Eskenzi Blog

At last we have a female role model in the world of technology in the shape of the feisty blonde lastminute.com founder, Martha Lane-Fox. While she was a major player in the .com boom, and followed this with a stint in the world of Karaoke, setting up Lucky Voice,  she is now back in tech mode with her role as the government’s new digital champion and adviser, providing a much needed role model for bright savvy entrepreneurial women considering a career in the technology sector.

 At a recent event I attended I was so disappointed to see that nothing has really changed since I started out in the tech world several years ago. There were only a fraction of women and the majority of those were scantily clad promo girls!

While other highly technical professions such as medicine attract a high number of female candidates a career working in technology is just not on the wish list for most women. Martha Lane Fox shows that IT doesn’t have to be all servers, networks and back-end technology, the digital revolution which we have been happily ensconced in for a number of years has opened up a wealth of new opportunities for women.

You could say that Web 2.0 is designed for multi-tasking women who like to be in constant communication – so it is logical that they should also be involved in the development and deployment of this technology and bring some much needed female blood to the industry. Yes technology companies need to do more to attract female talent but here’s hoping Martha will show that glamour and Tech are not such an unusual cocktail!

As I write this fully aware that the media and internet is buzzing with analysis and opinions on the “budget from hell” on reflection perhaps it hasn’t hit the cosy world of IT too badly.

Yes we are entering unchartered territory with public sector cuts greater than ever before and the uncertainty of the impact of the 2.5% VAT hike on the business world at large.

BUT there are reasons to stay optimistic, the budget is strongly focused on boosting business in the UK, Corporation Tax is to be cut by 4% and between now and 2016 £13bn will be invested in business with a focus on small businesses.

What’s more as an industry that is constantly facing pressure to reduce costs and increase efficiency; the IT Sector is better placed than most to weather the storm.

The two pillars of cost savings and increased efficiency, Cloud Computing and Virtualisation, will be even more appealing to both public and private sectors; with the gloomy reality that we have years of belt tightening ahead the fact that these technologies lead to long term savings rather than a short term “quick fix” will be even more enticing; not just to the IT department but those responsible for the bottom line in companies of all shapes and sizes.

Tony Dyhouse, cyber security programme director for the Digital Systems Knowledge Transfer Network, quoted in Computer Weekly also suggests that is not all gloom and doom as clever companies will use their initiative to find less costly ways to fortify their defences; such as educating people about the value of data and the risks of data loss in an effort to strengthen the weakest link in the security chain – human beings.

So the sun is shining, we are in the midst of World Cup fever, maybe things aren’t so bad…..

A journalist friend of mine recently started his own one man campaign to move from Facebook to Linked In, reasoning behind this being that he did not want the metadata of his life to be available to greedy commercial companies eager to make money from him.  Facebook has received quite a beating, possible even a pummeling, in recent months over its privacy policy or lack of it as some would say and it brings us to the “internet age-old” question in this world of reveal all, see all, hear all; do we still have the right to cling on to our privacy rights? This is not a question I am even going to try and answer here as many are better qualified than me to debate this, however as a PR professional what I have noticed is a slow but steady cross over to Linked In amongst dedicated users of social media.  Linked In is very much the “steady eddy” of the social networking world, founded in 2006 membership has climbed consistently and steadily, now topping 65+ million users, not quite the stratospheric rise of Facebook and Twitter but one that reflects the niche and specific nature of its audience. While it is billed as purely a business networking/recruiting tool as we all know there is more to business that just the transactional. People make friends, meet partners and lives change through business, the social/human factor is key. In line with this observation more and more business people are using Linked In to form social relationships and exchange information that might not be work –related. Could LinkedIn be transformed into a more holistic site where friends and colleagues meet in cyberspace in a more civilized, less “reveal all” social media environment in which their privacy won’t be compromised?

The much heralded Apple iPad finally arrived in the UK today and was met with great excitement from both the press and consumers. And having got my hands on a journalist’s iPad at a recent press event I have to say it truly is an amazing piece of kit.

Now I have to admit that I’m a massive fan of all things touch screen and I was fortunate to have launched the Microsoft Surface to the UK press last year in London http://bit.ly/NcQhj whilst working at my previous agency. However the one thing that stood out for me at the launch of Surface was the device lives and dies on the quality of the applications which are available to the user. So I’ve no doubt that the Apple AppStore will play an integral part in driving user adoption as well as being key in making user experience more personal and unique as the device develops.

My only question is will the number of new iPad apps keep pace with consumer demand because, as you may or may not know, Apple is rather strict about which apps make it into their AppStore. So how do the army of developers out there frantically trying to create apps for the iPad know what the users, and Apple, want.

