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HOME NEWS CAN THE UK SMART METER PROJECT SUCCEED? MORE WOMEN IN TECH ARE SETTING UP ON THEIR OWN HEALTH LOTTERY SECURES DATA WITH EQUINIX THE UNCERTAINTY SURROUNDING THE CISO’S ROLE EDITOR’S COMMENT OPINION BUYER’S GUIDE TO SOFTWARE ASSET MANAGEMENT MEGA-SUPPLIERS RACE TO COMPETE IN THE CLOUD DOWNTIME Doomed to fail? EXPERT ANALYSIS BRANDS THE UK’S SMART METER PROJECT THE ‘MOST COMPLEX ROLL-OUT IN THE WORLD’ 13-19 August 2013 | ComputerWeekly.com

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Page 1: Doomed to fail?docs.media.bitpipe.com/io_11x/io_110094/item... · originally brought a case against Barnet Council calling for a judicial review of the outsourcing programme. Her

computerweekly.com 13-19 August 2013 1

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CaN tHe UK smart meter

projeCt sUCCeed?

more womeN iN teCH are settiNg Up oN tHeir owN

HealtH lottery seCUres data witH eqUiNix

tHe UNCertaiNty sUrroUNdiNg tHe

Ciso’s role

editor’s CommeNt

opiNioN

BUyer’s gUide to software asset

maNagemeNt

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iN tHe CloUd

dowNtime Doomed to fail?ExpErt analysis brands thE UK’s smart mEtEr projEct

thE ‘most complEx roll-oUt in thE world’

13-19 August 2013 | ComputerWeekly.com

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Ciso’s role

editor’s CommeNt

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the week in it

IT outsourcingCapita and Barnet deal to be completed after campaigner’s court appeal failsOutsourcing contracts worth over £470m will be signed off by Barnet Council after a Court of Appeal ruled that a deal between the council and Capita was lawful. Disability rights campaigner Maria Nash originally brought a case against Barnet Council calling for a judicial review of the outsourcing programme. Her case alleged that Barnet Council did not properly con-sult citizens on the outsourcing plan.

IT innovationBusinesses claim UK lags behind China and US in tech innovationOver half of businesses claim the UK lags behind China and the US, which are investing in technology to drive innova-tion. Experts claim that to solve this prob-lem everyone within a business should be involved in creating innovation, rather than individuals and departments.

Internet technologyUK average broadband speed risesThe average speed of broadband connec-tions in the UK has reached 14.7Mbps, according to the latest report from Ofcom. The telecoms regulator has published its bi-annual survey into fixed-line residential broadband speeds, which showed the figure had risen by 2.7Mbps in the six months to May 2013 and by 5.7Mbps when compared with the same period last year.

Mobile hardwareAndroid eats into Apple’s market shareShipments of Apple iPads declined by 14% year on year for the second quarter, according to the latest market share data from analyst Canalys. Apple’s market share dropped to 43%, while Samsung, Amazon, Lenovo and Acer each grew annually by over 200%, driven by increas-ing demand for smallscreen tablets. Canalys estimated that 68% of tablets shipped in the second quarter had a screen size smaller than 9in.

IT investmentUtilities seek quick return on IT spendWestern European utilities are expected to spend $10.4bn on IT in 2013, 62.9% of which will be dedicated to services. IDC’s Western Europe Utilities Industry IT Spending 2012–2017 forecast predicted that software spending would see the most significant boom, growing by 7.4% to reach $3.2bn by 2017.

Social mediaTwitter to introduce “in-Tweet report button” for abusive messagesMicroblogging platform Twitter will introduce a button for reporting abusive behaviour on its website and Android app next month. The implementation comes after a string of bomb and rape threats against UK women in the public eye. Twitter has already implemented an “in-Tweet report button” in the latest version of its iOS app and on its mobile website.

Government spends £1.3m on staff for manual processinG due to universal credit it delaysthe department for work and pensions (dwp) has employed more than 100 staff at a cost of £1.3m to manually check data about the welfare benefits cap because of delays in developing the it system for Universal credit.

staff take data from systems run by dwp, hm revenue & customs (hmrc) and local authorities to identify households affected by the benefit cap introduced in april.

the costs were revealed in an answer to a parliamentary question submitted by labour mp stephen doughty.

in response, work and pensions minister mark hoban said the checks will be required “until such time that an automated solution is developed and introduced”, which means the costs could increase further if the system is not in place by april 2014.

access the latest it news via rss feed

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Home

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more womeN iN teCH are settiNg Up oN tHeir owN

HealtH lottery seCUres data witH eqUiNix

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Ciso’s role

editor’s CommeNt

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BUyer’s gUide to software asset

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the week in it

access the latest it news via rss feed

IT recruitmentEntry-level graduates and employee numbers on the rise, survey revealsEntry-level graduates are now the sec-ond biggest talent pool for employers, up 3% on last year at 38%, according to a global job creation study by Ernst & Young. Experienced non-management roles remained at 51%, the same as last year. Over a third of employers said they intended to fill vacancies with entry-level graduates. In addition, candidates without a degree rose from 3% to 29%.

Mobile networksVodafone announces 4G launch dateVodafone has announced its 4G network will launch at the end of August, making it the third mobile network operator to offer the faster mobile connectivity. Vodafone’s 4G network will go live on 29 August in London, followed by a further 12 cities, including Bradford and Leeds, by the end of 2013. O2’s 4G services are scheduled to launch on the same day.

Web softwareMPs and Lords get online training toolStaff at the Houses of Parliament will soon gain access to online training after a contract was signed with Learning Pool. The company provides tools for employ-ees to learn important processes and poli-cies within the workplace, and this con-tract will see courses such as fire safety and disability awareness made available over a web portal.

IT trainingUK graduates arrive in India for intern-ships at IT services provider WiproUK engineering graduates have arrived in India to start a nine-month intern-ship with IT services giant Wipro. A total of 19 UK engineering graduates have arrived at Wipro’s Bangalore campus, where they will embark on a nine-month intern-ship as part of its India Gateway pilot programme.

