You are all Rogue Traders

At the ICAS2016 conference I was given the opportunity to do a magic minute to room full of CA's. 1 minute to tell all these very smart, clever folks about how good IFB are and what we can do for them, and their clients.

Telling your story in 60 seconds may sound easy - but I have a head full of 20 years of what we do, what we are planning to do, what didn't work so well, stuff, and just as importantly what the audience think we do. It's all broadband you know.

Getting the ultimate elevator pitch is probably still the thing that moves around in my head most frequently - because my pitch is changing all the time as we up our game at IFB - it is the single greatest talking point for me when I am in the car - alone. Sure give me 15 minutes and you will know that we understand your business, its pains - proper pains - and give you comfort that IFB is the team for you. But 1 minute...

Do I do Connectivity? - nah everyone else does that all the time. Do I do hosting and what we do in our Data Centres? Cloud? - yeah cloud everyone is taking about it ,,, but too many interpretations of what that is.

Data - yes data all these folks in the room will get data. CA's all love numbers and spreadsheets and reliability and predictability and volume and growth and charts.. yes data.

So there I am sat in the room 45 mins from lunch - fully rehearsed after the night before's drive down from Aberdeen and up stands Nick Leeson. He delivers a very humble piece about how he without malice - I'm not judging - unpicked one of the oldest banks in the world and caused it to fail owing $1b.

He started off making the most of an opportunity that a lack of security gave him, he used words like scandal, breach, audit, loss, integrity, loopholes, diligence, compliance, everyone of the exploits he explored and took advantage of had finance all over it but in my mind just as easily could have had DATA.

“20 mins later I was stood unrehearsed in front of ICAS2016 - very aware I’m the last guy standing between a room full of CA’s who are not expensing lunch and their lunch - and said: You are all Rogue Traders when it comes to data!”

"You are all looking for short cuts to speeds things up, places to temporarily store your data so you can get to is easily and quickly on and off corporate networks and systems, not following all the rules when it comes to the boring lengthy security stuff you have been asked to take, because no one will ever know no one will be harmed."

This got a twitch or two.

Until Nick Leeson was found out he wasn't causing that much damage, but he was, he had compromised his employer by taking advantage of - exploited - insecure and non-policed shortcuts, flaws in process, procedure and people which meant by the time he was found out he cost his business its business.

He could have done all that much more quickly but with just as a devastating effect by bypassing or abusing the data protection policies and procedures in his business.

So what are you doing to stop a Digital Leeson affecting your business?