Telus/Rotman 2009 IT Security Survey

I’ll try to get a better post out later this week, but I thought I’d share some initial information from today’s briefing via Twitter.

Mike

IAM Consulting Services

Code Technology’s IAM Consulting Services pages have been updated.

We offer a full range of services for IAM strategy development, program definition and project delivery.

Contact us today for more information.

Social Media Marketing

I’ve just signed up for the Social Media Marketing Bootcamp that is taking place in downtown Edmonton on September 9th.

The idea is to see how my own business marketing stacks up against the best practices that are emerging.  I’m already using the web, which of course includes many things now tagged as ’social media’, and traditional media for marketing, but perhaps there is a set of practices and techniques that can help my business.

Maybe there is an identity angle to be discovered…

Update: no real identity angles, but a very worthwhile session — I learnt a lot about how to design and implement a social media program.  They are running this again in October but already are nearing capacity, so sign up today if you are interested!

Mike

Telus/Rotman IT Security Survey

 

Last year I commented on an excellent survey of IT Security practices that was conducted by Telus and the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto.  The survey for 2009 is now online.

Some interesting findings from 2008: 

• 4 percent of government organizations reported financial data loss due to information security breaches
• 1 in 11 government organizations have lost confidential data
• IT security investments directly impact (reduce) security incident reports
• breach costs average 23 percent higher in Canada vs US

If you are involved in information security in a Canadian public organization or private-sector company, please click here and fill out the survey.  Your information will be help to provide a complete picture of information security practices in Canada.

Mike

Google Street View Visiting Today

I took a day off today so I happened to be driving through my own neighbourhood around 10:00am.  As I turned the bend, I noticed a Chevy Cobalt with an odd derrick-like structure mounted on the roof:

Of course it was the Google Street View car!  

The cameras on the car take pictures in all directions. Specialized software then ’stitches’ the still images together to provide the Street View experience.  Here is a picture of the camera cluster:

There has been lots of discussion across the country about Street View and its potential for privacy invasion.  The Privacy Commissioner of Canada weighed in on this with their Fact Sheet titled Captured on Camera.  The basic point is that we do have privacy rights:

In Canada, there is private-sector privacy legislation that applies to these street-level imaging applications if they are collecting images of identifiable people. And, while the Privacy Commissioners of Canada, British Columbia, Alberta and Quebec recognize the popularity of these applications, they have also expressed reservations because the technology captures images not just of places, but of people as well. 

I believe the federal commissioner lobbied Google and was able to extract two key concessions: Google would notify residents of the Street View car visit and the company would allow citizens to have images scrubbed if they were deemed privacy invasive.  

I’ll dig up the facts related to this on a subsequent update to this post, but for now I have to go tidy up my front yard!

Mike

Update: Google has a video describing how to remove sensitive or inappropriate images from the service.

Update: Thanks to  Master Maq for a link to an Edmonton Journal article that, I suppose, meets the Privacy Commissioner’s requirement to notify us they are in town. Or does it?