Green computingFacebook’s datacentre carbon footprint and greenhouse gas emissions riseDespite its focus on energy efficiency, smart datacentre design, and use of renewable energy resources, Facebook’s datacentre carbon footprint increased by 52% in 2012, while its greenhouse gas emissions increased by 34%, compared with the previous year.

Charitable ITHelpAge International, Oxfam get pro bono data expertise from DataKindData scientists from investment banks, Marks & Spencer and Ocado gave up their free time for a weekend to take part in an event for charities. But the 80 or so data geeks were not running or swimming – they were donating their data analytics expertise pro bono. The DataDive was held by non-profit organisation DataKind UK at Mozilla’s offices in Covent Garden. n

uK pc supplier marKet share estimates, Q2 2013Supplier 2Q13 market share 2Q12 market share 2Q12-2Q13 growth

hp 19.9% 18.5% -6.9%

dell 14.1% 12.4% -1.2%

lenovo 10.7% 7.2% 28.6%

acer 10.5% 11.6% -21.4%

toshiba 8.9% 9.4% -17.7%

others 36% 40.8% -23.3%

total 100% 100% -13% source: Gartner, august 2013

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analysis

A Smart Meter Select Committee has given the UK’s smart meter roll-out the thumbs up, but some claim the project is doomed to fail. Cliff Saran reports

Does the UK smart meter project have the power to succeed?

Experts have raised concerns over the economic impact and benefits, the technical infrastructure and the IT

project management behind the UK’s smart meter programme.

When engineering consultant Mott MacDonald calculated the cost of the smart meter programme, it stated the net present value of the programme would be £4bn in the red, according to Alex Henney, an econo-mist and advisor for the electricity industry, who gave evidence to the Smart Meter Select Committee.

Yet the civil service has put the net present value at £4.9bn.

“The civil service went to town to tweak the numbers,” said Henney. “It’s a political freak to go from -£4bn to +£4.9bn in four years. If that does not ring alarm bells, then you can believe pigs can fly.”

Costly and complexHe says the UK programme is twice as expensive as the Spanish and Italian smart meter programmes.

“There are two obvious differences,” he said. “First, the Italians and Spanish rely on a powerline network [for data communica-tions], which is simpler and cheaper than wireless technology.”

Second, Italy and Spain use a central distributed network operator (DNO) to roll out the smart meters, which, according to Henney, is simpler than relying on electricity suppliers.

“We have devised the most complex roll-out in the world,” he said. The UK approach, which relies on suppliers rolling out meters, will need an enormous database to collate information on who owns the meter, thereby incurring costs and introducing potential errors and complexity.

The UK’s smart meter project aims to

enable consumers to see how much energy they use. Henney said the programme would require an energy use display in each house-hold, at an additional cost of £25 each. That may not seem like much, but over the course of 43 million households, it mounts up to more than £1.1bn.

Henney said many people are likely to throw these displays away and they are unlikely to have any impact on people’s usage patterns. “The average residential consumption is 4,000KwH, compared with 16,000KwH in Norway where home heating exclusively uses electricity,” he said. “The average UK electricity consumption has not increased much. In the case of gas, con-sumption has gone down.”

The EU wants member states to provide 80% of households with smart meters. An Ernst & Young study for the German Federal Ministry of Information and Technology has not recommended smart meters in Germany.

Minimal environmental benefitsFrom Henney’s analysis, smart meters will not give the UK a major environmental boost, as many homes now use efficient

the EU wants member states to provide 80% of households with smart meters

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Big Data: Utilities rise

to the smart meter

challenge

Smart meters:

Good for consumers but infrastructure

unresolved

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properly constructed risk register with pro-visions to sort out problems if they should arise,” he said.

Thomas, who previously worked on tax office IT, said: “One of the ways we man-aged projects in taxes was by identifying possible outcomes for the project and assigning risk to each.”

Thomas is a strong proponent of formal methods, which he claimed would decrease

project cost. “Most of the costs in an IT pro-ject are the efforts in finding errors. We’ve known for 40 years that testing only shows the presence of errors, not their absence,” he said.

According to Thomas, a formal method-ology would reduce errors getting into the smart meter programme, saving a lot of time as problem areas are identified early. Fewer errors also means less risk of cyber attacks affecting smart meters and people’s electric-ity and gas supplies.

The chance of failure is high. In his evidence to the Select Committee, Andrew Ward, operations director at Scottish Power, highlighted a project oversight which occurred at the company’s US division.

“As part of the deployment, [the US operations] rolled out 200,000 meters and had to replace 5,000 because they could not update communications over the wire,” said Ward.

In other words, the team failed to identify the potential flaw of meters not being remotely accessible and, as a result, had to replace 2.5% of them at considerable cost. If this were to occur in the UK’s roll-out, almost one million households would be affected. n

condensing boilers for heating and energy-efficient lighting. He said the government’s premise that people will manage their energy consumption through smart meters is flawed.

In other parts of the world, the largest gains in energy reduction have not come from smart meter roll-outs, but from targeted measures that reduce peak consumption. In California, for example, the main demand side response is not coming from real-time smart meters, but from electricity suppliers directly controlling air-conditioning units, said Henney.

ross Anderson, a professor in security engineering at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory, warned that the energy industry has no reason to lower energy consumption.

“There is no prospect it will meet its energy-saving goals as the meters will be controlled by the retailers whose interest is to maximise sales volumes,” said Anderson. “The project was sold on the basis of a thor-oughly dishonest impact assessment and it’s pressing ahead, despite lack of agree-ment on many aspects of the specification. It’s a classic IT disaster in the making.”

Risk of project failureBeyond the choice of wireless over powerline for smart meter connectivity and the potential ineffectiveness of people to manage their consumption, the software development and project management of the programme may not be robust enough.

