According to recent research, 900-1000 laptops go missing every week at Heathrow ... that is 52,000 a year. Worldwide, 800,000 laptops are lost or stolen at airports every year.
Even more incredibly, the survey also reveals that many travellers fail to take any steps to protect the information contained on their laptops. Nearly 60 per cent of the British respondents admitted that they did not protect confidential information, while more than half said that they did not back up data.
I’m getting used to surveys quoting wild statistics, and have become partially immune to them. But in this research, the fact that made me sit up and pay attention was: ‘42 percent of British travellers said that their computer went missing after they asked another passenger to keep an eye on it’.
I really want to believe that the research is not accurate but I suspect it is an indication of how lax people can be with laptops - whether at airports, stations, motorway service areas (or classrooms?). It also reinforces the main challenge with achieving effective information security – people. Every public and commercial sector organisation now has security policies, procedures and technology in place but people do seem to persist in being either careless or too trusting when it comes to being vigilant when using laptops and network-enabled PDAs when travelling – and they are increasingly carrying data that you don’t want to lose.
Do you know what confidential data is on your university’s laptops? Do you know where they are going to be this summer, and are any of your staff planning to take them on their holidays? Perhaps it’s time to drop them a friendly note of advice before they leave the country!
A final reminder - we are running a free Microsoft Security Symposium for the Public Sector on September 16th in London. You can review the symposium programme here and register online ... and, if you do attend, we promise to make sure you do not leave your laptop behind...
Not able to get to IT Forum? There are plenty of events up and down the country coming up. These are all deliverd by Microsoft technical professionals to a level 200 technical “how to” level for IT professionals and are FREE to attend.
Virtualisation and Management Technologies 21 August 2008, Liverpool: Microsoft Virtualisation and Management Technologies 9 September 2008, Reading: Microsoft Virtualisation and Management Technologies
11 September 2008, Edinburgh: Microsoft Management and Virtualisation Technologies
SQL Server 2008 10 September 2008, Reading: SQL Server 2008 Unleashed 7 October 2008. Manchester: TechNet: SQL Server - Under New Management
23 October 2008, Exeter: TechNet: SQL Server - Under New Management
A bit of Fun
10 September 2008, London: Microsoft “After Hours” – The Sequel
Exchange Server 2007
29 October 2008, London: Recipient management, policies and permissions in Exchange Server 2007
Licensing 2 October 2008, Reading: An Introduction and overview of Microsoft Licensing 21 October 2008, Reading: Understanding Microsoft’s Server Product Licensing in a Virtual Environment
Windows Powershell
14 October 2008, Birmingham: TechNet: Windows PowerShell: Around the Data Centre in 80 Scripts
Unified Communications 2 September 2008, Reading : TechNet: the Microsoft Vision for Unified Communications
Small Business Server 2008 and Essential Business Server 2008
22 October 2008, Bristol: Taking Care of Business Every day with Small Business Server 2008 and Essential Business Server 2008
29 October 2008, London: Taking Care of Business Every day with Small Business Server 2008 and Essential Business Server 2008
Windows Server 2008
16 October 2008, Edinburgh: Windows Server 2008 – What’s New and Exciting
Thanks to Andrew Fryer who sent me an email this afternoon for this:
http://blogs.ncl.ac.uk/blogs/index.php/wit/2008/08/08/sql_server_2008_arrives
This makes great reading coming so soon after the launch of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and builds on other stories in Higher Education such as Cambridge University’s Darwinian Project.
Actually, you have to do something first and that is register for EduCoMS and become an active participant in the community and start sharing your knowledge without delay. The first ticket has already been given and we have more to hand out. Looking forward to hearing from you and to seeing you at TechED:IT Forum.
