Assorted thoughts…

I’ve been swamped with a new project lately so I’ve not had much chance to post.  If I had more time in the past week, I would have written really insightful things on topics such as:

• The Alberta Auditor General reports that numerous government departments have not maintained proper control over IT systems, pointing out a need to improve IT security.  Good news for security consultants here in oil country, but the interesting thing about this post is that IT security is news-worthy — normally not the sort of thing you’d expect to read in the morning paper.  Does that signify a shift in general attitudes towards IT security?
• Thanks to Vikram Kumar’s blog for the story of the identity fraud artist in New Zealand who managed to bilk the government out of a cool $NZ3.4 million ($C2.5m).  He did it through serial impersonization, using faked government documents to claim benefits for multiple identities. “It was a full time occupation of serious dishonesty,” said Justice Peter Woodhouse.  And I like the bit about the buried cash and gold bullion, gotta be a movie script in here somewhere!
• An awareness of security breaches is always a good thing.  I periodically drop in on the Breach Blog site to catch up on news about misplaced records, hacked databases and stolen flash drives.  Keeps fresh the belief that we can’t do enough to secure our information — and if we don’t, someone is lying in wait to make us look foolish…

Mike