With ever increasing concerns on privacy and information security, the essence of enterprise level information security is also being felt by many organizations, locally and globally. Integration of information security measures and practices along with business processes must result into seamless security integration and be affordable.
Sambad Technologies (and Shristi Technologies as consultant on Information Security) organized Information Security for Business training on May 12-14, 2010 at Eastin Hotel, Bangkok, Thailand. The training addressed latest enterprise information security risks and contemporary approaches to reduce the risk level. The event also provided a common platform for executives, managers, and professionals from various enterprises for human networking, experience sharing, and prospective business expansion.
The ecosystem of learning-and-teaching is eventually transforming towards learning-and-sharing. Participation of right stakeholders in learning-and-sharing is very essential for knowledge discovery and sharing.- optimal utilization of multi-cores
- parallel processing
- synchronization of user threads and kernel threads
- security in virtualization
- energy efficiency consideration
Considering the difficulties faced by academia in conducting Operating System course in under-graduate and graduate studies, Microsoft offers a good set of learning resources that enables learners to explore features of most popular operating system kernel.
The Windows Core Workshop, Beijing, 2010 was centered on use of WRK in academics. WRK is a core kernel with no GUI, no drivers, and enables learners to play with kernel behaviors in user space, I/O stack, I/O filtering etc. The technical sessions covered by Dave Probert, the kernel architect at Microsoft, were fabulous. Faculties from various countries also shared their experiences of using WRK into OS curriculum.
World economy emerged from commodity exchange and had come to experience economy. There has been lots of innovation in product design and service delivery, and now the market demands authenticity in experience. After its invention, extensive use of information technology in business processes has resulted into requirement of more specialized attention to different fields of IT. The convergence of technologies enabled work to flow from place to place and a new culture of doing business, namely out-sourcing, emerged. The original idea behind outsourcing was to harness productivity from the regions where labor cost is low, and to compress the time of project completion as the work was dispatched to a different time-zone.
Companies taking out-sourced development and service delivery tasks performed very well for couple of years. But as the living standards of human resources went up by time, employees in the out-sourcing companies started demanding more benefits. Companies from developed world found it less charming to out-source their business processes to developing world where labor cost was considered to be cheaper before.
Dependency on service based economy only turns out very fast. The physical products also turn out after some time. However, intellectual properties can be enhanced regularly so that their usability can be maximized throughout time. Nepalese IT industries has been focusing a lot in IT enabled services for quick return but less attention has been given to develop intellectual properties like software, systems, pattents etc.
Nepalese software industries need to understand which particular track of economy they would like to follow; IT enabled services or intellectual properties? IT enabled services are really important but heavily relying on services only can be disastrous. Rather the software industries need to developed their own core intellectual properties and then only provide services required to enhance the quality and usability of their products in future.
In the context where the global communication infrastructure, information, and services are under the threat of Information Security breach, Nepalese organizations are also not far apart. Followings are the synopsis that are the motivation factors for serious concern over Information Security in Nepalese market.- Barack Obama’s concern in cyber security highlights importance of Information Security in current world. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/22/technology/internet/22cyber.html?_r=1&ref=technology
- BBC News broadcasts that online fraud went up by 185%. http://www.bbc.co.uk/london/content/articles/2008/10/04/bexley_phishing_feature.shtml
- Iranian Cyber army diverting requests to Twitter to malicious website. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8420233.stm
- Students bypassing school Internet security. http://news.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/hi/technology/newsid_10000000/newsid_10003500/10003579.stm
- A single man in US stole 138m credit card numbers from super-market chains like WalMart and Seven-Eleven. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8206305.stm
- Lower configuration of web-platform went slow after Jackson’s death. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8120324.stm
- Viruses making leap even to international space station! http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7583805.stm
- the role of NDA plays very insignificant role in case of Information Security breach as most of the security breach occur due to human instincts,
- preparedness for disaster recovery plan and policies are completely missing,
- general acceptable use policy missing even in large organizations,
- people are very keen in personal information security (spyware, keyloggers, SSL enabled protocols) but unaware about the behavior of technology that would aggregate into an Information Security catastrophe,
- business model threats such as; SaaS security models, sub-system vendor lock-in etc. are not analyzed, and
- as a whole, an Information Security implementation framework, policies, procedures, code of conduct, awareness of social engineering etc. are missing.
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Media coverages;
- Artha Ko Artha – NTV: http://arthakoartha.com/old_site/uploads/videos/20thDec2009.html (start time: 20:45 - http://arthakoartha.com/old_site/uploads/videos/20thDec2009.FLV)
- http://www.nafij.comli.com/index.php?news&nid=63
- http://www.nayapatrika.com/newsportal/finance/9195.html
- http://nagariknews.com/economy/148-telecom/8335-2009-12-19-07-53-20.html
Knowledge Management, being a set of management practices and supplemented by tools, is highly applicable in all development projects. Sustainability of development projects does ensure the sustainable development of nation. All the stakeholders need to be aware about the influencing factors and enhance their positive effects in the development projects. The role of management culture, knowledge creation and collaboration, and
efficient and effective tools has been well understood by the professional society. All we need is to develop an efficient framework that supports knowledge integration from different fields of expertise and conduct sustainable projects.
