Risk & Reality
I am often surprised how poorly most people evaluate risk. If you ask someone what is the greatest risk in their daily life, you will get all manner of poorly conceived answers about the risks we face...
View ArticleMoney Laundering on the High Seas
I never underestimate the creativity of crooks. This ingenious scheme illustrates how crooks are always looking for a weakness to exploit. In this case, the criminals insured a marine vessel and then...
View ArticleThe Bank Act & the PI
The Bank Act The Bank Act (1991, c. 46) is an Act of the Government of Canada respecting banks and banking. The Canadian banking industry includes 20 domestic banks, 24 foreign bank subsidiaries and...
View ArticleOnline Persecutors Must Be Taken Seriously
Fanatical persecutors who use the Internet are a real danger. Not just a danger to one’s reputation, but to life itself. Korean Canadian hip hop artist Daniel Lee had his career severely damaged by an...
View ArticleCrowd-sourced Violence
I recently assisted a family that suffered from the actions of a small group of misguided, radical, and dangerously fanatical persecutors who use the Internet as a force multiplier. This campaign...
View ArticleIrrational Fear as Law
I noticed in my normal news feed that Obama will ‘evaluate’ bill to ban online munition sales. We have to recognise that many of our laws are enacted to satisfy irrational fears associated with risk....
View ArticleHow to End the War of Drugs — Part 1
This article is a continuation of a previous article, Drugs, Violence, and Economics. In this article I shall outline the steps that can be taken to sensibly deal with our drug problem. Unfortuately,...
View ArticleActive Shooter
The news about madmen shooting people in the U.S.A. raises the issue of planning for such an event. Here is an excellent video that offers sound advise on how to deal with this on a personal level.
View ArticleRisk Assessment Adventure
Once you acquire good research skills, you can apply those skills to support many endeavors. Recently, I have been doing risk assessment matrices for Business Continuity and Emergency Response...
View ArticleAdventures in Business Continuity
Risk management is research, analysis, planning, and artful guessing. In my part of the risk management process, I have to deal with the inevitable failure. Every General will tell you that no plan...
View ArticleWhat’s in an Employee Number
I was reviewing a stalled investigation into an apparent corporate fraud when I noticed something interesting. A surveillance photograph was in the paper file — you don’t see many real surveilance...
View ArticleTim Horton’s & Investigative Internet Research
An article titled, Tim Hortons apologizes for blocking gay and lesbian news website by The Canadian Press on Friday, July 19, 2013 caught my attention. Tim Hortons is a popular Canadian coffee shop...
View ArticleRisk Assessment Adventure: When Havoc Strikes
Business Continuity Awhile back I wrote about one of my adventures in risk assessment. This involved identifying the risks to a Business Continuity site located in a rural area outside a large...
View ArticleContingency Planning
Recently, I wrote about the dangers of government action when preparing for adverse conditions. While conducting some research on this topic for a planning document I came across a couple of...
View ArticleICANN Wants to Close Whois
A working group for Internet regulators at ICANN wants to close all Whois databases. They what to force anybody needing this data to grovel before them before granting access. They are trying to...
View ArticleGetting Out of Google
Google and other search engines are wonderful things for gathering information, we all know that, but what if people with evil intent are gathering information about you? Getting out of Street View...
View ArticlePractice Doesn’t Make Perfect
Practice doesn’t make perfect – it shows you how many ways you can screw-up. I’m a big believer in practice. I was working on a project to improve a company’s emergency preparedness that began with a...
View ArticleNine Meals From Anarchy
A few months later and another practice disaster is under way. These practice sessions are supposed to take the emergency out of emergency management. The building’s automated locking system is working...
View ArticleBusiness Interrupted
Managers sometimes tie themselves into knots worrying about the risk or threat rather than analysing the impact of interrupted business processes. My advice is to stop fretting about the cause and...
View ArticleWindows Error Reporting Risk
Windows Error Reporting (WER) is a crash reporting technology introduced by Microsoft with Windows XP. However, we now know that it may send Microsoft unencrypted personally identifiable information...
View Article