OpinionCategory

It is a well-known adage in cybersecurity that there is a balance between usability and security – if you increase the security and control, you decrease usability. Conversely, to make a system user-friendly and easy to use, it has to be done at the cost of lowering security. This has… Continue Reading Challenging the balance between security and usability

In times where you need to run through your BCP drill, it is important to know and understand the reasons why you need to exercise your Business Continuity Plan drill, and where it fits in with the rest of your Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP or DR Plan). Your BCP Drill… Continue Reading The BCP Drill

With the hack of Optus Telecommunications on 22 September 2022, where the personal information of up to 11.5 million Australians (nearly half of all people in Australia) was stolen, this has highlighted the need for cybersecurity reform in Australia. Unlike other countries, there are no mandated fines and penalties for… Continue Reading Cybersecurity reform in Australia

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

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

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

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

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

With the increased prevalence of working from home initiated by the Covid-19 pandemic, we all need to be more aware of the concern with remote working, which is to include your colleagues. Back in pre-coronavirus days, the concept of “working from home” was often reserved for senior employees, and used… Continue Reading Remote working – include your colleagues

Does your organisation have a culture of cybersecurity? Or, is your company taking a ‘traditional’ approach with cybersecurity and considering it to be a layer that is applied by the IT department? The way that most modern organisations are evolving is that cybersecurity is a culture, not an action to… Continue Reading Cybersecurity is a culture, not an action

I started my career on Exchange 5.0 in late 1997, and the product became my main skill area for nearly 22 years. In that time, I experienced hacking attacks and website defacement of OWA, stability battles and architecture changes when Microsoft evolved the system towards cloud capability. When my career… Continue Reading Exchange on-premises hack: who still has servers?