At this point I asked a friend in the US who knows about these things to find out what makes a good app and how. As an example of a great iPad app he pointed me in the direction of a company called Big Oven http://www.bigoven.com/ipad-recipes.aspx; a site which has recently been recommended in Forbes ‘must have iPad Apps for professionals http://bit.ly/bzc6rh . Now in terms of how a developer creates that magic dust which turns a bad app into a good app (well at least in the eyes of Apple maybe), it turns out the secret to a successful app is in our hands, or at least the way we behave. Application developers need to be able to access masses of our customer data and have the ability to interpret patters and trends, sometimes in real time, to improve the product.

So for all the style and innovative beauty which the iPad offers, take a minute to remember the part that the developers play in creating the fantastic apps which make the amazing iPad experience possible.

So, we finally have a new Prime Minster and, some may say, an unexpected Deputy Prime Minister but what can we learn from the last week? Not a lot, I would be inclined to respond. At the end of the day, what they have FINALLY done, is put aside their differences, reached a compromise and agreed to work together for the greater good. Isn’t that what happens in successful businesses every day?

Within the organisation you have various factions all trying to get the job done the best way possible. Yet, similarly to the three parties involved in the recent power struggle, each group has a different perspective often causing conflict and potential resentment. A very basic overview would be thus :

In the red corner you have the ‘users’ who just want to get the job done and to do so they need access to data, the ability to manipulate records and the facility to share this information with others.

In the blue corner you have management, incorporating the security team, who don’t want users to touch anything that’s in a structured format in case they ‘mess it up’.

Caught in the middle, now where’s my orange crayon – you have the relatively small IT team who are often wrongly blamed as the weak link in the outfit as they’re role is to understand everyone’s pain and try to make it go away.

Where I think Westminster should be looking, whilst navigating these un-chartered waters, is to those organisations who have managed to bring these three factions together, for the greater good, and working alongside one another in peace and harmony delivering secure systems that enable business to function.

Fingers crossed they don’t opt for the alternative – complete anarchy that sees users running a mock and violating data all over the place; triggering alarm bells that cause swat teams to descend after the fires are well and truly raging; while one, two or five people run around with buckets shouting for every one to remain calm.

There I was last week in the Press Office at Infosecurity, looking around at the journalists and analysts wondering what had happened to the time and marvelling at the fact that this was my 15^th Infosec!  It‘s like a huge party for me now, every corner I turn there’s someone I know – and it’s great fun meeting the same people year after year!  Many didn’t have kids and now they all have teenagers, including me.  Some are onto their fifth or sixth job and literally move around the stands, branded in different T-shirts but still in the IT security industry!  I remember when Reed Exhibitions first asked me to help them launch the show and together with the Sales Manager we scratched our heads wondering what IT security really meant! Back then, we only had about 60 exhibitors, and in our first year we got around 3000 visitors and about 25 journalists.   What a difference 15 years makes, this year we had in excess of 12,000 visitors, almost 300 exhibitors and the analysts and press ran into the many hundreds!  I know longer scratch my head wondering what IT security is all about, in those 15 years IT security has changed immensely it’s become mainstream, no longer do friends at dinner party’s disappear  when I tell them what I do, now they actively engage in telling me how they secure their own computers and phones! Hallelujah – that means that all our surveys are actually paying off, infact it’s often our friends who have left their mobile phones at the back of a taxi, or given away their passwords for a chocolate bar! 

IT security really is something that touches us all – our recent survey into ID theft which we carried out just before Infosecurity, illustrated the fact that IT security really does impact everyone.  42% of the 1000 people who we polled have had their identity stolen and 44% of people said they have suffered from bank/credit card fraud.  So since I’ve been involved in this business, it seems things have got worse not better.  However, things maybe on the turn.  Last week’s announcement by the Deputy Information Commissioner at Infosecurity revealed that any company suffering from a data breach will now have to report it by law just as they do in the US.  Plus there will be fines of up to £500,000 for those companies that don’t have sufficient safety measures in place to protect the data held on customers!!! Of course this is great news for the consumer, not such good news for employers and music to the ears of those in the IT security industry.   I wonder what the next 15 years will hold.  I’ve seen many a millionaire being created at Infosecurity  even at this year’s show PGP and GuardianEdge were bought by Symantec and I suspect that in the next 15 years there will be many many more Infosecurity exhibitors who will look back on the show with a warm glow as they too are launched into the Infosecurity spotlight!  Bring on number 16!

Hallelujah! At last the Information Commissioner  is showing some teeth  with the recent  announcement that  from 6^th April 2010 companies who lose information that ends up being breached because they didn’t’ adequately protect it could end up being fined by up to £500,000 and possibly face imprisonment!!

