A misplaced decimal point has cost Clerical Medical £17m. Apparently a wrong decimal point was input to some unit pricing data in 2002.
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Author: Louise Pryor
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Spreadsheet use in investment banks
A white paper from Lepus Consulting on The Management of Spreadsheet Use in Financial Services. Despite the title, it considers only investment banks. It’s mainly anecdotal evidence from a survey (no numbers), with a short guide to best practice.
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Web based spreadsheet
Another web-based spreadsheet. I don’t know how it compares to Google’s.
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MP3 players: more than just a nuisanceMP
Apparently it’s possible to use them to hack into ATMs, as well as to annoy your fellow passengers.
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More laptop woes
Laptops can contain confidential information, and are inherently less secure than large machines: it is easier to take physical possession of them.
Nationwide building society recently had one stolen that contained customer information; and 3 laptops containing police payroll information were stolen from LogicaCMG, the UK IT services firm.
You have to wonder whether it was absolutely necessary for this information to be on the laptops in the first place. It appears that it may not have been, as Nationwide are saying that the employee who had the laptop stolen may not have been complying with the firm’s security policy. Of course, it’s one thing to have a policy and another for it to be complied with.
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He who pays the piper…
Firefox 2.0 is better than Internet Explorer 7 at preventing phishing, according to a study commissioned by Mozilla. A study commissioned by Microsoft found that IE7 is better than a range of 7 third-party security applications. The Microsoft study didn’t include Firefox.
“The Shuttle was never expected to be in orbit as one year gives way to another”. Unbelievable.
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More public sector IT woes
This time it’s the Department of Work and Pensions, in particular their contact centres.
Contact centre employees have to use a number of different systems containing client information. These systems are not properly joined up, so that people applying for benefits or pensions have to give the same information on a number of occasions – when much of it is already held on a system in the department.
Not only is this frustrating for the member of the public, as well as the staff member concerned, it’s also a very good way of ensuring that inaccurate and inconsistent information gets into the system(s).
“There are at least 55 different telephone numbers for contacting the DWP and, quite incredibly, if you contact the wrong service, the department’s technology will not enable your call to be transferred to the right service.”
I suppose that if you make it really hard for people to claim benefits then you save money, as fewer of them will stick it out, but it’s expensive in terms of productivity and staff morale.
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Is anti-piracy overkill?
There are some worrying aspects to the anti-piracy technologies that are part of Microsoft’s new Vista operating system.
In any case, the entire concept of significantly reducing the functionality of running systems is saturated with risks. Microsoft notes that their products aren’t supposed to be used for “critical” types of applications. That’s a fine sentiment, but Microsoft has succeeded all too well in getting developers to use their operating systems in all manner of exceptionally important applications. That’s the reality.
Of course, just because Microsoft says that they can use such drastic anti-piracy measures in any particular situation, doesn’t mean that they necessarily will, but can we really afford to take that chance? Even if you are the most 100% squeaky-clean human on planet Earth, and would never even dream of running pirated software, you may want to think twice (or more than twice) before jumping into bed with Microsoft on this one.
The End User License Agreement (EULA) for Vista is also much more restrictive than previous EULAs. So your chances of inadvertently violating it, and hence being a software pirate, are much higher.
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Perceived risk vs. actual risk
I can’t put it better than Bruce Schneier, commenting on a Los Angeles Times op-ed by Dennis Gilbert. People just aren’t rational about risk. They over react to some risks, and under react to others.
This has big implications for risk management, especially in risk identification and risk assessment.
More importantly, though, it affects how both we and those that govern us respond to global warming and terrorism.