Nota Bene

What’s Denmark famous for? Yes, it produces nice butter and bacon and beer and political dramas, and I do believe pastries were invented there. But what’s the one thing that’s the most quintessentially Danish like nothing else? Yes: Lego. So when in Denmark…

… go to Legoland! Here! Infinitesimal Lego! Constructions, installations, models, and all sorts of Lego-related amusements. If only I were 40 years younger I’d have stayed forever. But alas I can’t go back in time. Still, even at 50 I’d have wanted to stay a lot longer :)…

Right at the entrance you come across an outsized Lego installation – meaning, made out of outsized pieces a lot bigger than the standard mini-pieces. However, most of the exhibits seem to be made of the standard ‘bricks’. In we go!…

Read on: Oh my Force!…

Hej!

One more report from the Nordic front…

While we were in Copenhagen it turned out several conferences – maybe also exhibitions – were taking place simultaneously in the city. So I guess it was only logical that practically all the hotels were full, having been fully booked up months ago. So we had to be fitted in ‘somewhere, anywhere… main thing – the place has a roof’.

I braced for the worst, but needn’t have, for the only hotel my good offices found that had a few vacancies was the Nimb Hotel. As that Wiki-link tells you, hardly a dosshouse :). Also, incredibly handily, it was a mere five minutes’ walk to the conference hall where I was speaking. There’s just one problem: peacocks! Screaming their little heads off – right under our windows!

The view from my window. Not bad at all. Recommend.

Read on: robo-rabbits vs peacocks…

Copenhagen, Denmark. Hadn’t been here in quite a while; last time was in February 2011. Back then, as could be expected in this Nordic capital, it was cold (and windy). This time though – suitably summery: sunny and warm and with long light evenings. Very ‘euro-cool’ too: folks lounging languidly at street cafes and restaurants, cyclists seeming to take direct aim at unaccustomed (non-European) pedestrian-tourists, and boats leisurely carrying folks about to and fro along the rivers and canals. Euro-cool? Euro-paradise!

As per the usual MO, after having finished our business in the current locality, it was time to head out for some micro-tourism. Scratch that. Nano-tourism: just three hours’ worth! I’m sure three days would be a more suitable length of time to check out this city more appropriately, but what could I do? I had to be back on the road come evening. Accordingly, the tourism-tempo was decidedly up…

Read on: Mermaids Seize Boat!…

Hi folks from modish Milan, where it’s a sunny 28 degrees centigrade!

28º? So what? It is summer, after all. Yes, and temperatures in Moscow two weeks ago were approaching 28º. But for the last several days in the Russian capital it’s been hovering around 7º, and has hardly stopped tipping it down with rain (I even heard that there was hail at the weekend in St. Petersburg!) What’s going on? Moscow’s not in Greenland. It’s not on Kamchatka either (where snow in June fails to shock anyone). It’s on the relatively temperate Central Russian Upland! Still, I should be grateful it didn’t get as bad as in Paris…

Out of my hotel room window I’ve got a great view of the Milano Centrale railway station. What a grandiose bit of architecture…

Though I’ve been inside it a few times before and always been very impressed, I decide to have another peek – just to lessen my sclerosis.

Read on: Monumental, imperially, with a reserve for the future …

Phew. Another regional partner conference done and dusted. We have quite a few every year: North American (this year in Cancun); Latin America (recently in Bolivia, but this year I sadly couldn’t make it); and APAC (just the other week in Vietnam). There’s also an ‘Emerging Markets’ conference – the one that we’ve just done and dusted, in Barcelona – which covers Latin America (yep, they’re lucky – they get two conferences a year), Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

As always it was as always: meetings, presentations, discussion, negotiations and so on: the serious bit. Then there was the fun bit: a gala dinner, this time in Barcelona’s Maritime Museum. Super place for a super supper :).

Artificial intelligence… Two words which together conjure up so much wonder and awe in the imagination of programmers, sci-fi fans and perhaps just about anyone with an interest in the fate of the world!

