What this week’s internet-wide PHP scramble actually tests On Tuesday, the people who look after the software plumbing most of the web runs on had a bad day. Two critical flaws were found in PHP, the language that quietly powers something like seven or eight in every ten websites, including a huge chunk of the
Who’s Allowed to Pull the Plug? Read More »
When someone asks me what I do for a living, I usually take a breath before answering. Business continuity, crisis management, information security, data protection, emergency planning, exercising, training…. People’s eyes start to glaze over somewhere around the third item, and I can see them filing me under “something in IT” or “health and safety,
Defrosted overnight: the French supermarket cyber attack and How it describes my job Read More »
I was listening to Times Radio yesterday when the conversation turned to the pay now on offer to tanker crews prepared to take ships through the Strait of Hormuz. The Financial Times has reported captains earning around $100,000 a month, against a normal rate of about $15,000, plus a $50,000 bonus for each passage, with
One in Twenty: What the Hormuz Bonus Tells Us About Risk Appetite Read More »
On Friday, the government told the country to start putting food aside. Environment Secretary Dame Angela Eagle said the UK is heading into what could be the largest El Niño event since records began in the nineteenth century, with sea temperatures in the Pacific running more than three degrees above average. The practical translation for
Stockpile the Tins. Audit the Supply Chain. Read More »
On Monday evening, Outlook and Exchange Online stopped working. Not for one company, for a meaningful slice of the world. People couldn’t log in. Messages sat unsent. Search returned nothing. IT teams spent hours fielding calls from colleagues who couldn’t do their jobs, because the one tool most of us touch fifty times a day
A Forgotten Certificate Just Broke Email for Millions. That’s the Real Story. Read More »
This afternoon, a power failure at a communications centre brought major disruption to rail services across the Midlands and north-west England. Avanti West Coast, CrossCountry, East Midlands Railway, London Northwestern, Northern, TransPennine Express and Transport for Wales were all affected. Not one operator having a bad day. Seven, at once, because of a single point
None of It Was Mine to Fix: What a Trip to the Alps Taught Me About Contingency Planning I’ve just got back from a few days in the Alps, and the getting there and back was, in its own small way, a masterclass in exactly the thing I spend my working life advising other people
None of It Was Mine to Fix: What a Trip to the Alps Taught Me About Contingency Planning Read More »
What the Sats Marking Crisis Tells Us About Third-Party Contract Handovers Every July, Year 6 pupils across England find out how they did in their Sats. This year, a lot of schools found out how their exam board did instead, and the answer wasn’t good. Pearson took over the £180 million Sats marking contract from
What the Sats Marking Crisis Tells Us About Third-Party Contract Handovers Read More »
Does Your ISO 27001 Certificate Mean You’re Secure? After I published my recent piece on the GCHQ Director’s Bletchley Park lecture, a fellow practitioner left a comment that I’ve been turning over in my head ever since. It’s a question about ISO 27001 certification and what it really proves about security that deserves more than
Does Your ISO 27001 Certificate Mean You’re Secure? Read More »
When Your Website Becomes a Supply Chain Case Study There’s a particular kind of irony in being a business continuity and resilience consultant whose own website has spent the better part of the last year effectively out of action. But here we are. And since the new Cambridge Risk Solutions website went live this week,
When Your Website Becomes a Supply Chain Case Study Read More »
