ISACA Conference

The last 3 days, I've attended the Annual ISACA Conference organized by the Mumbai Chapter. This year's conference was titled "InfoSec Chakravyuha" and was held at the Westin Hotel in Goregaon a Western Suburb of Mumbai.

For those who don't know ISACA is an independent, nonprofit, global association. It engages in the development, adoption and use of globally accepted, industry-leading knowledge and practices for information systems. You can learn more about ISACA, its members and its activities at its website.
www.isaca.org

The theme of this year's security conference was very aptly written by the conference's organizers and reproduced in their brochure. And I loved the design of the logo and all things about the brochure, mainly because we helped design it.


"
In today’s world information is a key to everything that matters. Finance, banking, manufacturing, outsourcing and other industries along with governments thrive on information. Securing the information is really important as the information can be misused if the security measures are not implemented. Due to advancement in the field, implementing of technology is becoming complex and securing the information is becoming equally challenging and complex.

Implementing security in today’s world involved understanding of lot about where and how the information is stored, processed and transferred. Different approaches are used to protect the information with specific measures, which are highly complex.

In continuation of 2012 theme, “Evolving Paradigms in Security”, ISACA Mumbai Chapter is now proudly presents its theme “InfoSec Chakravyuha” for its Annual Conference - 2013.

“Vyuha” is a Sanskrit word which means a formation. It also represents a military array. In the modern world of Information warfare, there needs to be strategy to protect information. The strategy to protect an army is no different from protecting information. As per the Mahabharata there are multiple types of Vyuhas in which the armies are formed.

Amongst them the most complicated formation is the “Chakravyuha”. The nearest English word for Chakravyuha is labyrinth, which is a complex web type formation. Despite challenging times, corporate and individuals are working towards maintaining the security in more innovative and cost conscious manner. We, at ISACA Mumbai Chapter, bringing industry experts and eminent faculties to deliver their views and thoughts on how security can be implemented even with challenges faced. The lectures and presentation would cover the first two days will be followed by workshops on Security and Assurance needs of professionals.
"

I attended both days of the Conference as well as the tutorial today. The primary incentive to attend all 3 days was the 21 CPE's (Continuing Professional Education) that I would get, invaluable CPE's required to keep alive my ISACA membership, but also my is2 (www.isc2.org) and PMI (www.pmi.org) memberships.

I enjoyed both days of the conference, but felt that the learning's were limited mainly because most of the Speakers were sponsors and so had an agenda. An agenda to promote their products which resulted, in my opinion to a skewed presentation of knowledge. Anther aspect that I felt left a lot to be desired was the presentation material and skills of the presenters. Most of them are professionals who present globally and yet could learn a lot on presenting skills from High Schoolers. At the very least, they should all visit TED (www.ted.com) and take some lessons from the TED presenters who say such a lot in so little time as opposed to most of the speakers who said very little in over an hours as most of them exceeded their allotted 40 minutes.

The tutorial conducted by K. K. Mookhey was very good. I disagree with some of what he believes, such as "... open source security risks", yet found much of his presentation very useful. Thanks Mr. Mookhey. You can learn more about his company at
http://niiconsulting.com

A big "Thank You" to Mr. Pramod Nayak the president of ISACA Mumbai and his team for inviting me and for making the 3 days memorable. All in all, a productive way to spend my weekend, with the final day just like the dessert. Making everything totally worthwhile.

Predictably Irrational

I recently read the book "Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely. It seems pretty obvious that I loved it, since here I am writing about it.

And my basic idea was that I should be able to get you to read it too. Since that's the point of writing about something. Get the reader to read, evaluate and then subscribe to the idea. And that's when I realized how silly that was. What can I say about the book that the author couldn't. And I found out pretty soon. "Nothing".

The author describes the idea pretty well in under 20 minutes. And I think that's what you should be doing.

And if you like what he says and the concept intrigues you, you can read about the book in greater detail at The Book Outlines Wiki for the book.

http://bookoutlines.pbworks.com/w/page/14422685/Predictably%20Irrational

And if you want to buy it, Amazon is always ready and willing to ship it, at a price of course.
http://www.amazon.com/Predictably-Irrational-Revised-Expanded-Edition/dp/0061353248

And at the end of this article, I've ended up doing something totally different from what I started out to. Not sure if this was predictable or rational or predictably irrational. Maybe it was "The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions" are sometime "Unpredictably Irrational".