Thanks to man’s best friend the dog R2-D2, the evil Skynet, the fantastical 2001: A Space Odyssey, post-apocalyptical androids dreaming of electric sheep, and maybe also Gary Numan, everyone is pretty well familiar with the concept of artificial intelligence (AI). Yep, books, the big screen, comics, er… mashed potato advertisements – AI is in all of them in a big way. It also features heavily in the marketing materials of recently-appearing and exceptionally-ambitious cybersecurity companies. In fact, there’s probably only one place today where you can’t find it. Thing is, that single place happens to cover practically everything that makes up this world and all the life in it: the not-so-insignificant sphere called ‘real everyday life‘.

Source

It’s common knowledge that since the days of Alan Turing and Norbert Wiener (that is, around the mid-20^th century) computers have come on in leaps and bounds. They learned how (rather, they were taught how) to play chess – and better than humans. They fly planes, now also cars on the roads. They write newspaper articles, catch malware and do tons of other useful – and often not so useful – things. They pass the Turing test to prove possession of intelligent behavior equivalent to a human. However, a chatterbot simulating a 13-year-old capable of nothing else – that is just an algorithm plus a collection of libraries. It is not artificial intelligence. Not convinced? Then I advise you simply look up the definition of AI, then that of an algorithm, and then look at the differences between the two. It’s not rocket computer science.

We are currently witnessing yet another wave of interest in AI across the world. Which number this wave is I’ve lost track of…

Read on: People that don’t know what they’re talking about…

All countries and the people who live in them are different. I think we’re all clear on that. Some countries and peoples differ from others more so, others less so. History, religion, traditions, customs, business – all have different grades of differentness. Business differences can stretch from one end of the spectrum to the other – from liberality and business freedom to strictness and extreme state regulation. Vive la difference! But the degree of diversity across a region can vary…

Let’s take Europe. Or Latin America. Within these regions countries of course differ, but if we step back and view the regions as wholes, we see they’re still in a lot of ways similar. However, that is not the case for one region of the world: Asia. Thing is, many from outside Asia don’t realize this, and make the mistake of thinking Asia on the whole is much like Europe is on the whole – only Asian. It isn’t. No way. Asian countries differ from each other much more than, say, France and Germany, or Paraguay and Peru. Even Brazil, the USA and Spain resemble each other more than, for example, India, South Korea, and Indonesia. Over in Asia, things are a lot more variegated. Which makes it all the more interesting…

I get a real kick out of the diversity of impressions, traditions, and business rituals in Asia. Even the basics are strange yet crazy cool; for example, how to correctly make folks’ acquaintance and exchange business cards. Yep, I just love Asian diversity and divergence.

Read on: united colors of partners…

Hi all!

On a bit of a roll here on the survival-of-the-fittest-in-IT theme. Wasn’t planning a trilogy… it just kinda happened. Sort of…

…Sort of, as, well, the specific problem of parasites in the IT Security world I’ll be writing about today has been at the back of my mind for a long time already. This Darwinism talk seemed the perfect opportunity to finally let rip. You’ll see what I mean…

Today folks: parasites. But not those we’re fighting against (the ‘very’ bad guys); those who claim are also fighting the very bad guys (philosophical question: who’s worse?).

The IT industry today is developing at a galloping pace. Just 10-15 years ago its main themes were desktop antiviruses, firewalls and backups; today there’s a mass of new different security solutions, approaches and ideas. Sometimes we manage to stay ahead of the curve; sometimes we have some catch-up to do. And there are other times we fall into a stupor from astonishment – not from new technologies, innovations or fresh ideas, but from the barefaced brazenness and utter unscrupulousness of our colleagues in the security industry.

But first, let me explain how events have been developing.

There’s a very useful service called the VirusTotal multiscanner. It aggregates around 60 antivirus engines, which it uses to scan files and URLs folks send it for malware checking, and then it returns the verdict.

Example: Joe Bloggs finds a suspicious application or office document on a hard drive/USB stick/the Internet. Joe’s own antivirus software doesn’t flag it as containing a malware, but Joe is the paranoid type; he wants to make really sure it’s not infected. So he heads over to the VirusTotal site, which doesn’t have just one antivirus solution like he does, but ~60. It’s free too, so it’s a no brainer. So Joe uploads the file to VirusTotal and gets instant info on what all the different AVs think about it.

