.

I’m not sure this was the painting I saw; it could have been this, or even this one.

Straight away this got me thinking – about man-made global warming in particular…

So, the Thames hasn’t frozen over for more than 200 years. This means that the full force of the Industrial Revolution didn’t make the climate any warmer at all – since the Industrial Revolution’s full force was felt around the same time as when the Thames would freeze over (it was so cold around then (16^th to 19^th centuries) they’ve even called the period the Little Ice Age).

Ok, that could be countered with: ‘it hasn’t frozen over for 200 years precisely because of the man-made global warming caused by the Industrial Revolution!’ Hmmm. Ok folks, over to you. Your thoughts? :).

Read on: Sounds familiar…

I think it’s time to review my recent five-week spot of globetrotting. Not the longest of world tours for me, but still sufficiently intense – and, as ever, thoroughly enjoyable.

It went like this:

Moscow – Gatwick – Jersey – Normandy – Paris – Buenos Aires (connection) – Ushuaia – Antarctica – Buenos Aires – Porto Seguro – Sint Maarten – Amsterdam – Dubai – Moscow.

Read on: Seven countries, four continents, eight events…

A month ago the first leg of my month+ journey went in a smooth arc southwest from Europe, then down – right down to the bottom of the earth; then it was back up north (er, where else?:) to Saint Martin (the island) – specifically the Dutch 40% thereof (not the French 60%) (confused?!?!) – where the worlds’ craziest beach is and where we had our SAS-2017. Next, it was back home to Moscow. But not directly…

No. First of all, that would have been impossible (no direct flights). Secondly, it would have been boring, as we’d have missed out…: Amsterdam!

So off we flew – from the same runway where we were getting our kicks on Route 66 Beacon Hill Road earlier that day. Only… we didn’t blow anyone over. As I wrote in yesterday’s post, normally planes begin their acceleration from the beach end of the runway, blasting the tourists behind them as they do; but our KLM plane did it the other way round. Another strange thing: flying from the Netherlands to Holland took… eight hours and 15 minutes. And there was me thinking the country was not so large :).

All righty: Amsterdam!…

So, as the title asks – what does Amsterdam smell of? I mean – in the old city center along the banks of the canals? Yep, you guessed it: ganjer! Practically everywhere!

Read on: so we went to a museum…

Our experts + other experts + our media crew + international press + Sint Maarten = work hard, play hard. Sun, sand, surf, palm trees… and the cybersecurity avant garde. Yep – it was SAS 2017.

Hmmm. What’s this fence doing here – practically on the beach? And all those ‘Danger’ signs?

Aha – yes; you’ve guessed it: it’s that landing strip – the one that ends just short of the beach!

Read on: The pretty unusual feeling…

Hi folks!

After my Antarctic series on this here blog of mine, it looks like another series may be on the horizon – a historical one. Yesterday we had an alternative history of so-called crown dependencies; today – more history; not of a (British) crown dependency but a former (British) crown colony, no less…

So, who… you know, got there first from overseas? I was just curious after reading various scholarly versions and falsifications. So I read up more on the subject, and I discovered the following:

Episode 1: Homo Sapiens.

So who first discovered America? You know, like a zillion years ago? Well there’s no precise answer to that question one as it was… a zillion years ago, before things like writing and the keeping of records, and a zillion other useful things were invented. But, apparently, it was someone who was from what is now Siberia, who, at some point during the spring of the ice age, crossed the (possibly, at least in parts, dry) valley between the two glacial mountains on either side of what is today the (very wet) Bering Strait.

Who knows today what the Bering Strait looked like back then? Was it completely dry? Was it a swampy marsh? Or was it much like it is today – a sea? Did that first Siberian walk it? Canoe it? Swim it? We’ll probably never know, unless…).

Read on: What made them decide to go east?…