The costs associated with the IT behind the programme are likely to escalate and time scales will overrun, according to software engineer Martyn Thomas, a member of the IET Information Technology Policy Panel.

“It is a very large IT project, and the govern-ment’s

track record is not good,” said Thomas. “The government usually overlooks the amount of business change.”

risk is another factor that could contrib-ute to the project’s demise. “There isn’t a

› Smart meters demand smart deployment› Government reveals failing projects

› Universal Credit has hallmarks of another IT failure

“We have devised the most complex smart meter roll-out in the World”alex henney, economist and

electricity industry advisor

analysis

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analysis

Why UK women in IT are choosing startups over the corporate world

U K women are increasingly flocking to the tech startup scene instead of choosing to join the corporate world.

That is a stark contrast from traditional IT roles, where women make up less than 20% of the UK IT workforce.

Zoe Cunningham, managing director of Softwire Technology, said: “I was recently on an all-female panel at the Cybher conference for female bloggers and I was the only one in a corporate role. All of the other women had founded their own businesses – often after finding they couldn’t progress further in larger organisations.

“Although it’s amazing the startup world offers great opportunities to women, it’s sad they weren’t able to contribute to their full potential in a traditional environment.”

Cunningham said that in her networks, there are lots of women starting their own businesses. “One of my friends left a

high-flying finance job after she was pulled into an office and criticised for what she was wearing on a dress-down Friday,” she said. “This had never happened to any of the men. She is now working on her own business and running a chapter of a female networking group.”

Inspiring role modelsCunningham, who was recently added to Computer Weekly’s rising Star list of Most Influential Women in UK IT, said she was lucky enough to see the founder of My-wardrobe.com speak at Management Today’s 35 women under 35 awards recently: “She was proud to say ‘I appointed myself CEO’ and explained she never would have attained that role via the corporate route.”

Vicky Brock, CEO of startup Clear returns agreed: “We’ve been able to attract great female talent into Clear returns, because the

With rising confidence to create solutions or frustration with the traditional environment, more women are starting on their own. Kayleigh Bateman reports

Most Influential

Woman in UK IT 2013: Joanna Shields CEO of

Tech City

Women do not realise just how good they

are, survey reveals

Zoe cunningham, softwire: “tech is not an option for businesses of the future and smart women know this”

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startup culture is an appealing alternative to the rigid corporate IT world.

“I tell potential recruits that, ‘Yes you could be a tiny cog in a huge machine, be safe and never be sure what, if anything, you achieved – or you could take a risk, work here and directly change the world, ideally by the middle of next week’. A startup isn’t for everyone but those who are attracted are typically fantastically enterprising and keen to prove themselves.”

Brock said several of the women in her team have ambitions of starting their own business one day and she believes in helping them: “In startups generally, there is now a 50/50 gender split. However, that falls significantly when you look at the high-growth startups getting venture capital (VC) investment - the category tech startups often fall into.

“In that category, there is a growing female presence, but nothing like 50/50 yet - maybe less than 10% (except for fashion tech, which is a lot higher).”

Joanna Shields has been at the helm of reshaping the UK’s tech startup scene since taking the role of CEO at Tech City nine months ago and was voted the winner of Computer Weekly’s Most Influential Woman in UK IT 2013 award.

In a recent interview with Computer Weekly, Shields had similar views: “I have the privilege of working in Tech City, the East London cluster which is becoming the hot-bed of ideas and creativity and there are so many women-led businesses.

“If we can change this early stage and create an environment where people feel comfort-able starting their own companies or entering the tech careers, then this problem won’t exist in five to 10 years from now,” Shields said.

Motivation to join the startup scene“Tech is not an option for businesses of the future and smart women know this,” said Cunningham, giving reasons why women appear to be more attracted to the startup

scene than the traditional cor-porate world.

“If you think differently from

your peers and managers, it can be tiring to be constantly fighting your corner. When you’re your own boss, no-one tells you what to do.”

According to Brock, the best female-led tech startups come from a problem expe-rienced by the female founder that has not been sufficiently solved by the market yet.

“It’s nothing to do with a reaction to men,” she said. “Women are simply starting to have the confidence to respond to problems or opportunities in their own lives by seeing there may be a tech solution - and maybe a profitable business in that solution.”

She said her startup Clear returns came from her permanently returning things: “I’ve seen innovative battery engineering solutions that come from the female founder’s desire to charge her phone via her handbag.”

Women-led privately-owned technology firms in the US are more capital-efficient, achieve 35% higher return on investment and attain 12% higher revenue then male-owned technology companies – when ven-ture-backed – according to a recent survey.

Brock said: “I went over to Women 2.0 Tech Tour in New York in November and just recently to the We Own It Summit – US women are a great example for people like me to be inspired by. But it is not just about women founding startups, it’s about them founding startups with global visibility and ambitions to really scale – that challenge is still up for grabs.

“Talent is so precious and fundamental to a tech firm’s success, it’s more than altruistic to encourage it. It is an imperative of busi-ness survival. And hopefully female business leaders will focus on encouraging the women, in the way men have naturally focused on attracting their own peers and networks.” n

› The 25 most influential women in UK IT 2013› Take charge of your career path to success

› Snap Fashion: One year on

analysis

“a startup isn’t for everyone but those Who are attracted are typically fantastically enterprising and keen to prove themselves”vicky brock, clear returns

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case study

The Health Lottery securely manages growing volumes of data with a flexible and scalable IT architecture from Equinix. Archana Venkatraman reports

Twin datacentres just the ticket for lottery data security and robust IT

When The Health Lottery, the UK lottery game which donates 20% to health-related good causes,

wanted an infrastructure solution that would secure its increasing volumes of data, help it remain compliant and increase its IT resil-ience, its IT team decided on a twin datacen-tre strategy to overcome its main challenges and make its IT robust.

The Health Lottery Scheme was launched 18 months ago, and today manages 51 society lotteries that operate in rotation, with each representing a different geographi-cal region of the UK and raising money to address health inequalities in their area. Since its launch, the local society lotteries have raised over £24m.