First of all, to clarify: both the folks at VirusTotal and those at VirusTotal’s owners Google are firmly on the ‘good guys’ side. They have no connection with parasites whatsoever. VirusTotal is run by a very professional team, which has for years been fulfilling the task at hand extremely effectively. (Still need convincing? How about VirusTotal winning the MVP award last year at the Security Analyst Summit (SAS)?) Today VirusTotal is one of the most important sources of new malware samples and malicious URLs; and also a very cool archeological tool for researching targeted attacks.

Recognizing VirusTotal for enduring contribution to security research #SaveTheWorldMVP #TheSAS2015 pic.twitter.com/lZTjN30Xwg

— J. A. Guerrero-Saade (@juanandres_gs) February 16, 2015

The problem lies with a handful of shady users of the multiscanner who, alas, are becoming more and more unblushingly unabashed in how they conduct themselves.

Read on: Things getting interesting… for wrong reasons

The idea of space travel has been knocking about in the back of my brain for quite a few years now, in fact since the time when Sir Richard Branson was sponsoring the Brawn GP Formula One Team. Back then we (KL) were mulling over getting into F-1 sponsorship (which we eventually did get into by sponsoring Scuderia Ferrari) and I met RB at a race. To cut a long story short, after a good bit of banter I ended up buying a ticket from his good offices – for a trip into space!

Since then, I’ve managed to bone up and get some practice in on space-related themes by experiencing weightlessness (in an IL-76), witnessing the launch of a Soyuz from Baikonur, and visiting the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City.

https://www.instagram.com/p/wtT_yhuiSq/

Weightlessness is just awesome, and I had no real problems getting the knack of it. But to dock a Soyuz trainer to a mock-up International Space Station – I couldn’t crack that: I couldn’t get the hang of the management console there. It seems space engineers have no clue about user experience and A/B testing :).

In the meantime, a cosmodrome was built for Virgin Galactic. This isn’t too large as only sub-orbital planes are planned to be launched from it. There’ve already been test flights, glamorous presentations, and other assorted good news stories coming out of it. Then there was some very bad news; then there was a long silence for some 18 months.

Then, just the other day, out of the blue space, I received a communication of cosmic importance! (They don’t forget about their clients – already a good sign. But it gets better…)

Read on: Dear astronaut…

Hi folks!

As promised, herewith, more on the connection between evolution theory and how protection against cyberthreats develops.

To date, what precisely brings about mutations of living organisms is unknown. Some of the more unconventional experts reckon it’s the work of viruses, which intentionally rearrange genes (yep, there’s who really rules the world!). But whatever the case may be, similar mutation processes also occur in IT Security – sometimes with the help of viruses too.

In line with the best traditions of the principle of the struggle for existence, security technologies evolve over time: new categories of products appear, others become extinct, while some products merge with others. Regarding the latter for example, integrity checkers were a major breakthrough in the mid-90s, but nowadays they’re a minor part of endpoint solutions. New market segments and niches appear (for example, Anti-APT) to complement the existing arsenals of protective technologies – this being a normal process of positive symbiosis for good. But all the while nasty parasites crawl out of the woodwork to warm themselves in the sun. C’est la vie – as it’s always been, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

In the struggle for market share in IT Security there regularly appear prophets prophesizing a sudden end to ‘traditional’ technologies and – by happy chance – simultaneous (‘just in time!’) invention of a bullshit product revolutionary panacea (with generous discounts for the first five customers).

But this isn’t something new: any of you remember anti-spyware? In the early 2000s a huge bubble of products to get rid of spyware grew up from nothing. Much BS was fired the consumer’s way about the inability of ‘traditional antivirus’ to cope with this particular problem, but right from the beginning it was all just made up.

But the market has grown used to and tired of such prophets, and these days monetizing ‘panaceas’ requires a lot more investment and snake oil marketing efforts.

Read on: David and Don Draper Against Goliath…