Thanks and goodbye

As I will be leaving AppGate soon to join the Swedish Post and Telecom agency (from January 1) as the Director General it is time to end this blog. I would like to thank everyone for this time!

Thin clients...now on Mobile phones

I have worked with mobile users and applications for several years. I have seen the transition from "oh I am so happy to have emails on my phone" to something that are a part of the organisations IT access architecture. The problem has been (and still is) that it is almost impossible to create applications that works with all mobile operating systems...or phones. I spoke to some friends in the industry yesterday and the answer seems to be simple...use the web browser in the phone and connect to the Intranet through an VPN. Simple, secure and cost effective. Now when the mobile networks are so good it is not necessary to carry around the data. Why create solutions that are un-necessary. I even have customers who run terminal servers on their mobile phones.

Black list versus white list

As long as I have been active in the IT-industry the methodology for internal security has been blacklisting. You can reach almost everything but we will close down access to certain resources. That was probably OK "in the old days""when there where an limited amount of information accessible. I therefore think white-listing is much easier to use: block everything and give access only to information that is needed for the given task. Much easier, much more secure...and probably more cost-effective.

Maybe you already know...

I have been appointed by the Swedish Government to be the new Director-General of the Swedish Post-and Telecom Agency. I am sorry to leave my friends at AppGate but happy to get new ones at PTS. I will start my at my new job in January 2010, until then I will continue to blog. For more information about PTS, please visit www.pts.se

Time they are a changing

I read something interesting today, the sales of ADSL is losing momentum due to increased usage of mobile data access. It sounds fairly obvious when I think about it, mobile is easier, more flexible and therefore in a way, more user friendly. But the change is also interesting from other perspectives because it has other implications then just the obvious. The fact that people now can be connected everywhere will create new business models, the need need for new security architectures and more connected "devices". I remember when I (several years ago) tried to buy an "connected refrigerator" (not the best of ideas...) but now we will see a fast adoption of new things connected to Internet.( Please do not tell my wife but I will buy a TV with internet access soon.. ). My next car will probably be connected etc etc. We have talked about this for a long time but the difference is that now it is really happening. Maybe we are now "Back to the Future". What I do not know is who will produce those services, companies like Skype and Spotify has taught me to humble. Ten years ago the industry was filled with fun ideas (not all of them very good) based on new technologies. I think that we will see a lot of that new innovation "pulse" again.

Security and energy consumption

For good reasons there is a lot of talk about the IT industry´s need for energy and all the measures that can be taken to limit that need. I spoke to a customer this morning that we did some work with a while ago and replaced several security point products (a mobile VPN system, several internal firewalls, an SSL VPN and an old IP-sec based VPN) and he told me that one of effects he now has seen is lower usage of electricity due to less servers and point products. At the same time they started to virtulize the infrastructure so the effect was double (they run our server in a virtualized form "on top" of the applications)

I have not thought about this effect before but it makes me happy that increased security can sometimes lower energy consumption. So my tip of the day is to look into the usage of power when you design your next architecture.

Reality versus hype

I read an study today about customers willingness to adopt "the cloud". In the study only 8% where ready to make the move. The others had concerns about security, integrity and costs. I think this proves that the IT industry has matured, people now understand that they need to analyse the consequences of implementing new technologies. I think this is good..being tired of all hypes that vendors have sold to their customers over the years...with the result that a lot of money and energy has been lost on immature or useless products.