A ticket costs £1, and 20p of every pound played goes directly to causes such as MenCap, the School Food Trust, the Alzheimer’s Society, Dementia UK and the Youth Sports Trust.

Growing volume of dataWith 40,000 retail partners, including Tesco and the Co-op, and prizes ranging from £20 to £100,000, the Health Lottery has a large group of regular players and a growing volume of data.

The game, delivered via its retail partners as well as online, is at the heart of the busi-ness, so the ICT development and infrastruc-ture requirements were considerable from the start, says David Wall, chief operating officer of The Health Lottery. “Our strategy was to outsource ICT and keep core staff to a minimum,” he says.

The IT team needed three major suppliers – one for its software, one for infrastructure management, and one for the physical host-ing of infrastructure to support and protect software applications, customer data and the online infrastructure.

“On the infrastructure side, our key chal-lenge was security. We needed restricted access to our servers for nominated person-nel only, and we needed to demonstrate this clearly as part of strict compliance regula-tions,” says Wall.

The team also wanted a service provider that could help it enter the cloud in the future and develop mobile

the health lottery’s it team uses two datacentres to ensure system resilience for the continuity of the game

Sweating your

datacentre’s IT assets – is it

a good idea?

The dark side of

software-defined

datacentres

for online gaming service providers, transaction security and data security compliance are extremely important

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such as the Health Lottery, critical public services, or the financial services sector.

The mirror sites, in two geographically-diverse datacentres, underpin the resilience of data and delivery and share identical security processes, ensuring that the Health Lottery is prepared for any eventuality, says Wall.

While the datacentre facility helps the Health Lottery meet data compliance regulations and its resiliency requirements,

it also benefits from high power density space with a wider choice of network service providers because the datacentre is a carrier-neutral facility.

Customers using datacentres provided by telecommunications companies or internet service providers cannot switch without physically moving the server to another location. Network or carrier-neutral datacentres are operated by third parties and allow customers to switch providers and use multiple providers.

“We get greater levels of efficiency by cross-connecting, saving on leased lines and enhancing resilience. Moving forward, as the cloud and mobile gaming take off, we will take advantage of these new opportunities. Equinix’s ecosystem will give us the flexibility to develop our channels, choose new direc-tions, and build new games,” says Wall.

The Health Lottery has an international master agreement in place with Equinix, which means it can choose to expand its operations outside the UK seamlessly. The IT team also runs monthly reviews to check on IT efficiency, says Wall. n

device strategies to create new business opportunities, he adds.

The Health Lottery selected Equinix, a provider of carrier-neutral datacentres and internet services. The lottery met its infra-structure needs by hosting the apps in an Equinix datacentre but having remote links to its own headquarters and to the televi-sion draw studio.

Meeting data security requirementsData security was one of the primary rea-sons The Health Lottery selected Equinix, according to Wall. Transaction security and data security compliance are extremely important for online gaming service provid-ers, and the Data Protection Act 1998 and the Privacy and Electronic Communications regulations (PECr) must be complied with at the datacentre level.

Equinix’s datacentres are certified and come with ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 security systems accreditation that helps eliminate the need for lengthy and repeated assess-ments, says Wall.

“The primary concerns in our business are the security of our data and the continuity of the game,” he says.

The multiple physical and data security lev-els in the IT facility help the lottery scheme company to comply with current and poten-tial future gaming regulations.

Disaster recovery best practiceIn addition to security management, the Health Lottery’s IT team uses two datacen-tres to ensure system resilience for the con-tinuity of the game and minimal downtime.

“For added resilience, we chose to deploy two Equinix datacentres, mirroring data in case of a disaster recovery scenario. While this is not strictly required by regulations, we prefer to follow best practice for complete

peace of mind,” says Wall.

Although running two identical

active-active datacentres costs more than having a single IT facility, it is a disaster recovery best practice for businesses that are dependent on constant high availability,

› Users’ top datacentre pain points› Next-generation datacentres: The cloud

› An holistic approach to managing datacentres

“equinix’s ecosystem Will give us the flexibility to develop our channels, choose neW directions, and build neW games”david Wall, health lottery

case study

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interview

The difficulty of defining the CISO

Business skills are key components of any chief information security officer (CISO), says Paul Swarbrick, CISO at

the UK’s air traffic control service, NATS.“After 25 years in information assurance,

I am convinced that in the modern era the role is not about technical expertise, but about being a business expert,” he told Computer Weekly.

Essential CISO skills, therefore, include good communication skills, risk management and governance skills and an understanding of how businesses work.

“The people I stay closest to are the head of internal audit and head of corporate govern-ance,” says Swarbrick. Technical vulnerabili-ties only become a business risk when they are expressed in business terms, he says.

“There is a difference between penetration testing to look for technical vulnerabilties and doing a risk assessment, which is at the business level,” says Swarbrick.

A common problem in many organisations is that the CISO role is ill-defined because there is no consensus around what someone in that role should do.

CISOs in no man’s land“Many CISOs are stuck in a no man’s land because of a mismatch in expectations by the business, IT, risk and the CISO them-selves,” says Javvad Malik, senior enterprise security analyst at 451 research.

Another common problem is that the technical people speak one language and the business people, senior management and the board, speak another.

“Part of my job is to be the translator so I can explain the risks associated with busi-ness practices or proposed changes to those practices in terms of the technology so the management can understand why it is a risk to them,” says Swarbrick.

At the same time, CISOs need to be able

Many chief information security officers are finding themselves in no man’s land due to uncertainty surrounding the role. Warwick Ashford reports

Why the role of a CISO can reduce the

average cost of a data breach

Lacking privacy laws aid growing CISO role in data privacy management

CW500 interview

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identify potential technical problems in pro-posed business initiatives. CISO should strive to have a healthy balance of technical and business skills.

“Part of my job is to talk to the teams tasked with setting up these initiatives to ensure they understand the security require-ments that need to be put around that infor-mation,” says Swarbrick.

