War StoriesCategory

Yesterday, there was a world-wide incident that affected computers running CrowdStrike Falcon, where there was a conflict between the vendor’s anti-malware protection and the Windows sensor, resulting in a BSOD and unresponsive computers. This is a major incident that was effectively the effective impact as we were expecting from the… Continue Reading Lessons from the CrowdStrike incident

A question that has been around my mind for a while is “does the CISO need to become the CSO”? Is the responsibility of the Chief Information Security Officer too limiting, and should they be the Chief Security Officer? The issue with a CISO is that they often are limited… Continue Reading Does the CISO need to become the CSO?

There are many projects I have been involved with, where the product design or implementation has been driven by the need for reporting, analysis or compliance, but backend effectiveness does not equate to customer satisfaction, and businesses should be more aware of this in their product releases. A key example… Continue Reading Backend effectiveness does not equate to customer satisfaction

People have asked me about my leadership style, and as it is such a common question, I have decided to post it here. People recognise that I am passionate, and I lead through inspiration and desire to achieve the strategic goals. I am a positive and passionate person who motivates… Continue Reading My leadership style

If you have ever been in a tricky situation, you will know that half the battle is knowing what is going on – you can’t fix a problem if you don’t know what has happened. However, root cause analysis needs to wait until after the issue is resolved. Too often,… Continue Reading Half the battle is knowing what is going on

I started my career on Exchange 5.0 in late 1997, and the product became my main skill area for nearly 22 years. In that time, I experienced hacking attacks and website defacement of OWA, stability battles and architecture changes when Microsoft evolved the system towards cloud capability. When my career… Continue Reading Exchange on-premises hack: who still has servers?

Today I was promoted to CIO within the Naval Shipbuilding College, to build on the vision of a data-driven enterprise to evolve the sovereign capability of naval shipbuilding in Australia. I am honoured to be recognised after my first eight months to be credited with having the abilities and approach… Continue Reading My journey to CIO

I have encountered many baffling processes in businesses that leaves me wondering – who is your process written for? You may have spent many hours performing a Digital Transformation, focusing on streamlining processes and removing paper forms and taking advantage of new technologies to automate and accelerate processes and functions… Continue Reading Who is your process written for?

A hot topic around the world is the use of digital systems to record health information for people. It’s not just the healthcare record security concerns – the fear that information can be hacked or even changed, it also has roots in incomplete recording of information, and how healthcare professionals… Continue Reading Healthcare record security concerns

Unfortunately working extra hours and overworking has become a ‘badge of honour’ to try and prove that you are a hard worker and somehow to justify that you are valuable to your business. I strongly disagree and consider overworking a disease that must be cured. Overworking leads to burnout. Overworking… Continue Reading The overworking disease

Every week, millions of people dutifully complete their timesheets, just as businesses have expected of them for decades. The tyranny of timesheets has been something that many employees have endured and been frustrated by for almost as long – we all hate timesheets. Admittedly, there are some positive reasons for… Continue Reading The tyranny of timesheets

2020 has not started well, particularly in Australia with bushfires, floods and now Coronavirus. It is undeniable that life and culture will be changed forever by the lockdown of business and society caused by the global pandemic that has gripped the whole world. The short, medium and long term effects… Continue Reading How Covid-19 may change business and IT

The problem with backups Legacy approaches to backup in the IT industry are largely focussed on performing a backup of an entire server. This means that multiple backups will contain a full copy of the Windows operating system, and other files that will never need to be restored. Follow this… Continue Reading Backup for cloud

Security is a rapidly moving beast – faster than any other facet of the technology industry. We are in a constant battle with everyone from hackers to script-kiddies, from targeted data theft attacks to Denial of Service. Our security teams and network administrators are playing catch-up with the malicious operators.… Continue Reading Your security is obsolete

We have all had it before – something that has been around for a long time, and we have no idea if it is important any more – but no-one will take the ownership to declare that it can be disposed of. This is where the Scream Test comes in.… Continue Reading The Scream Test

Skills evaporation is a blight that affects many businesses, particularly monolithic large businesses and governments. Skills evaporation will happen when good people leave a business to pursue better opportunities, taking knowledge with them – but also the culture of the remaining people is that their skills are reduced by the… Continue Reading Skills evaporation

How much does it cost to manage your data? In an early job, I was making a projection to purchase more disk to expand capacity on our Exchange mailbox servers. At the time, disk was relatively expensive, and the capacity that I had projected for 3 years would have also… Continue Reading Save Money – by buying more disk