You’ve all seen the ads; “Service X is disrupting the Y industry!“, or worse; “We’re using Artificial Intelligence to disrupt…”.

At this point I will look no further at what you have to offer, because if your product/service could stand on its merits, why would you to resort to using tired and almost entirely inaccurate marketing drivel? And are you really to solve my problems or just make money?

Yes, that was a rhetorical question.

Continue reading “If You Need to be ‘Disruptive’ to Sell your Security Product, Make a Better Product” →

In Part 1 of this two-part blog ‘series’, I played the part of a security expert (which I do most days), and examined how privacy is changing the face of the security industry.

In Part 2, I have enlisted the help of a lawyer, data protection and contracts expert, who is basically to blame for me getting into this ‘privacy stuff’ in the first place. She also happens to be my sister; Angela Boswell.

In her learned (and earned!) opinion……………………

Continue reading “On the Convergence of Data Privacy and Data Security – Part 2” →

I’ve heard that the best writers draw inspiration from the people around them. Clearly this works for crap writers too, because I totally stole the phrase ‘distracting innovation’ from a friend of mine. So thank you for that Gareth.

I have dedicated the last half of my career to providing my clients the only thing that makes sense to me; an appropriate security program that supports and enables the needs of the business. I have also chosen to predicate the implementation of that program on the following well established cornerstones. In order of importance:

Continue reading “Cybersecurity Vendors: Masters of Distracting Innovation” →

It was not that long ago that the most senior security incumbent at the time of a data breach was not only fired ignominiously, but torn to shreds by his/her ‘peers’ as being anything from unqualified, to incompetent, to grossly negligent.

They became nothing short of pariahs.

The vestiges of this ridiculous practice are still rife (take BA for example), but things are changing, and we all have a Recital to thank for it:

Continue reading “The Rise of the Breach Response Specialist” →

No, this is not a political statement, though I couldn’t resist a play on words that also takes a poke at nationalist imbeciles on both sides of the Atlantic.

Instead, this is about the UK’s pending/potential/who-the-hell-knows-when/if exit from the EU and its effects on international transfers of personal data to/from the UK to/from the EU. Amazingly this is still confusing to a significant portion of the population, if they have even looked into it at all. You must understand that unless you have absolutely no intention of doing business whatsoever with your soon-to-be-ex EU counterparts, it’s the UK businesses that will need to be pro-active. Well, pro-active was three years ago, but you simply must make it easy for EU-based businesses to work with you regardless of the Brexit result.

Continue reading “Making Britain ‘Adequate’ Again” →