He believes the trend is away from CISOs having a deep depth and breadth of technical knowledge to needing to understand busi-ness governance.

“In any business, you have to link security requirements to business requirements, but also the security vulnerabilties and risks to actual business risks,” says Swarbrick.

Increasingly, the focus of the CISO role should be business governance rather than information security because security needs cannot be separated from business.

“Every security control you are putting in place should be linked back to a business requirement or a business risk that needs to be addressed,” says Swarbrick.

This, he says, means understanding how things are financed, how things are run and what the organisation does.

“The days of the CISO who is simply a highly-qualified network engineer are over. Instead we are going to see CISOs that have an understanding of the technology, but a much deeper understanding of the busi-nesses that they work with,” says Swarbrick.

A modern CISO needs to have a very close working relationship with the CEO, members of the board and an understanding of the knowledge and experience they themselves bring to the table.

Looking ahead, Swarbrick says UK com-panies are embracing a managed services approach to IT and as they increasingly move to the cloud, a lot of infrastructure will fall

out of the con-trol of those organisations.

“The skills that were required to

maintain these things will become less impor-tant, but CISOs are going to have to document and demonstrate what the business’s require-ments are, and what third-party contracts are

being drawn up and service agreements are being negotiated,” he says.

A time for diplomatic skillsIn the coming years, Swarbrick says CISOs are going to be more diplomats and com-municators than techies and engineers.

Malik believes CISOs will also align more with the risk function in organisations, either reporting directly to the chief risk

officer or becoming one of the roles of the chief risk officer.

In terms of strategies to remain relevant, CISOs need to learn as much as they can about the organisations they work for, says Swarbrick. “They should spend more time listening than talking and more time under-standing what the business does than telling the business what it needs to do,” he says.

Malik says because time is always at a premium, CISOs could hold periodic mini-workshops with the IT and security teams to ensure they are up to speed on technology being deployed in the company.

CISOs should also turn any lack of clarity surrounding their role to their advantage by defining the role in a way that is best-suited to the business, highlighting the need to have business acumen.

“The ability to define a security role that is relevant to the business is a key skill required by any CISO, alongside good communication and leadership skills, which are essential for maintaining good technical team support while they are out being the Pr manager for security in the organisation,” he says.

As the CISO role is still immature, he says, CISOs and would-be CISOs should look to other markets to see how individuals have risen to the top and adapt those templates. n

› CISOs: From no seat to multiple hats› The keys for success in the role of CISO

› Why a security conscience is key among CISOs

interview

“the days of the ciso Who is simply a highly-qualified netWork engineer are over”paul sWarbrick, nats

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CWEuropeCWEurope is an E-Zine developed exclusively for our European audience

covering all the major areas of change within IT. The monthly E-Zine focuses on

themes relevant to the European market, offering both local language content

as well as English. Whether it’s building a new data centre, considering cloud

computing, developing a more secure infrastructure, CWEurope discusses key

management questions for IT pros to explore as they consider upcoming

IT purchasing and technology decisions.

Access this month’s issue today!

From the publishers of

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editor’s comment

Alarm bells ringing as Universal Credit IT is wrapped in secrecy

So, what is really going on with the Universal Credit IT programme?

If you trust journalistic warning bells – and believe the saying that there is no smoke without fire – then there has to be something seriously wrong. Let’s look at what we have recently learned.

There is a significant amount of internal strife at the Department for Work & Pensions (DWP) over Universal Credit. Computer Weekly has seen a copy of a leaked staff survey in which civil servants working on the scheme were scathing about its flaws. While it does not mention IT specifically, there are several comments that could be taken to imply serious concerns.

“After 29 years of service, this has been the most soul-destroying work I have done. I have worked long hours to deliver quality products that now appear to be in the bin,” said one person in the survey feedback.

We know that the Government Digital Service (GDS) has been called in to help with the project, but according to another employee in the survey, this has not been well received either: “The involvement of GDS and the appar-ent secrecy around what they’re doing is bad for morale”.

The DWP remains tight-lipped on the subject – the secrecy surrounding the project is unprecedented. But the amount of rumour and speculation is almost equally unprecedented and every journalistic warning bell, from years of experience reporting on government IT disas-ters, points to problems behind the scenes.

Nobody wants to say anything because the implications of failure are enormous. Put simply, if it turns out that £300m has been spent on IT that has been scrapped, or even that there are significant IT issues that are adversely affecting the roll-out, then work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith will face calls to resign.

Every snippet of information and every new rumour about Universal Credit IT help to paint a picture of a disillusioned team, in a dysfunctional project.

The only thing that is certain is that with a general election less than two years away, new leadership – and the minister ultimately responsible – are running out of time to get Universal Credit on track. n

Bryan GlickEditor in chief

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confident people – they have to be able to command and maintain the trust of employ-ees and shareholders. Yet are they aware of the risks that this outward confidence and bravado may bring to their business?

Reduce your risk of cyber attackIn today’s cyber connected world, where the effects of bad information security practices can affect not just the technology that runs the company, but also its financial performance, share price, customer loyalty and brand, has the evolution of cyber risk reached a position where business leaders must examine an ideological approach to business management?

I don’t mean to be conclusive, and I always want to be on the side of the victim, but I can foresee an increasing trend where a company’s modus operandi brings upon it the wrath of the hacktivist community.

This trend requires two changes in a com-pany’s approach to cyber risk: business lead-ers need to become educated on the true threats that their business faces, and infor-mation security professionals have to arm their business leaders with that information. Such a high level of awareness is not easily obtained and will require an evolution of a new capability within the infosec arsenal.

