Beware the ‘Glocals’ if you’re Planning a Career in Asian IT
Posted: January 30, 2015 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: china, harvey nash, hong kong jobs, idg connect, IT jobs, IT jobs asia, office stress, recruitment, regus Leave a comment
I’ve just finished a piece for IDG Connect looking ahead to job prospects in Hong Kong and China for ex-pat IT pros in 2015. As usual, it’s a mixed bag.
On the one hand the jobs market is booming and there are plenty of vacancies. The Harvey Nash CIO Survey of 2014, for example found 76% of Hong Kong and China CIOs were concerned about a technology skills shortage. A further 42% said they were planning to increase headcount last year and APAC MD Nick Marsh told me by email that he “expects to see that demand continue” this year.
Skills particularly in demand, he said, are big data, mobile, cloud and digital, although more traditional areas are also important. “Fundamental areas such as project management, enterprise architecture, and business analysis are still the top areas of skill demand,” he said.
Candidates with leadership capabilities and “exceptional communication skills” as well as those who can demonstrate an ability to innovate will be favoured.
However, Marsh also warned that employers in the region are increasingly likely to favour “glocals” – that is, locals who have overseas education and/or experience.
This is bad news for the ex-pat IT job seeker looking to land a plum job in China or Hong Kong.
“Candidates should focus on the strength of their understanding of the local market, customers, and their industry,” Marsh advised. “This understanding is critical, and without it they are likely to lose out to local or ‘glocal’ talent.”
More bad news came in the form of a recent Regus study on office stress in Hong Kong and China.
It found that in Hong Kong, working to deadlines (24%) was rated stressful by a far higher percentage than the global average (14%), while “colleagues” (11%) was more than double the global norm of 5%.
Unreliable or obsolete technology (26%) and a lack of staff (28%) were also major factors.
“When employees don’t have a good work/life balance, they feel overstretched, unhappy and, ultimately they become less productive,” Regus Hong Kong country manager Michael Ormiston told me. “Flexible working can alleviate some of the pressures that create stress, while at the same time reducing a company’s costs.”
Given that most employers in China and Hong Kong are putting ex-pats on local packages these days, a move out East is becoming less and less attractive to Western IT professionals. It might be worth staying put for the time being.
Cameron on a hiding to nothing if he really does want encrypted comms ban
Posted: January 15, 2015 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: cameron, charlie hebdo, cybercrime, encrypted communications, enisa, europol, FBI, imessage, infosecurity magazine, je suis charlie, prime minister, terrorist, tory party, whatsapp Leave a comment
This week, prime minister David Cameron seemed to indicate that if he is elected this May he’ll do all he can to ensure strongly encrypted communications are banned in the UK.
Well, that’s the gist of what he said. More correctly, he made it clear that no form of comms should exist where, in extremis, the security services can’t eavesdrop on private conversations – to stop criminals, terrorists etc.
His comments have been widely criticised in the media and by the technology industry, and rightly so.
Although others including the FBI, US attorney general Eric Holder and even Europol have voiced concerns about encrypted communications, none have gone as far as Cameron – who is now apparently off to the US to try and get support for his plans from Barack Obama.
A few thoughts sprung to mind as I reported on this breaking story:
- If Cameron thinks he can take on the might of Apple, Google et al over this, he’s mistaken.
- His comments are at odds with European security agency Enisa which has just released a document praising encryption and calling for MORE privacy enhancing technologies (PETs), not fewer
- There’s no evidence that the Paris attacks would have been prevented if encrypted comms were banned
- The UK’s burgeoning tech industry will suffer
- UK business will react angrily if they can’t use strongly encrypted comms, as will UK entrepreneurs – it’s sending out a dreadful signal to potential investors in our supposedly liberal democratic country. Also, these are exactly the sort of traditional Tory supporters Cameron needs on side.
- If encrypted comms were banned, or backdoors were engineered into products so the security services could access them if needed, the bad guys would eventually find a way of exploiting them too.
- Terrorists and criminals will continue to use encrypted comms, downloaded from regions where they are still legal.
