The great big cyber security threat!

Apparently, according to a review of national security, there is regular massive attacks, with 1000 malicious emails targeted at government a month! See the BBC report here.

I laughed my head off. I see that on some clients systems (depending on how you count the stats) either in 1 second, and certainly in one day. With a bit of luck they refer to very carefully crafted and directed attacks, not the run of the mill stuff than business face daily, because law enforcement is not that interested in combating cyber crime.

Apparently these threats can bring down air traffic control, the national grid and other critical systems. True, which is why these systems should be nowhere near the internet, should not have USB ports or CD drives, and also be tied down tighter than a very tight thing. They should be able to operate autonomously if their interconnections break, and then their communications should not be over the internet or lines of communications that could be compromised by a cyber attack.

All that is easy to say though, the problem with the internet though is that it is easy and cheap.

Is the news border control force just spin and gimmicks?

Gordon Brown announced that there would be a new border control force, which would have been the adoption of Conservative (and also Liberal Democrat) policy, that Labour have to date argued against.

It looks like a U turn, but in fact isn't really because the reality is that immigration, customs and visa staff will just hang out together in similar uniforms rather than a single coordinated force including police powers and coordinating with all agencies.

In short, looks good, probably won't achieve much.

The BBC has this.