The time to become proactive is here. Cyber threat intelligence will be required by companies to help them understand how they can avoid becoming a cyber target, and help their leaders to reposition their brand and prevent them from crossing the ideologi-cal threshold before it is too late. n

opinion

Businesses might need to change their approach to cyber risk and reconsider their operating methods to avoid the wrath of the ideological hacker, says Mark Brown

How to avoid becoming a cyber target

Information risk has evolved from amateur script kiddies seeking to outsmart their friends from their bedrooms, to a highly

organised and professional criminal activity. The nature of the attacker has changed dra-

matically – but has the victim’s response been adequate? Numerous technical solutions are available for tackling the ever-increasing and evolving threat, but is that enough, or are other parameters as important?

To truly understand the threat you must understand why a company could become a target. Why does the hacktivist community, even though their numbers swell and they become ever more organised in their opera-tions, remain focused on targeting specific companies? Historic analysis suggests a number of indicators point to why hacktivists undertake attacks on those specific com-panies and that, in many cases, it could be argued that the company itself is to blame.

The indicator here is not the approach of the information security team or the lack of investment by the overall business in cyber security defences, but the link between a business’s operating methods, its client-facing posture, and how these can make that business a possible target.

Hackers with a causeMany members of the hacktivist community are quite ideological in their stance and tar-get companies not because they think it is a challenge to do so, but because they funda-mentally believe it is the right thing to do.

Hacktivism is fuelled by individuals who believe in a cause – freedom of speech, eradication of poverty, religion, fair trade. While many companies have actively taken steps to promote their responsible behaviour towards all these issues, how many of these have actually taken steps to implement this through the overall culture of their busi-ness and down to the grass roots of their approach to risk and incident management?

Business leaders are, by their nature,

Hacktivism examples:

What companies can

learn from the HBGary attack

Peter Kuper on

hacktivism, the evolution of hacking and

mobile threats

Mark Brown is director of risk and information security at Ernst & Young.

This is an edited version. Click here to read the full article online.

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buyer’s Guide

Just as intelligent management of a datacentre’s hardware assets is critical to ensure that IT delivers business value, managing software assets is vital for maintaining a highly flexible and up-to-date IT platform. But more often, software is purchased by the IT department out of necessity – and then forgotten due to its intangible form.

As software asset management (SAM) tools evolve into complex systems, using them correctly can help organisations maintain their software purchases to better meet business needs while remaining compliant with their software contracts.

Start with a software auditAs with hardware, the first step in software management is to carry out a full asset discov-ery. The majority of systems management tools will be able to carry out this task, but the capabilities of the systems may not provide exactly what is needed.

For example, some systems will look only within the datacentre. While this may be useful in identifying the number of licences being used across a specific software, this will only touch a small proportion of the applications and licences an organisation has.

Trawling through a total estate of servers, desktops, laptops, tablets and other mobile devices has become a difficult task, particularly with the rising popularity of bring your own device (BYOD) schemes, where licences may have been bought directly by the user. Yet building up a full picture of what is being used has many different advantages.

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Forrester: Tips for

software contract

negotiation

IT directors attack dire

software licensing schemes

Clive Longbottom reports on best practices for software asset management

Buyer’s guidesoftware asset management part 1 of 3

Well-managed software for flexible and resilient IT

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buyer’s Guide

First, patterns of use can be built up. For example, is a specific group of employees using a specific application? Are employees carrying out the same tasks using different applications? Second, the issue of licensing compliance can be addressed. Once a full picture of the applica-tion landscape has been established, IT managers can assess how these have been licensed.

In many cases, organisations will find that they have a corporate agreement for licences, yet departments and individuals have sourced their own software, with licences costing much more than if they had gone through a central purchasing capability. Bringing these licences into the central system could save a lot of money and help businesses remain compliant.

However, it may well be that “golden images” have been used with corporate licences with-out any checks as to whether the number of seats implemented is within the agreed contract.

Although this software discovery process can lead to extra costs for the organisation in bringing the contract into line with the number of licences being used, it will be cheaper than being fined should a software audit be carried out by the likes of Fast (the Federation Against Software Theft).

The software use patterns identified may help IT save costs in another instance too. Many SAM tools will be able to report on when an application was last used by an employee. In some cases, this may have been weeks, even months, ago – in many cases, it will be apparent that the employee installed the software to try out and has not used it since. Harvesting these unused licences can help to offset the need to change existing contracts.

A third advantage is that, as long as the asset discov-ery tool is granular enough, it will be able to ascertain the status of the application – its version level, what patches have been applied and so on. This allows IT to bring applications fully up to the latest version and ensure that patches have been applied where necessary.

When combined with a good hardware asset manage-ment system, the overall hardware estate can be interrogated to ensure that it is capable of taking the software upgrades. Where this is not possible, the machine can be upgraded or replaced as necessary, or marked as a special case with the software to remain as is when further software updates are scheduled to run.

How to pick SAM toolsGood SAM tools should also be able to map the dependencies between software, tracking how a business process will use different applications as it progresses. Again, through the use of suitable rules engines, these dependencies can be managed – to prevent the updating of one application from causing a whole business process to fail, for example. Also, possible problematic areas can be identified – for example, where software has a dependency on the use of IE6, and so introduce security loopholes that could be exploited by hackers.

For most organisations, the main strength of SAM tools will, however, reside in the capa-bility to manage software licences against agreed contracts. In many cases, this is not just

a case of counting licences and comparing them against how many are allowed to be used. The domain expertise built up by suppliers such as Flexera and Snow Software means that the nuances of contracts can be used to the best advantage.

For example, through identifying all licences that are cur-rently in place and the use patterns around them, it may

be possible to use concurrent licensing rather than per-seat licencing, whereby licences can be allocated based on the number of people using an application, rather than on named seats, so bringing down the number of licences required considerably. If this is not an option, then it may be that by bringing all licences under one agreement, rather than

building up a full picture of What is being used brings in many different advantages

› SMEs: Optimising IT assets› Treat software as a valuable asset

› Ins and outs of software asset management

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buyer’s Guide

several, a point may be reached where a new discount level is hit. For an organisation with, say, 1,000 seats, which has 600 licences under one agreement and four other contracts for 100 seats each, hitting the 1,000 seats under one contract may optimise the costs consid-erably – not just on licences, but also on maintenance. For international organisations, this can be exceedingly valid, as bringing licence agreements from several countries together under a single international contract could help save large amounts of money, as well as the time taken in managing the various contracts.

