RSA takes one for the team, but which team?

RSA_EMCEdward Snowden says (according to Reuters) that RSA Security accepted $10 million from the National Security Agency in exchange for installing (or allowing to have installed) a secret backdoor so the NSA could decrypt messages as it pleased. Hell no says RSA (a division of storage vendor EMC), stating in very strong terms that this was not at all the case. But then in a second day look at the RSA/EMC statement bloggers began to see the company as dissembling, their firm defense as really more of a non-denial denial. So what’s the truth here and what’s the lesson?

For the truth I reached deep into the bowels of elliptic […]

By |December 24th, 2013|2013, Government, Industry, Internet, Politics, Privacy and Security, Public Relations, Technology, Uncategorized|53 Comments
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Some thoughts on how a Grinch stole Target’s Christmas

targetThere was a time when “activist investor” Carl Icahn actually owned and ran businesses, one of which was TransWorld Airlines (TWA), eventually sold to American Airlines. In an attempt to cut costs, TWA under Icahn outsourced reservation service to a call center built in a prison with prisoners on the phone. When you called to book travel you were giving your credit card number to a felon and telling him when you’d be away from home. Smart move, Carl, and very akin to what may have caused the post-Thanksgiving theft of 40 million credit card numbers from Target, the U.S. discount retailer.

Target used to do its IT all in the USA, then to save costs […]

By |December 20th, 2013|2013, Companies, Internet, Social Media|71 Comments
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My sister’s a quilter and Google mugged her!

On my home page you’ll always see a link to Portrait Quilts, my sister’s web site where for several years she has sold quilts, pillows, and tote bags printed with customer photographs. This is how she makes her living, selling on the web and through photo stores. Buy one, please. Or if you are a quilter she’ll print your photos on cloth so you can quilt them yourself.

Then approximately three months ago Google decided that Portrait Quilts does not exist.

You can find a Google listing for portraitquilts.com, if you search for that specific string, but if you look for photo quilts or any similar search term, Portrait Quilts — which for years was always the top result — no longer […]

By |December 10th, 2013|2013, Companies, Internet, Technology|153 Comments
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See you on the golf course, John, Cisco is in trouble

ballmerchambersLast week I began this series on large companies in turmoil by looking at Intel, which I saw trying to guarantee its future through enlightened acquisitions that actually emulated this week’s company — Cisco Systems. So if Cisco already knows how to assimilate other companies and technologies to stay ahead of the market, how can they have a problem? Cisco’s problem is their market is mature and being commoditized with all boats sinking. And this time there isn’t an obvious new idea to buy.

Cisco is a becoming a very expensive utility appliance.  The revenues streams at Cisco that are at risk:

–          Enterprise routers for T-1 services versus DOCSIS 3.1 and in the future 4G LTE-A

–          […]

By |December 4th, 2013|2013, Business, Companies, Internet|33 Comments
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The Google File System makes NSA’s hack blatantly illegal and they know it

nsa_google_snoopThe latest Edward Snowden bombshell that the National Security Agency has been hacking foreign Google and Yahoo data centers is particularly disturbing. Plenty has been written about it so I normally wouldn’t comment except that the general press has, I think, too shallow an understanding of the technology involved. The hack is even more insidious than they know.

The superficial story is in the NSA slide (above) that you’ve probably seen already. The major point being that somehow the NSA — probably through the GCHQ in Britain — is grabbing virtually all Google non-spider web traffic from the Google Front End Servers, because that’s where the SSL encryption is decoded.

Yahoo has no such encryption.

The major point […]

By |November 2nd, 2013|Breaking News, Government, Internet, Privacy and Security|44 Comments
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