Global leaders from business, politics and academia have issued a sharp riposte to recent claims that the threat of cyber security has been ‘overhyped.’ Rebutting distorted media coverage of the OECD report, ‘Reducing systemic cybersecurity risk’, the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting at Davos last week saw cyber security at the top of the policy agenda. In the sixth edition of its own report, Global risks 2011, the WEF cites cyber security as one of the principal emerging threats to businesses and nation states alike. Quite apart from being exaggerated, the WEF suggests that the ‘risks’ of cyber security ‘could be underestimated.’

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Technorati Tags: cyber security, Davos, NATO, World Economic Forum

Well, who saw this coming then? For once, it wasn’t the analysts, commentators and the Bank of England.

Predictions for the recently announced statistics on GDP had ranged from 0.2% to 0.6% growth – nothing to write home about, but it was expected that the economy would continue to move in the right direction nonetheless.

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It’s been a while since I listened to the entirety of a State of the Union address. Since joining Intellect just over two years ago it must have been one of the most IT friendly, big speeches I have ever heard. Subtitled ‘winning the future’ President Obama focused a lot of the one-hour address on how the US need to invest in innovative technology – information technology, health technology, green technology, teaching technology, even using technology to reform, slim-down and modernise government.

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Technorati Tags: IT and innvoation, state of the union adress, US and technology

Advocates say plastic/printed electronics will revolutionise the electronics industry, whereas cynics insist this is ‘blue sky’ technology and it will, in any case, move to low cost countries. Intellect’s first Plastic Electronics Conference will be held next month, and attempt to give attendees a realistic feel for timescale and current barriers to growth. Printed circuitry can be used to place electronics on compact, inexpensive and lightweight substrates, reducing costs and size. Displays, batteries, transistors, and interconnects are among the technologies that can be produced on paper, plastics and other thin materials. However, whilst the media and general public is captured by the possibilities of low costs goods that have odd shapes and sizes (even fitting in clothes) technologists realise that the many categories lumped under the broad banner of plastic/printed electronics are still far from production. These designs can include disposable products such as glucose test strips and medical patches but, as Plastic Logic has quickly learned, one of the main challenges facing this fledgling market is pricing. That means product and business developers will have to examine tradeoffs – and that’s exactly one of the issues the event will try to address.

As technology changes are forcing requirements for low cost, low carbon and flexible applications, plastic/printed (or organic and large area) electronics have emerged with some of the most efficient techniques by which to achieve these goals. While development is still in its early stages, the technology may have the potential to dramatically change the electronics industry. The list of devices that rely on plastic/printed electronics technologies is big and getting bigger. Applications include touch screens, RFID antennae, medical sensors, flexible circuits, solar cells and so on. If we include smart packaging, lighting, optical signal processing and various applications available to retailers, the potential is truly enormous. In addition to consumer products, there are also big prospects in the automotive and aerospace industries. American engineers at Boeing, for example, are already experimenting with printed electronics technology to reduce weight, maintenance and cost of aircraft. In fact, the new 747-8 plane incorporates a partly printed bird-strike damage detection sensor.

As one of the most cost-effective production methods, plastic/printed electronics is enabling the high volume, high throughput, low cost paradigm. In fact, integrating several electronic functions (eg. sensors and antennae) which previously had to be applied as separate components, cuts the number of parts required and the amount of logistical and assembly work. This results in compact, ready-to-install ‘all-in-one’ electronic modules that require a minimum of space, thus reflecting the trend toward miniaturisation in electronics. On the other hand, at present the majority of these new applications must interface with traditional electronic components for functionality (eg. it’s not yet possible to print a microchip at present) and, moreover, many predict the UK will need to focus on R&D rather than mass-manufacturing. Incidentally, we’ve heard that a Russian state-backed company has invested GBP400m in Plastic Logic even though the company is planning its first high-volume, state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in… guess where? Dresden, Germany and not some remote Asian location!

The UK has a huge chance to groom R&D IP-drenched fledging indigenous companies to become the next advanced manufacturing global leaders, no matter if the high volume will be sited in bigger and/or cheaper countries. The key is to maintain the leading edge in R&D and design so that ultra-specialised and flexible manufacturing can still be performed in this country. A hybrid of plastic/printed electronics alongside surface mount technology (SMT) will most likely remain as the preferred methodology for the foreseeable future. However, it’s worth investigating the current problems facing many technology start-ups in the field and see whether there’s a market reality beyond speculation. One may conclude that plastic/printed electronics will be complementary to PCBs and the EMS industry rather than competitive but we all know how in technology (and electronics in particular) things change so quickly and the global market always rewards leaders, not followers.

Last July the Health Select Committee announced an enquiry into commissioning in reaction to the publication of ‘Liberating the NHS’ White Paper. Since then the committee has been busy collating the sheer volume of responses to the consultation, hosting multiple evidence sessions as well as questioning the Secretary of State for Health on his plans for the reforms. So what conclusions have been drawn from this in-depth look at commissioning?

In the report the committee heavily criticises the government for shifting its policy on commissioning saying they do not believe the reforms represent the ‘most efficient way’ of delivering the objectives and the financial savings desperately needed within the NHS. In addition the report goes on to highlight the increased risks the new commissioning plans face alongside the ‘Nicholson Challenge’ of finding £20bn of efficiency savings and doing so ‘without setting out a credible plan for mitigating that risk’.

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Technorati Tags: commissioning, gp consortia, health care, health select committee, health select committee report into commissioning, healthcare services, pcts

The publication of the OECD report Reducing Systemic Cybersecurity Risk has sparked a spate of misleading news stories claiming that the study demonstrates that the ‘risks of cyber war have been ‘over-hyped’.’ There is of course a delicious irony that the media is now misrepresenting and simplifying a report that supposedly identifies misrepresentation and simplification in the cyber agenda, but let’s put the record straight.