A cautious approach to SAM in the cloud eraWhen looking at SAM tools, there is one area where IT has to exercise caution. There is a strong move away from perpetual or yearly licences plus maintenance towards subscriptions, as cloud computing pushes all software suppliers to review how they market their products and attempt to maintain revenue streams.

In many cases, a perpetual licence will allow a user to continue using the software, even if no maintenance is paid from there on. Increasingly, subscription models will include some automated governance of the soft-ware – if the subscription is not paid, then access to the software will be automatically blocked.

SAM systems will need to be able to look more to the future and advise when subscription renewals are com-ing up, and also to provide user self-service capabilities to gain access to external subscription-based services through agreed corporate policies.

Organisations should ensure their SAM partner of choice is already prepared for this and is working con-tinuously to maintain its domain expertise in a manner that allows the organisation to move to a subscription model as and when this makes sense.

We can expect to see more SAM systems come through in the market, which will be able to help an organisation in identifying when this sweet spot is reached, providing helpful information on what options an organisation should be con-sidering to optimise its software asset base.

Overall, IT must remember that SAM goes beyond the datacentre infrastructure. However, by rationalising client licences, a better picture of server requirements in the datacentre can be developed. Only through a full and strategic SAM approach can the datacentre be fully optimised for the business. n

bringing licence agreements from several countries together under a single contract could help save money and time taken in managing the various contracts

Clive Longbottom is founder of industry analyst Quocirca

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cloud computinG services

T raditional mega-suppliers such as IBM, HP, Oracle and Dell have ruled the world of enterprise IT for several decades. But with pure cloud providers such as AWS (Ama-zon Web Services), Salesforce, Google and Windows Azure stealing ground from them, can these mega-suppliers convince enterprises with their private, public and

hybrid cloud offerings?A quick glance at Gartner’s cloud IaaS (infrastructure as a service) Magic Quadrant for

October 2012 reveals fascinating trends – while AWS is placed firmly in the leader quadrant, traditional firms such as IBM and HP are conspicuously absent.

“Traditional providers have enjoyed a very large enterprise installed base for many years, but cloud is changing that,” says Gartner’s vice-president for cloud, Gregor Petri.

“But there’s room for all in the big cloud world,” he says. Despite its hype, the cloud still accounts for just 4.8% of the overall enterprise IT spend.

Gartner estimates the worldwide market for public cloud services for 2013 to be at $129bn, representing less than 5% of the total IT market of $2.7tn in 2013.

Playing catch-upHP, IBM and Oracle are rapidly building their cloud portfolio to take advantage of their large installed base when cloud is still nascent. Although late in the cloud game, they are racing to develop cloud tools faster than their customers can keep up, Petri explains.

Take IBM. While it has not featured in the Magic Quadrant, it acquired SoftLayer Technologies, which did feature in the “niche player” segment of the quadrant, for a reported $2bn.

“It is a lot of money and that’s the price IBM had to pay to catch up in the cloud space,” says randy Kerns, senior strategist at analyst firm Evaluator Group. With SoftLayer, IBM hopes to take on Openstack market leader rackspace and meet its $7bn annually in cloud revenue objective by 2015.

At IBM Pulse conference in March 2013, the supplier announced its open cloud architecture and plans to base all cloud offerings on OpenStack. “IBM really needed that new culture and

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IBM updates zEnterprise mainframe

products for cloud, mobile and analytics

Cloud contracts poor

on security, says Gartner

The battle for the cloud

Pure cloud providers have changed the game and traditional mega-suppliers must fight to keep up. Archana Venkatraman reports

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cloud computinG services

expertise in its DNA in the cloud era which SoftLayer can provide,” says analyst Greg Schultz. “The traditional model of IT delivery had run its course and we had to make the transi-

tion quickly and that was the most challenging aspect,” says Jim Comfort, general manager for cloud development and delivery at IBM. “We have now moved from a product-first to a cloud-first and services-first mentality.”

He says that IBM realised in 2008 that cloud would massively transform IT and started looking at how it could develop its own cloud services.

“In the last five to six years, we have acquired around 1,000 SaaS (software as a service) companies and this indicates our understanding of users’ cloud demands.

“Fifteen years ago, we didn’t have a services model – we do now. Five years ago, we didn’t have a cloud model, but today it is a big part of our business,” says Comfort, insist-ing that IBM evolves with changing IT.

IBM reported its second quarter rev-enues in July revealing a 17% year-on-year drop in profit. In the first quarter too, its revenues and profit fell short of analyst forecasts. But its cloud revenue was up the highest (by 70%) in the second quarter.

Others are aggressive in their cloud push too. HP has developed a converged cloud strategy. “The world is moving to a hybrid environment,” says Steve Dietch, vice-president, worldwide cloud at HP. “No customer will be 100% on a public cloud or a private cloud. Users want choice and we are addressing their demands via our converged cloud.”

Reluctance to ditch expensive in-house infrastructureEnterprises have made huge investments in their in-house infrastructure and many are reluctant to ditch their old IT for the cloud. “Our strategy is based on this heterogeneous, hybrid environment to support existing investment,” Dietch says.

HP has had “cloud-like services” which are more like managed and hosting services but just over a year ago, it launched its own cloud suite. “Its cloud offering is now a lot similar to AWS,” says Schultz.

But it needs to do more, say experts. “HP still needs to add services such as relational data-base, such as Hadoop or Mapreduce, to widen its cloud capabilities,” says Schultz.

Oracle’s cloud strategy is gaining momentum too. It has collaborated with Salesforce to integrate their Salesforce.com and Oracle clouds. As part of the alliance, Salesforce.com will standardise on Oracle’s Linux, Exadata, Oracle Database and Java Middleware.