Indian Culture

Earlier this week, I flew into Mumbai for a meeting. I flew India's national airline Air India. One of the things that stuck me at the check-in was the complete change in interaction. And I wasn't sure this was an anomaly or was our attitude as a people.

Since this was at the back of my mind, I was consciously observing the interaction at every level. The air hostesses, the pilots, the ground staff in Mumbai, the immigration officials, the customs, the cab drivers, the rickshaw drivers, restaurant personnel, hotel personnel, IT programmers, managers,... basically everyone I came across.

And the interesting things was that there were several differences in behavior between people in the US and those in India. Some good and some not so good.

Here's my list of the Top 5 good differences and the top 5 bad differences.


Good

5 - God fearing
Almost all Indians believe in the divine. And are very devout. And believe that their fate is decided by the Almighty.

4 - Knowledgeable
We tend to be updated with information. And are quite knowledgeable about events. Local and Global. Being informed is not restricted to urban areas and even in rural areas most people are up to date on information and are knowledgeable in general.

3 - Helpful
This quality shows itself in everyday life. You can ask any stranger for directions and they'll go out of their way to help even if they have absolutely no idea of your destination. Or ask your relatives or friends for help and the only problem you may have is too many willing people.

2 - Patient
Our culture has taught us to be patient. And this allows us to live life with a smile, even when on many occasions the time taken may be frustrating.

1 - Adjusting
As a people we are very flexible and adjustable. Most people quickly adapt to their circumstances and adjust very well even in the most adverse of conditions.

 
Not so good

5 - Line Breakers
We love to break lines. And complain when others do the same. Whether its in driving or at the airport. Interestingly even at the US Embassy an American Immigration Officer commented to me, "This is India, you don't wait your turn, it may never come."

4 - Tardiness
Its okay to be late. But its not okay for anything or anybody else to be late. We love to complain about how everyone else is late, from the government employees to the trains, to the courier, but justify our tardiness with several reasons.

3 - Hierarchical Behaviour
Our behavior is totally dynamic. We have our best smile and nice things to say to someone superior to us and are completely obnoxious to those we think are inferior to us. Seems like 66 years after Independence we are still caught up in a class based society.

2 - Bribers
We seem to think its okay to bribe to get something done. And spend hours justifying that what we did was because we had no choice, but the system is corrupt and so on. Problem is the fact is that the system is corrupt because we make it so, a simple but inconvenient truth we refuse to accept.

1 - Chaltha Hai
An unique Indian attitude of abject acceptance of circumstances. Its an "Its okay" attitude. And so its not important to keep our commitments. We feel that if something is close enough to what we claimed its good enough. Problem is close enough is conveniently defined as what is the current result.

As a culture we have several positives and a few negatives. If as a country we are able to collectively reform our negatives, we could very quickly make a huge difference. To ourselves, to India and to the world.

TedX - What's that ?

My daughter Freia mentioned to me that she along with a few friends is organizing a TEDx event at her school. I had heard about TED, but had no idea what TEDx was.

Not wanting to sound ignorant, I decided to find out the hard way. Translated it meant "Googling TEDX". And what I found was interesting.

Apparently TEDx is a smaller version of TED, licensed but not directly supervised by TED. As most things TED, it was a "YAGI'. In case you're wondering what "YAGI" means, its a acronym I just made up, "Yet Another Great Idea".

You can read more about TEDx and how it works at the TED website.
http://www.ted.com/pages/about_tedx

And then I found the page for the event Freia was helping organize.
http://www.tedxyouthdais.com/Home.html

And not surprisingly, it also had a facebook page.
https://www.facebook.com/TEDxYouthDAIS

They have an impressive list of speakers. Ranging from the 16 year old Hemani to the 68 year old Harish. And other equally interesting speakers in between. I would have loved to attend the event. But apparently there are only 100 slots, and over 500 people wanting to attend. So I'm not even going to try. And will view the video of the speakers with interest. Especially since they're so much better in the edited online version.

Here's wishing the TEDx DAIS team and especially Freia all the very best.