IT’s for Charity

This article is primarily aimed at a specific type of Manx organisation - those which are registered as charities with the Isle of Man General Registry and whose charitable objective is something most of us would recognise as a worthwhile charitable purpose - helping society in some way that is not merely as a not for profit outsourcing of services otherwise normally delivered by the public sector.  

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World class technology development in Andreas? Catching the Rays.

I don’t know about you, but I was slightly gobsmacked last week to read that for the month of July the Isle of Man was the sunniest place in the British Isles. I read this news shortly before driving from Port Erin to Andreas under a leaden grey sky to meet one of the two inventors of Rayzig. More about them later, in the meantime what is Rayzig and why does it matter?

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Information and the CIA

A long, long time ago, and a long way from here, I used to work in one of those organisations where every office had a safe for locking away sensitive documents, the clean desk policy was mandatory, the whiteboards and wallcharts had curtains (which were kept closed to prevent you from seeing them), the barred windows were triple-glazed to inhibit eavesdropping using “laser microphones”, and the building was repeatedly “swept” for electronic “bugs”.  Before I was allowed to work there somebody visited my known family, acquaintances, past schoolteachers et. al. and quizzed them to make sure I was trustworthy. 

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Helping Others to EAT

One of the great advantages in living on a small island is the sense of community. So many of us are actively involved in local community initiatives, freely giving our time and expertise to benefit the island and those living here. I have written previously about Code Club and STEAM Lab which are creating opportunities for people to learn how to program computers and to create technology using small computers such as Arduino and Raspberry Pi. These skills can be used for may purposes - almost all of the electronically controlled machines we use everyday including washing machines, cookers, motor cars etc. are programmed and controlled using fundamentally similar methods and technologies. 

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Code Club STEAMs Ahead

The Isle of Man Code Club http://codeclub.im has been running since March 2014. Hundreds of people on the island, including many youngsters and business and technology professionals, have benefitted from this voluntary initiative, developing and expanding their computing skills through formal programming tuition, informal workshops, meeting other people interested or skilled in digital technologies and getting the opportunity to experience, and learn from experts and enthusiasts about, technologies that they would not otherwise have access to, such as Virtual Reality, Robotics, 3D Printing etc. Code Club has also put teams of Isle of Man youngsters into the UK Cyber Security Challenge, and they have performed well. 

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Great Techspectations

So, how do you feel about your corporate IT? How do your customers feel when using your website or engaging with your business via technology? How do your employees and suppliers feel about using your IT systems? 

Being a user of technology is frequently complex because technology itself is complex. A phrase I find myself using repeatedly to IT and Business leaders in respect of their internal and outward-facing IT provision is that “Perception is Reality” - and different stakeholders will have differing perceptions of your company’s IT.

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IT’s Armageddon

I usually write IT Matters the week before you see it in print, so right now we’re in the immediate aftermath of the WannaCry ransomware outbreak. As you will have heard in other reports, WannaCry was a ransomware which used a viral spreading mechanism called EternalBlue originally engineered by the United States National Security Agency (NSA) to propagate across networks of computers running Microsoft Windows. Other than its use of this new spreading mechanism the WannaCry ransomware is unexceptional, but its effects have been remarkable. 

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Porter’s Generic Strategies

I had another topic in mind for this IT Matters, but I found myself in two separate conversations this week about the different considerations in the “Build or Buy?” decision for key business software depending upon the nature of the business.

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Stuck In The Middle of Nowhere

Middle of Nowhere might be a bit of a cruel way to describe Horncastle, a small and ancient market town in the Lincolnshire Wolds halfway between Lincoln and Skegness and a one hour drive to the nearest motorway. With a population of under 7,000 souls it is a bit larger than the villages of Port Erin and Port St. Mary combined, but miniscule in comparison with most UK towns. There is little industry other than agricultural supplies and retail; the old grain warehouses and woollen mills have been taken over by the antiques trade, the dense concentration of antiques shops draws in coach-loads of customers in for the whole town, which retains a wide selection of small independent retailers, restaurants and coffee bars despite the dramatic depopulation of the surrounding countryside due to the mechanisation of farming in the 20th century. It is one of those quaint places where one can pleasurably mooch for hours; despite having old shops, old pavements, narrow streets etc., “regeneration” is not on the horizon and there are very few empty retail premises. 

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The Weakest Link

I’ll make no apologies for another article about Cyber Security, according to the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) (http://www.britishchambers.org.uk) digital survey which was published last week, 20% of the c. 1,200 businesses responding had fallen victim to a cyber attack in the previous year. Narrowing the results to “larger” businesses (with more than 100 employees) and the percentage which were victims of cyber attacks rises to 42%.

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