 As most of the breaches that occurred in 2009 were mainly Government screw ups – it’ll be interesting to see who’ll be publicly hung out to dry first – my guess is it’ll be a government body – now won’t that be an interesting dilemma as the  government works their way towards an election.   On the subject of being caught with your pants down and having to have them cleaned -  we’ve just issued our second laundrette and mobile security survey for Credant technologies to find out how many memory sticks are left in laundrettes. It’s a survey to illustrate how easy it is to lose information in even the most unlikely places.   Unbelievably the number has halved from over 9000  to 4,500 compared with the same period last year – well we thought this was a bit strange especially as we’ve been doing these sorts of survey’s for  15 years and  know that most users don’t give a stuffing about security so why have they dropped in number.  In delving a bit deeper and talking with Credant’s “consultants at the coalface” they say it comes down to memory sticks which are just no longer the flavour of the month. It would appear that people are downloading data onto their smartphones and blackberry’s – or onto their funky little netbooks which are a whole lot heavier and therefore a bit more obvious when handing them across the laundrette counter.  Are netbooks and smartphones going to mean the demise of the memory stick? With the latest Information Commissioners Office announcement I think companies are going to be a whole lot stricter with what they allow their  users to download onto their mobile devices as they sure as hell won’t want  their  dirty laundry hung out to dry in public! This can only smell fresh news for all of us in the IT security industry – roll on 6^th April!

When we were in New Zealand over Christmas our mates were amazed that we couldn’t wait to get back to Tel Aviv in Israel for a sales kick-off meeting with Tufin Technologies one of our Israeli clients! Our mates impression of Tel Aviv was a worn torn third world city, amidst camel dung and Shishas!  It couldn’t be further from the truth. Forget Hampstead or Nottinghill for cafes and restaurants, behind the facade of huge giant modern office blocks are the most incredible chic and classy hip dining establishments where people will use any excuse to meet up with friends or colleagues to eat what is truly the most fantastic and great cuisine.  They also make the best espressos and cappuccinos in the world. Apart from the huge variety of amazing food, they don’t do chain stores very well, so the shopping is both exciting and unique.  There is also a buzz and tempo in this city that I haven’t recently experienced in any of the other big cities that I’ve visited – it’s an energy that you get totally pulled into.  It’s also the epicentre of the IT security industry which has spawned many a successful company such as CheckPoint and RSA as well as many of our own clients such as Tufin, Cyber-Ark, Imperva and Pursway.  If you get a chance to visit Tel Aviv do, it’s cheap to get to, and great great fun!  Thanks Tufin for giving us the opportunity to visit you again.

I came across a very interesting blog recently by Cindy Kim on ‘The Future of PR – How PR Firms Can Get on the Ball!’

It is well worth a read if you are interested in how to approach Social Media PR, I whole heartedly agree with all that Cindy has written and would add that when incorporating social media communication into the Marcomms strategy the organisation needs to get involved from the CEO to tech support. Much in the way that if IT is implemented to effect change management without the buy in from the business units and the executive team, social media interactions must follow through the culture of the organisation. There is always innate talent in an organisation which social media has the power to free and give voice to. It is even more important in social media interaction for all communication to be consistent, honest, and get your message across, to do this there must be fundamental buy in from the top down. Every employee can potentially become an ambassador for your organisation, so an internal comms campaign is essential to support their efforts.

Neil Stinchcombe – Director

I’m truly excited. Today we’ve just issued our first web 2.0 social media press release for Credant Technologies, who I thank for allowing us to use them as our first client to try out this new technology which has been sent out alongside the traditional release to all those other press who still prefer a traditional lay-out. We’ve produced a video and a cartoon to accompany the release and it looks fab (can I say that myself?). The story is a goodie too – Quarter of people admit they spend 2-6 hours a week working in bed, 57% of their partners hate them for it and most are using their devices which are stuffed full of sensitive data with very little security. See the link http://www.prweb.com/releases/2009/05/prweb2434214.htm.
The bloggers are going to love this story and we’re hoping to get it on TV and radio. That’s the beauty of these survey releases – you never know who is going to run with them. You spend days priming the press and hoping they’ll run with the story – then it’s a bit like a snowball you have to watch it gather moss and it can take days before you can say ‘hey presto’ you’ve got a biggie in The Times or on the BBC website. There is no greater pleasure in the world when you get national coverage for a story that you’ve dreamed up to get your clients names ‘in lights’. So I’ve done my bit, I’ve spoken to all the influential journalists there are to speak to, I’ve sent the release out globally and now it’s a waiting game – a nerve racking, but exhilarating one, but what PR is all about. It’s all about thinking out of the box and making Credant in this instance, the news of the day, the talk of the town, the end point data security specialists that everyone’s talking about! They’ve been prepared to try something new and invest in a video and cartoon to make this story have even greater legs – we’ve worked as a partnership and that’s what successful PR is all about – working with your clients, having fun coming up with concepts, executing them and trying something absolutely new that you hope will fly. Watch this space – because I think this will be a biggie!

Yvonne Eskenzi – Director