Visit KMSD Conference 2009 – website here.
My presentation covers the research on how Micro-Servers can be used at different levels of governance, automation for service delivery, and decision making and planning by government as well as public/private organizations. A complete solution framework is developed and presented. The queries about the product and implementation framework were very effective. (Photos here)
Followings are the summaries of some of the influential presentations I witnessed.
Experiences from Hydro-Powers - Rather than investing money in real-state sector, why not invest in more productive project such as hydro-powers – experience of Prakash Sharan Mahat, Minister of Energy. Tranmission highway project for electricity, (what about transportation, and information??) for increased accessibility are essential components of hydro-power projects. Multi-purpose projects, are we ready for them yet?
Energy and climate change (the economics behind that) - The major concern, CDM and Carbon market has enabled very un-fair business of carbon emission quota. The ambitious growth of developing country impedes the efforts of developed countries to minimize the emission of CO2.
ICIMOD shared experience of; glaciers are becoming shorter and shorter. Too many landslides. Lack of GHG mitigation plans. Livelihood and poverty problems. Imja lake. Some success stories from Bangladesh, Nepal, and India.
AIT President shared his vision for knowledge economy regarding contextualization of knowledge assets, knowledge being not value-free or consequence-free, knowledge being essential for proper tie up of sponsors with projects, and in overall the role of knowledge creating academies in addressing knowledge requirement of the society.
Dr. Pahari from Nepal Development Research Institute presented very important concept on why spatial information management is required in current context of Nepal for effective planning of development projects. Most of the reports generated contain summaries of attributes but lack geo-statistical information related to them. This presentation convinced the need of some tools that can capture spatial information which served as an open platform for my solution framework!! I thanked him for it.
One of the interesting presentation with a radical context but very effective one was on disaster preparedness by the use of Nepalese proverbs! The implicit knowledge in traditional knowledge, stories, proverbs in Nepalese culture can be externalized and shared with communities for disaster preparedness.
Panel discussion on Knowledge Management for Mountain Development at the end emphasized on success factors for knowledge management (from ICIMOD), implications of knowledge management for conservation planning by looking into bio-diversity, mitigation of information asymmetry in food production (from Helvetas), use of legacy communication systems for information dissemination, and use of water informatory for water capacity management in regional level (from ICIMOD).
The businesses are becoming aware of information security threats in Nepal. However due to lack of implementation framework, proper management of enterprise level security, and human firewall and motivation, the readiness for Information Security in businesses can’t be assured. A concrete framework which is ‘applicable’ in Nepalese business scenario is essential.
Information Security for Business trainings conducted in Butwal (photos here) and Pokhara (photos here) reflected the need of such framework and cost effective solutions. Shristi Technologies, Sambad Technologies, and Datum Systems are jointly conducting the training to supplement the need. The next training is going to be conducted on December 19-20 at Kathmandu will harness all the experiences and knowledge collected from previous 7 such trainings.
It is great to have IEEE AH-ICI Conference on Internet organized in Nepal. The blend of emerging technologies and their applications when shared in mass creates a huge impact in Nepalese society. Papers presented in 21 different tracks are very fascinating and informative.
Use of ‘unicore’ for e-Science platform, 8051 implementation of elliptical curve encryption, host information protocol, mutual authentication in 3G networks, security concerns in WiMAX were very interesting presentations during the conference.
Glimpse of the conference are here.
Technology is derived from science and engineering subsequently. Use of scientific findings and engineering designs for better quality of human life and work culture is called technology. Traditionally, four pillars of technology are defined such as; data, hardware, software, and communication technologies. These four pillars are driven by human factor. To get best out of technology, it must be integrated with business processes, work culture, and daily life activities which results into a form of integrated-services. The blend of technology and management culture enables good productivity and effectiveness and hence good quality of human life.
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Insights are reflections of ambiance. There need not be any reasons for traveling, emotions and feelings we have. Aren’t in search of any treasure nor any goal. The experiences that we collect add values to life. Wherever I go, I know the emotions will never stop flowing, nothing gonna be certain, but I always become certain that I want it more and more.
Photos of 6-day Mustang Trek: Day-1, Day-2, Day-3, Day-4, Day-5, and Day-6.
We need to promote internal tourism as well. Many Nepalese visit Mustang for regilious tour. Hospitality and quality of service will definitely add values for the internal tourists and hence promotion for internal tourism.
Nikon D90 performed great during the expedition. The RAW pictures taken when VR enabled were stunning. Still need to explore more functions in it. Some of the selected shots are here.
Experience the joy of trekking through these videos.
Many of Nepalese organizations, including Nepal Government, are not able to manage human resouces properly and hence aren’t able to harness productivity from the resource pool.
Throughout many ages of human civilization, the society’s main concern has been to boost productivity in terms of efficiency and effectiveness. Information and Communication Technology not only enhances productivity but also quality of human life.
At operational level of HRM, personnel records, benefits, schedules, compensation, training, and skills need to be recorded in an inventory. At tactical level, the organizations can control relocation cost, contract cost, evaluate performance, appraise, and manage work-flow. Whereas in strategic level long term personnel planning, rewarding, employee development and career planning, knowledge management, rentention strategies, and succession planning can be done with efficiency and effectiveness by the use of ICT.
