Peter Bassill — latest writing on cyber security

Latest articles · page 13 of 14

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  Privacy

  Assistants, drivers, and household staff

  Part 11 of 18. The people around a senior board director are, for practical purposes, part of the security boundary. The standing rules that protect everyone — the executive, the staff, the relationship — without becoming surveillance.

  • 12 December 2023
  • 7 min read
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  Policy

  The CISO in the dock

  The SEC's charges against Tim Brown over the SolarWinds disclosures, alongside Joe Sullivan's conviction over Uber a year ago, signal a regime change in personal accountability for security leaders. What it means for UK CISOs and the boards that employ them.

  • 30 November 2023
  • 7 min read
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  Threats

  23andMe, and the data with the longest half-life

  Last month 23andMe disclosed that attackers used credential stuffing against accounts opted in to relative-matching to scrape data on roughly 6.9 million people. The board lesson is about which data has the longest half-life — and it is not what most firms think.

  • 14 November 2023
  • 6 min read
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  Policy

  The board director's public exposure

  Part 10 of 18. Companies House, LinkedIn, conference speaker lists, the corporate website. The footprint your board role creates whether you want it or not, and the small set of choices that determine how much it reveals.

  • 17 October 2023
  • 7 min read
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  Privacy

  Financial and identity hygiene at home

  Part 9 of 18. Credit freezes, the paper post, joint advisors, mortgage and bank communications, the family-office channel. The unglamorous half of personal privacy that, when neglected, costs the most.

  • 12 September 2023
  • 8 min read
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  Privacy

  Photo backup, family chat groups, and the extended family

  Part 8 of 18. iCloud, Google Photos, WhatsApp family chats, grandparents on Facebook. The household network you actually live in is wider than the four walls of the house. What to do about it without becoming the family killjoy.

  • 15 August 2023
  • 7 min read
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  Privacy

  Gaming, voice chat, and the communities that look least like social media

  Part 7 of 18, fourth of five children-focused posts. Roblox, Fortnite, Minecraft, Discord. The environments where British children spend more time than they spend on social media, what the risks actually look like, and what to do.

  • 11 July 2023
  • 8 min read
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  Privacy

  Children, social media, and the parent's reasonable role

  Part 6 of 18, third of five children-focused posts. The conversation about social media most parents avoid, written for the board-director parent who wants to be present without being absurd.

  • 13 June 2023
  • 8 min read
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  Privacy

  School accounts and edtech: the parent's reasonable role

  Part 5 of 18, second of five children-focused posts. Schools collect a remarkable amount of data on children. Some of it is necessary; some of it is not. What a board-director parent should ask, and what they are entitled to.

  • 16 May 2023
  • 8 min read
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  Privacy

  The digital footprint we create for our children before they can speak

  Part 4 of 18, first of the children-focused posts. The photos, the school records, the birthday Facebook posts, the WhatsApp groups, the smart toys. What we lay down for our children, before they have any say.

  • 18 April 2023
  • 8 min read
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  Privacy

  The smart-home dilemma

  Part 3 of 18. Alexa, Ring, the smart thermostat, the smart TV, the connected fridge. The devices you have invited into your kitchen and what they are actually doing while you sleep.

  • 21 March 2023
  • 7 min read
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  Defence

  The home network you live on

  Part 2 of 18. Your home Wi-Fi router is the only thing between everything connected in your house and the rest of the internet. What boards should ask their household to look at this weekend.

  • 28 February 2023
  • 7 min read
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  Policy

  Digital privacy for board directors: the eighteen-post version

  An honest start to a long series. What digital privacy actually means for a board director in 2023, why the home / travel / work boundary is the right framing even though it leaks, and why children deserve four of the eighteen posts.

  • 7 February 2023
  • 6 min read
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  AI

  INT8 quantisation, in numbers — and why INT16 is the boring choice

  What "INT8-quantised inference" actually means once you do the arithmetic, why dropping from FP32 to INT8 is a cliff and dropping to INT16 isn't, and why every interesting question about putting an ML model on real silicon ends up here.

  • 26 May 2022
  • 11 min read
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  Threats

  What the teenagers taught the Fortune 500

  LAPSUS$ compromised Microsoft, Okta, Nvidia, Samsung, Vodafone, and several others in a few months. They were teenagers using social engineering and MFA fatigue. The lesson, awkwardly, is that the dominant compromise vector in 2022 is social, not technical.

  • 26 April 2022
  • 8 min read