Professor Sommer and Brown’s report does indeed argue for a more nuanced approach to cyber security challenges. As this blogger pointed out in an article in November, the sensationalized media portrayal of cyber security, such as the recent mushroom-cloud embossed Economist article, is unhelpful. Reducing Systemic Cybersecurity Risk accurately describes how cyber attacks can vary radically from pedestrian ‘phishing’ scams to ‘multi-stranded stealth onslaught’ and that a more focussed response demands the establishment of a sophisticated and multi-layered common cyber vocabulary.

Any interpretation that uses this to question the Strategic Defence and Security Review’s designation of cyber security as a tier-1 threat is guilty of the same conflation of cyber warfare and cyber security in the round that the Professors criticise! That there are vulnerabilities that affect seemingly mundane activities, such as online medical health records and tax returns, is the very reason cyber is such a potentially disruptive threat. Indeed the report itself, in contrast with its presentation in the media, highlights the significance of this ‘interconnectedness’, pointing out that ‘victims of cybersecurity lapses and attacks include many civilian systems.’

Equally, the statement that ‘it is unlikely that there will ever be a true cyberwar’ should not be taken out of context. The authors are simply explaining that cyber attacks will be employed alongside, rather than instead of, conventional weapons. This should certainly not be read as an intention to reduce the significance of these new technologies – this much is clear through the report’s statement that ‘the use of cyber weaponry will shortly become ubiquitous.’

It is the very breadth of cyber security challenges that make it such a potent threat. It would be a great shame if this rigorously researched report were viewed through the same binary lens that Professors Sommer and Brown have set out to condemn.

Technorati Tags: cyber security, OECD, Professor Sommer

Given the significant shift in education policy since last year’s election, this year’s BETT conference was of particular interest as it was one of the first opportunities for industry and the education community to come together and reflect on the impact of these changes.

Despite leaving university just over three years ago, the show illustrated to me just how much has changed in terms of the technology that is now available to enhance learning. The changes since I was at school are even more dramatic as then we were only just starting to use the internet for research and using an overhead projector was about as advanced as it really got.

I spoke with a number of teachers about how they are using technology in their school and also their reaction to latest government policy. Some teachers expressed concern about the impact of closing Becta and were not convinced that the coalition is fully appreciative of the positive contribution that technology can play in education. In contrast, other teachers made clear that they were excited at the recent policy shift and argued that teachers will relish the absence of an overly prescriptive steer from the centre. It was interesting to hear from one teacher in particular who said that the debate around technology and education is too often shaped by what teachers want and not enough attention is paid to what students expect and what they value.

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Technorati Tags: BETT, education, Public Sector

As the deadline for submitting views on a new Information Strategy for the NHS closes today media is already reporting on all the challenges facing the DH in implementing the strategy. Our response and the BMA’s are getting much press coverage for saying the NHS lacks skills, ICT systems and money to drive an Information Revolution. But that’s not the whole story of our responses.

The BMA praises many of the successful ICT developments to date including GP Systems of Choice, GP2GP, ePrescribing systems, and PACs. The BMA continues to say they fully support the empowerment of patients through better use and access to the right information. Intellect’s response goes on to tell the government’s plans for an information revolution is an exciting opportunity to show how the NHS and industry can drive a step-change in health and social care that will be centred on patients and clinicians through better use of information and technology.

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Technorati Tags: eHealth, government IT, Information Revolution, NHS

Scarcely picked up by the financial services media, a report published just before Christmas by the Senior Supervisors Group (SSG) has acknowledged that many SIFIs (systemically important financial institutions, if you must be reminded…) have actually made some significant progress recently in improving their internal technology-enabled risk processes.

In ‘Observations on Developments in Risk Appetite Frameworks and IT Infrastructure‘ the SSG (made up of prominent financial regulators from across the world, including the FSA) puts forward a refreshing assessment of the use of IT within major financial services providers to implement a comprehensive risk data infrastructure. The short version is ‘good start, but must do more’, if we are to learn from the financial crisis and the serious harm that the unidentified and unmitigated build up of risk within individual financial institutions can inflict.

However, welcome as this report is, there are still two major concerns that stem from it:

1) How does this report go from being an ‘assessment’ to a serious policy consideration? Policy makers and many corners of the soon-to-be-replaced FSA should take heed from it – it goes quite a way to highlighting the importance of IT to the end result of reducing risk within financial institutions. As the FSA must have played some part in drafting this report – why does the role of technology remain off its and HM Treasury’s radar as such crucial reform is developed? (Should I read into the fact that I had to find a copy of this report on the French Central Bank’s website as the one on the FSA’s website doesnt work?)

2) As has been the case in the majority of consultations, statements and papers emanating from regulatory authorities and policy makers in recent months, a significant piece of the jigsaw has been overlooked. The SSG is right to focus upon the shortcomings of individual institutions in gathering data from across their businesses so that risk can be calculated, but what of systemic risk across the wider financial system? There remains a key challenge, as yet unaddressed and largely dismissed in the ongoing reform of the financial system – that regulators also need access to this information from all SIFIs so that they can monitor and, where necessary, act to mitigate the build up of systemic risk across the whole of the financial system. The challenge here is that information standards and formats differ from financial institution to institution and finding a means of standardising this information (and facilitating its sharing and analysis by regulators) is a complex and time consuming task – one that has not really been considered by the UK’s regulatory authorities so far. In short, the plumbing of the financial system needs some serious repair work.

So, promising and informative as the SSG’s paper is, it needs to have a tangible impact upon current deliberations, and it needs to go further.

Technorati Tags: data infrastructure, FSA, risk, Senior Supervisors Group, systemic risk