Sophos global head of security research James Lyne summed up the whole farce neatly in comments he sent me by email:
“Even if regulation was brought in to force legitimate companies to use encryption the government (in extremis) could intercept, unless they plan to build a great firewall of China (but even bigger and better – or sinister) to prevent people getting their hands on open source tools available in other countries it isn’t going to stop the darker side of the net from using it,” he told me.
“At the end of the day, terrorists will use any tools at their disposal to communicate, so this is unlikely to solve the real problem. The intention behind the statement was likely a little different to the way in which it has appeared but the suggestion as it stands would do the UK more harm than good and clearly lacks insight into how the internet works or how such controls might be implemented.”
Did North Korea Really Hack Sony?
Posted: January 8, 2015 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: brian honan, cyber attack, europol, FBI, guardians of peace, infosecurity magazine, insider threat, Kim Jong-un, north korea, Pyongyang, Sony hack, Sony Pictures Entertainment Leave a comment
Not for the first time, official law enforcement is at odds with certain sections of the information security industry on the attribution of a particularly high profile cyber attack.
The case, of course, is the destructive hit on Sony Pictures Entertainment which not only forced the movie giant to close its entire network for over a week, but also led to embarrassing internal documents and communications leaking online.
Oh, and the movie which is said to have started it all – The Interview – was virtually withdrawn from North American cinemas after distributors feared for the safety of movie-goers.
On one side it’s the Feds, who believe North Korea was responsible for the attack. On the other, industry players who believe a disgruntled insider – possibly with help from others – was to blame.
FBI director James Comey this week claimed that the hackers in question got “sloppy” a few times and forgot to use proxy servers to hide their true location, revealing IP addresses used “exclusively” by North Korea.
“They shut it off very quickly once they saw the mistake,” he added, according to Wired. “But not before we saw where it was coming from.”
The agency’s “behavioural analysis unit” has also been studying the Guardians of Peace – the group claiming responsibility – and deduced that it displays many of the psychological characteristics of North Korean operatives, he added.
The Feds have already claimed that some of the code in the malware used in this attack had been previously developed by Pyongyang, and that some of the tools used were also deployed in the DarkSeoul attacks of 2013.
So far so clear? Well, not quite according to security consultant and Europol special advisor, Brian Honan.
“What was interesting is director Comey also stated they have not yet identified the original attack vector. So this makes it even more difficult to attribute who is behind the attack and makes it more important that the FBI and Sony provide assurances regarding their attribution, particularly given that this attack is resulting in diplomatic action impacting international relations,” he told me.
“It would also be useful for many other companies to have sight of the IP addresses that were used in this attack so they can add them to their own defensive measures to prevent attacks from those IP addresses against their networks and systems.”
This scepticism has been echoed throughout sections of the information security sector – with experts claiming that attribution is tricky at the best of times and that the Feds would be wise to hold fire until a detailed forensic examination has been undertaken.
US security vendor Norse, for example, claimed last week that any evidence linking North Korea to the attacks was purely circumstantial and that an investigation it undertook pointed to the involvement of a former employee.
Part of its reasoning is that the names of corporate servers and passwords were programmed into the malware fired at Sony, which would indicate an insider’s involvement.
Another sticking point is the motivation of North Korea. If it did carry out the attack in retaliation for The Interview, which lampoons the Kim Jong-un regime, the Guardians of Peace online missives didn’t even mention the movie until the media began pegging it as the cause.
It certainly wasn’t mentioned when the group were trying to extort a ransom for the stolen data online.
In the end, we’ll have to assume the Feds have more up their sleeves than they’ve admitted to right now if we’re to be convinced about the link to Pyongyang.
“Such information need not be shared with others as it would expose valuable intelligence sources, however knowing that is what is reinforcing the FBI’s claims would help those of us in the industry to accept those claims,” said Honan.
“The FBI do have very skilled technical individuals on the case which are no doubt supplemented by Sony’s own staff and any of the private computer security companies engaged by Sony. However, analysing log data and forensics takes a very long time so I would not be surprised to see additional details come out at a later stage.”
phil muncaster 