Christian Wickham

192

Christian Wickham 's Posts

On 22nd September 2022, Optus Telecommunications announced that they had detected a “hack” of their systems, and revealed that 9.8 million customer records had been accessed. For Australia’s second largest mobile phone provider, this represents nearly half of all Australian’s personal details, which includes name and address and phone number… Continue Reading Hacking risk for domestic violence victims

For your next system development, make the systems intuitive instead of spending time up-skilling people in potentially high turnover positions. Great customer interaction should be your focus, ahead of designing a system that meets your internal needs for audit and reporting. Too often systems are designed with customer and user… Continue Reading Make your new systems intuitive

Often misunderstood, but the concept of “design for failure” is now common in the lexicon of system design and business operations. When you design for failure, it is not because you want to fail – instead it is with the understanding that failures can and do happen, but you want… Continue Reading How to design for failures

Many organisations will have had on-premises datacentres or computer rooms, or have had their own servers and infrastructure in co-lo or hosted datacentres. Whilst these systems may have served a company’s needs in the past, it is often more complex and unknown systems that are the last to be evolved… Continue Reading Replacing old Infrastructure – a step by step guide

There are many projects I have been involved with, where the product design or implementation has been driven by the need for reporting, analysis or compliance, but backend effectiveness does not equate to customer satisfaction, and businesses should be more aware of this in their product releases. A key example… Continue Reading Backend effectiveness does not equate to customer satisfaction

People have asked me about my leadership style, and as it is such a common question, I have decided to post it here. People recognise that I am passionate, and I lead through inspiration and desire to achieve the strategic goals. I am a positive and passionate person who motivates… Continue Reading My leadership style

Solving problems often takes a completely new viewpoint over what the problem actually is. There have been many recent studies and trials of working weeks durations, including a successful trial at Microsoft for a 4-day week that increased productivity. However, I have a different idea to solve the problem: changing… Continue Reading The new week – 5 on, 5 off

I was at a networking event where a new contact was telling me about her challenges in selecting a cloud platform for their major expansion. The issue she was experiencing was to decide between two cloud services that were offering significant discounts and included services for the migration and implementation.… Continue Reading A cloud discount is not always a saving

In our ever-increasingly online lives, passwords have become a vital part of our existence. However, passwords are still the most vulnerable part of our security – because they are created and used by people, who persistently are the weakest point in any security protection. Why are passwords so easy to… Continue Reading Password tips for ease of use

There have been two very different leadership styles in the invasion of Ukraine by Russia in February 2022. We have seen the impact of poor leadership and the benefit of strong leadership in the conflict, and there are many parallels that can be taken for business. Leadership in the Ukraine… Continue Reading Leadership in the Ukraine War

We are frequently given advice on creating complex passwords, never re-using passwords, and setting up two factor authentication, but we need to consider the 2 factor authentication risks – which come about through both technology limitations and with the ever-present security weakpoint of human factors. What is 2FA? Firstly, it… Continue Reading 2 Factor Authentication risks

Issues arose with using VPN servers when workforces expanded and scaled up. VPNs were built around a model where IT administrators distributed the devices employees used so they knew the network, device, and person. But remote work changed everything.    As the workforce expanded globally and added contractors along with… Continue Reading VPNs and Zero Trust

It is human nature to try and avoid mistakes and the embarrassment of failure, after all, it is educated in to use to avoid mistakes through “operant conditioning“, but it is important to take a policy of embracing mistakes in cybersecurity, to avoid people trying to hide times when they… Continue Reading Embracing mistakes in cybersecurity

If you have ever been in a tricky situation, you will know that half the battle is knowing what is going on – you can’t fix a problem if you don’t know what has happened. However, root cause analysis needs to wait until after the issue is resolved. Too often,… Continue Reading Half the battle is knowing what is going on

Organisations often run head-long into digital transformation, with a focus on technology and toolsets, and not fully understanding the impact on staff. Digital transformation is more than just moving all paper processes into electronic versions of themselves, more than just running out some new collaborative tools or enabling legacy applications… Continue Reading Digital Transformation and People

During my MBA, I was taught that the purpose of a business is to make money, and that customers should always be the focus of everything a company does. However, I think that this view is no longer valid and that my role in leading business by caring for staff… Continue Reading Leading business by caring for staff

With the use of Software as a Service offerings increasing, with 99% of businesses projected to use one or more SaaS solutions in an industry that is worth $165Bn a year. There are 15,529 companies providing SaaS solutions , and so it seems like a logical choice to start using… Continue Reading Risks of SaaS

We have all been there, either by working with someone straight out of University or when you were entering the workforce straight out of education – full of passion and enthusiasm, and keen to make a change. The teenager (or person in their twenties) may challenge and ask questions about… Continue Reading Teenagers might have answers

Why is it that business transformation so difficult to successfully achieve? I believe that the fears and insecurities that keep people locked into behaviours, even invisible fears, even when we know rationally that we should change. Whilst it is possible to change policies, processes, office layout and other external factors,… Continue Reading Change is about people, not policies