How do you keep one step ahead of your students? When they are used to living in a multimedia rich world, are you finding it increasingly difficult to grab them and engage them? I know that I find my own children don’t want to sit through a 300 photograph slide show any more...but I’ve found a way to fool them. Read on…
First there was the holiday snapshot, and then my parents bought a slide projector. Well, it all went downhill from there for a while. But then things brightened up with video cameras. For a little while things seemed to get better. And then I started to get tired of some of the boring holiday videos (How much ‘BuffetCam’ can you stand?)
So here’s a way to get students to (a) view a 300 photo slideshow and (b) become immersed in creating their own. Faculty all over the campus will be interested in this - archaeology, architecture, geology, design, art...
It’s Photosynth, which allows you to build a 3D model of a place or object from static photographs. I’ve found I can while away half an hour easily, exploring somebody else’s model of St Marks Square, Stonehenge or even a Ferrari 575 Superamerica.
While writing this, I discovered that the website had tripped up, simply through getting too much traffic, so if the same happens again, then watch this video of Blaise Aguera demonstrating it whilst you’re waiting for service to be resumed!
And now Photosynth has been fully released, it gets better. You can use Photosynth to turn regular digital photos into a three-dimensional, 360-degree model. And you can then share your synth with others – who can walk in your shoes through the same place. The technology does the hard work – reconstructing the scene or object from your flat photos – by looking for similarities between images, and using it to estimate the shape of the space/object, and work out the original camera position.
To create your own synth sign in to http://photosynth.com, download the synther application and viewer. And start building.
Which must be what Rick did – he’s obviously proud of his shed, as he’s built a complete model of the outside, and you can walk into the inside and look around. Take a look at the Rick’s Shed synth to see what I mean!
I know that many of you will have been busy changing things in your IT systems this summer, and some of you will be the proud owners of new servers, networks and equipment. I’ve also been busy over the summer – building up my stocks of goodies. And I’m prepared to give away a bag of goodies – including a handful of 4GB memory sticks and a little pile of software boxes, for the best synth of either the room you spend your day in or a building on campus that you’re proud of (inside or out)*. Grab your cameras, build the synth, and then post the URL as a comment (and email me too).
You can even embed a Photosynth object onto a web page – so you could introduce potential students to your university or college on your website.
* Oh, I bet there should be some small print here about the rules. So here goes. I decide. I send the goody bag. Humour gets bonus points. Unlike with my kids, my decision is final.
Yes, it’s summer and I’m looking for content to blog about and thankfully, I can make a tenuous link between beaches and Higher Education with this web site and, I hope, help you to enjoy one last trip to the sea before the students comes back and the next academic year begins in earnest.
The European Environment Agency (EEA) has launched a new web site www.eyeonearth.eu which profiles European beaches on a map and provides EEA water quality rating information. I checked out the beaches I visited this year to see how they all faired and, luckily, they all scored extremely well.
Eye on Earth is the result of a partnership between Microsoft and the EEA and shows information on water quality at around 21,000 sites in Europe. As a portal, it brings 7 years of historical data to users and should become a “global observatory for environmental challenges”. It uses state of the art mapping from Microsoft Live Earth as well as environmental headlines from the MSN news feeds.
Just to prove that this is about work - where’s the link to Higher Education? Peer Review. Ok I did say it was tenuous but here’s a Web 2.0 site that allows users to search for and access relevant data, view it in multiple ways and provide input to a wider community. The site encourages users to rate bathing sites and comment on them too. This will add to the data and should help make European bathing sites a safer and more pleasant place to visit.
Just for interest, here’s one of the beaches I went to over the summer to illustrate how the site functions. There’s also a handy Vista gadget with direct access to the sites data.
This is the first example I’ve seen of a university taking advantage of Photosynth to show of its wonderful buildings. I’ve been a big fan of Leeds University for more than 20 years and have been a frequent visitor and admirer of the Baines wing and doesn’t it look good in Photosynth?
I must get my camera out and go and do the same with the University of Sheffield and Firth Hall and Sheffield Hallam University’s student union.