But analysts at Ovum urge enterprises to continue with a business-as-usual attitude for their IT procurement plans. “There is nothing in this Oracle/Salesforce announcement that would indicate a shift in the marketplace for enterprise applications or datacentre hardware,” says Ovum’s Carter Lusher.

Oracle has also released its first cloud-ready database – 12c – which, it says, forms the foundation of its public cloud services. The new multi-tenant architecture offers customers cloud capabilities such as simplified provisioning and cloning without requiring major appli-cation changes.

The 12c release will make it easier for customers to consolidate their databases onto the cloud, Michelle Malcher, president of the Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG), said at 12c’s launch. Oracle’s cloud strategy aims to offer a single stack of technology, so users can either build their own private cloud or use Oracle’s public cloud. As it uses the same set of technolo-gies, Oracle says it will be easy to switch workloads running on private cloud to public cloud.

“It is about giving customers choice because enterprises do not know where they want to

“hp still needs to add services such as relational database... to Widen its cloud capabilities”greg schultz, analyst

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be in three years’ time, says richard Garsthagen, director for cloud business development for Oracle in Europe. “Do they want to have a private cloud, a public cloud or a hybrid IT? We want to give them a pathway now, so they can choose what they want when they are ready.”

The main reason enterprises look at cloud is to deliver IT as a service (ITaas). “IT deliv-ery is tedious with current enterprise IT. We will help enterprises do ITaaS more effi-ciently,” Garsthagen says.

HP too believes in a hybrid IT model, flex-ibility and interoperability for its customers and insists its cloud tools are compatible with other available cloud services to give users the choice they need.

Experts give a nod to suppliers’ hybrid approach. “Enterprises are not moving everything to the cloud. They want to integrate their existing IT with the cloud. And those that are heav-ily invested in IBM are looking at its cloud offerings while those with a Dell, VMware or HP infrastructure are exploring theirs,” Schultz says.

Uphill struggle for traditional vendorsIBM’s Comfort admits that new cloud providers such as AWS and Google are profoundly changing IT. “But they are still not enterprise-ready and the distributed IT world is not going away anywhere.”

But Gartner warns that traditional providers are in denial and ignoring AWS, Google and Salesforce’s ability to serve enterprise needs. “AWS is well aware of customers’ onsite infra-structure and is picking up rapidly to become a viable enterprise-IT player,” Petri says.

“They can do hybrid cloud too. Traditional suppliers must not think that they have an exclu-sive cling to the hybrid cloud world,” Petri adds.

The dynamics of the enterprise world are changing too. On one hand there are new large enterprises such as Netflix that are rapidly adopting the public cloud and standardising on new providers’ platforms, but others from the financial sector or public sector organisations are looking to tie their in-house IT with cloud.

Mega-suppliers locking horns for the cloud“It is bitter out there,” Schultz says. “Oracle and IBM are heading nose-to-nose in the data-base as a service (DbaaS) segment, while HP, Oracle, VMware and IBM are all battling out in the server sector.”

HP’s Dietch points out the loopholes in Oracle and IBM’s cloud strategy: “Oracle is inflex-ible and IBM, while a formidable competitor, is going in a weird direction.”

Dietch was referring to IBM’s rumoured plans to sell its x86 server business. “What does that mean to its customers banking on its private cloud services?” he asks.

Oracle strikes back by saying most suppliers have a big focus on IaaS when what typically runs inside the infrastruc-ture is what matters. “We offer database as a service. You can do DbaaS with IaaS but it is too tedious and that’s what our competitors are doing. With our cloud, IT can do all that

independently and quickly,” says Garsthagen.In the increasingly cloud-first world, businesses are assessing cost, compliance and secu-

rity, and weighing all cloud products for a good bargain. But traditional suppliers are not giving up the fight yet and are luring their existing customers with rosy cloud promises such as multi-tenancy, elastic cloud, ease to move workloads, hybrid IT and choice, insisting these are not all provided by pure cloud suppliers. n

“traditional suppliers must not think that they have an exclusive cling to the hybrid cloud World”gregor petri, gartner

› An introduction to hybrid cloud security› Enterprise cloud services: Who’s responsible?

› Guiding the enterprise into a hybrid model

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Z:, Y:, and X: all had exactly the same con-tent. To save space on the file server, he went into X: and deleted everything there. He then switched to Y: only to see that it was now empty too. He probably would have then looked in Z: except that sud-denly everyone starting complaining that their systems crashed.”

“I understand why end users want to turn off antivirus software when their machines seem slow, but why would an admin do that? The worst virus outbreak I ever saw came when a customer’s SQL team disa-bled antivirus on all their servers because it ‘slowed them down.’ Then SQL Slammer hit. Slow got redefined that day.” n

The 31 Worst Face-Palm Moments in ITGFI Software has published the worst “face-palm” moments in IT. Here are Downtime’s top three from the list:

“The project lead on another client engagement read an article about Java saying it was the ‘next big thing’. He declared the project should switch to Java. What he didn’t understand was that Java was being shown as the next big thing... for security exploits!”

“Here’s one for the Netware folks – I was called to figure out why a client’s server crashed and no one could access any data. It turns out a junior admin saw that

techie toilet trauma

a techie toilet that is controlled via an android app has a hardware flaw, meaning it can be con-trolled by any phone with the application. the my satis toilet, manufactured by japanese firm lixil and retailing at nearly £4,000, allows the user to play music from their smartphone through speakers in the toilet base, as well as tracking the users’ movements as a health check.

other features including flushing, lifting the toilet seat and sprays can also be controlled via the smartphone app.

but owners have now been warned that a flaw in the app’s hardware could mean the toilet is open to attack.

trustwave’s spiderlabs security experts have revealed the pin code to connect the toilet to the app via bluetooth for every model is set to 0000 and cannot be reset. any phone with the my satis app could connect to the toilet.

just think of the mischief you could play with your mates’ loo?

Read more on the

Downtime blog

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