I struggled to come up with something to write about for this week’s blog. I did several searches online for information security and related topics, but nothing jumped out at me. So, I decided to write about something that came up last night I got to think about everyday personal security and privacy. I am co-founder of local ghost hunting group and we just accepted three new members into our organization last night. We take what we do seriously because we going to people’s private homes and wander around in the dark unsupervised. There is a high level of trust these individuals are placing us when they let us into their homes to do this. This means we have to choose new members carefully because they are going to be representing us. We need people who are going to respect the homeowners policy regarding what we see in the house (not just paranormal – we seen some really hot stuff that people have).
Friday, November 9, 2012
The paranormal side of privacy and security
I struggled to come up with something to write about for this week’s blog. I did several searches online for information security and related topics, but nothing jumped out at me. So, I decided to write about something that came up last night I got to think about everyday personal security and privacy. I am co-founder of local ghost hunting group and we just accepted three new members into our organization last night. We take what we do seriously because we going to people’s private homes and wander around in the dark unsupervised. There is a high level of trust these individuals are placing us when they let us into their homes to do this. This means we have to choose new members carefully because they are going to be representing us. We need people who are going to respect the homeowners policy regarding what we see in the house (not just paranormal – we seen some really hot stuff that people have).
The most important thing is safeguarding the person’s privacy. Most of our clients are genuinely scared of whatever activity is going on in their home, and we are often their final attempt at a resolution. The very last thing they want is someone blabbing about the fact that they think they have ghosts in their house or business. Fortunately, we are able to debunk probably 75 – 80% of activity as everyday stuff like doors don’t latch properly or plumbing noises, et cetera. Even though that is the case, it still doesn’t mean that they want word to get out. The reason it’s so important to them is that it can affect how they are perceived by others. In the case of a business, it can cost the money customers believe you hear that the place is haunted, or that the owner is a little “off” for thinking that might be haunted.
So, we teach our new members to speak generically when telling investigation stories. Instead of saying something like Bob’s house in Central Omaha, we would just say a house in Omaha. It may seem like a small thing, but it really matters to our clients. The case files and pictures because our website are labeled in the same generic way (unless the home or business owner has given us permission to use their names, like Mystery Manner or the Squirrel Cage Jail in Council Bluffs).
I struggled to come up with something to write about for this week’s blog. I did several searches online for information security and related topics, but nothing jumped out at me. So, I decided to write about something that came up last night I got to think about everyday personal security and privacy. I am co-founder of local ghost hunting group and we just accepted three new members into our organization last night. We take what we do seriously because we going to people’s private homes and wander around in the dark unsupervised. There is a high level of trust these individuals are placing us when they let us into their homes to do this. This means we have to choose new members carefully because they are going to be representing us. We need people who are going to respect the homeowners policy regarding what we see in the house (not just paranormal – we seen some really hot stuff that people have).
Friday, November 2, 2012
Disaster Planning
I was initially going to do a post about Mac versus Windows and the ease of establishing VPNs for this weeks post. It’s a topic that would have tied into the general theme that is kind of present in my previous post, but hurricane Sandy got me thinking about disaster recovery from a business aspect. After I read the article in the link below, I was especially interested in this topic. So, join me on my deviation, won’t you?
DTCC is a company I have worked closely with for years, and their location in lower Manhattan was directly in Sandy’s path. The wall to their vault where they store the stock certificates borders the East River, so their lower levels are underwater and they are still unable to go in and assess the damage. Here is the first sentence from the article, “trillions of dollars worth of stock certificates and other paper securities that were stored in a vault in lower Manhattan may have suffered water damage from superstorm Sandy.” As of Friday, they have been able to reopen and now except physical security deposits at an alternate location in Brooklyn. This means that clients will be able to trade on the physical securities that has been deposited to their brokerage accounts, this is important because clearing firms can once again contact this business as normal. Unfortunately DTCC is still unable to process settlements, which means clearing firms are unable to settle trades based on the physical certificates already in DTCC’s custody. This was runs into regulatory and delivery issues, that at this point, I’m not sure how we will work around. I assume FINRA is going to grant exceptions and waive the extension fees that would normally apply, but something that will take a lot of planning and communication to all the broker/dealers.
My point to all this rambling is this. While DTCC’s disaster planning and recovery plan has obviously gone into effect, there has been a trickle-down effect that has created an immediate consequences on businesses here in the Midwest for very far from any kind of physical storm damage. There is no primary disaster plan for the company to put into place in this situation, but we still have to react and create new policies based on the East Coast conditions. There are workarounds to using DTCC as the primary certificate processing facility, but it is a lengthy and sometimes more expensive alternative. I guess the purpose to this writing is to bring up the fact that just because the company does not directly suffer any kind of disaster or damage, the planning team still needs to take outside factors into consideration. They need to plan for alternative ways to conduct business if one of our primary partnerships loses the ability to operate.
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