working from home

Virtuality & the Labour Party

Somewhere inside my head there’s an article on how businesses weren’t planning for a pandemic as a business continuity risk, most plans were about protecting infrastructure. My most recent linkedin article looks at the under-licensing and data leakage risks exposed by the spontaneous adoption of remote desk top technology but the country has had to adopt a much wider “work from home” practice than previously, stressing those parts of the economy that serve it, including home space and furniture supply. This all leaves unanswered how are democratic decisions being taken? Let’s look at the Labour Party; I wouldn’t want to be the Labour Party apparatchik that allowed 7.IV.H.8 (P41) 2019 to expire. It used to say,

The NEC shall invite CLPs to take part in pilots of staggered meetings, electronic attendance, online voting and other methods of maximising participation. The NEC may immediately give effect to these pilots and may incorporate any resultant rules into this rule book, subject to approval at Annual Conference 2019, when this sub-clause shall expire.

It wasn’t extended at Conference 19, and the rule now no-longer exists and virtual meetings are not permitted to take decisions. Someone’s going to be happy.

If deliberate, it’s another example of the bureaucracy just not giving a shit. …

Where is BS20001 when you need it?

I have been looking at my CISSP notes on Business Continuity and they all state that getting your people into work is as important as ensuring the IT can survive the disaster. Also, people have been reducing the likelihood of a data centre loss and to be frank that’s not what’s happened. No question but that much planning has been found wanting as companies whose strategy in terms of meeting their public duty in the case of a disaster has been to allow competitors to step in. Both Waitrose and Laithwaite’s web sites have failed over the last seven days; these will probably be because of both staff nonavailability and insufficient capacity to cope with increased demand.

I also wrote a piece on my linkedin blog about the vulnerabilities that a sudden switch to mass working from home may cause, looking at vulnerability management, data leakage protection and obliquely vendor management. …