Life In The Hacked Lane

If you do the Twitter thing, follow me at @hotpixUK
or LinkedIn here uk.linkedin.com/pub/tony-smith-bsc-hons-acih/a/979/351/

What a week it was. My favourite German Chancellors phone, an estimated 10 million Europeans and 2.9 customers of Adobe's Creative Cloud hacked. See http://blog.gsmarena.com/some-2-9-million-accounts-compromised-in-adobe-creative-cloud-hack/

Last month too, hackers got close to fleecing Santander using a £10 KVM switch attached to an office workstation. I bet you have the odd KVM switch lying idle in your server room, don't you?

So, in theory I might have been in that list somewhere. Due to inter-nation eavesdropping rules, my emails etc likely might have been hacked more likely by the French or Italians than GCHQ. I doubt they would have understood my housing IT rants. Still it demonstrates that hackers are live and well, applying maximum imagination and originality as ever.

It does all open up that debate about "How secure is cloud hosted data", when apparently the telcos may well be providing wire tapping at a data level? Is it all paranoia and conspiracy theory's?

More and more housing applications are being delivered in a cloud based form. ReAct is one we have used for years, without too much fuss, which holds address, contact, victim and perpetrator details, for instance. Payment solutions you use (including that Alliance & Leicester, now Santader one), may also hold debit, credit, payment card, sort codes and bank account details.

If your whole Rent Accounting module is cloud hosted, huge amounts of personal customer/resident data is potentially present. Maiden names, dates of birth, password confirmation questions etc. However secure that data in the hosting domain, could someone be listening to it being piped into your office?

While these places may hold partial data on your residents and their neighbours, with card strip codes not held, there's potential for some of the minimal data being enough to allow identity theft to occur by a telephone call and a reset. Identity theft complete. Identity thieves typically obtain and exploit personally identifiable information about individuals, or various credentials they use to authenticate themselves, in order to impersonate them.

Chatting to a friend a few weeks ago, who works at a chip design company, have recently invited a hacker in to try to crack security. With the aid of a spoof router, and a Pringles tin to enhance his wifi detection while parked across from the HQ on the street, he had located all the servers on the network in about 24 minutes and had a dozen back-doors into very valuable commercial designs using in Samsung & Apple devices. It just showed me how vulnerable we can be.

I hope your organisation has robust data protection and security policies. Also that they are continually reviewed and tested, particularly in the light of recent hacking prowess. Security and awareness of it does not start and end just with that RSA key generator device. One of the biggest risks might well be your own staff, or unauthorised visitors tail-gating in behind them. Be imaginative, as much as the hackers, if you can manage it!

Read on to: A new Windows 8 style housing management system coming soon, on a tablet near you 

You can link with me on LinkedIn here - uk.linkedin.com/pub/tony-smith-bsc-hons-acih/a/979/351/ It would be great to connect !

The Eagles - Life In The Hacked Lane .


(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk 07854-655009

PS As usual, if there are subjects you might like me to tackle on this blog, please get in touch and let me know!

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Never Satisfied

If you do the Twitter thing, follow me at @hotpixUK
or LinkedIn here uk.linkedin.com/pub/tony-smith-bsc-hons-acih/a/979/351/

Housing Management System IT Users, who would have them, never satisfied are they? User groups, surely the best things for them?

Well maybe not. An interesting discussion I had just a few days ago centred around, "Do Users ask Enough Of Their system Suppliers"? An interesting question considering at my tenure at my old shop, I worked until I was blue in the face, to persuade customers to take a part in user groups. My most memorable was once trying to persuade one to cross the border from Yorkshire to Burnley for one (20 miles). they admitted they had sadly only left their town twice. Once was to Leeds to the Christmas Market, the other to Tenerifee for two weeks honeymoon in the sun.  Burnley vs Tenerife, no contest I guess!

Still, what are user groups for, if not to shake up your supplier and get them to satisfy your needs? Gang up if you can with others to ask your supplier for what you want.  If enough of you want or need it, you should have a great chance of getting it. The housing software world moves much slower than the commercial software world, as so may IT people moving into it always exclaim.  User groups are the means of changing that. Ignore them at your peril.

Many RSL's I meet tell me how unhappy they are with their suppliers, but never go to the user groups and haul them over the coals. Many say they used to go and it made no difference. Well take it from me, if you have a genuine grievance, after the third time you raise it vocally, your supplier will take notice. You just need to keep at it. Realising improvements is a marathon not  a sprint.

The other danger is that customers perceive that they are content enough, that they don't need to attend. Someone else will fight their corner. Well, the reality is that only you will really fight your corner, so it's up to you to take part. I go to lots of supplier events and I would like to see many more fighting their corner. The result will be better housing management systems, happier neighbourhoods and more satisfied residents. So do your bit to get your own piece of IT satisfaction.  

You can link with me on LinkedIn here - uk.linkedin.com/pub/tony-smith-bsc-hons-acih/a/979/351/ It would be great to connect !

Read on to, The race

http://tonysmiththathousingitguy.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-race.html

Judas Priest - Never Satisfied .


(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk 07854-655009

PS As usual, if there are subjects you might like me to tackle on this blog, please get in touch and let me know!

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Long Gone

If you do the Twitter thing, follow me at @hotpixUK
or LinkedIn here http://uk.linkedin.com/in/tonysmiththathousingitguy

Recently I have been reading the excellent book ‘Nudge’ by Richard H Thaler. Also, quite spookily I have been working with a few clients on rechargeable repairs process.

‘That old chestnut’ you are thinking. I have encountered many organisations over the years that take a sceptical view of these, mainly because hardly anyone bothers to collect them. Or at best manage to collect about a quarter, if they are lucky. It always baffles me why rechargeable repair costs are not just sold on to a factoring company, to recover at least 30% of the invoiced value. That would at least be 25% more efficient and save the time of staff chasing them currently.

I think that having an efficient recharge policy, driven by customer services, can trap a lot of those lost keys, broken doors and tenant caused blockages, at a stroke. It’s essential that tenants are made aware of that first or course, at sign up and easily accessible on your website. More importantly, the ‘nudge’ potential of this, in reducing costs, can potentially be even greater. Once a tenant has been threatened with a charge of £40 for losing their keys and tells their friends, word will spread.

What I have described there, what I would call ‘transactional recharges’ is one thing, what about ones initiated by a property becoming void and the tenant is Long Gone? Stolen white goods, criminal damage, unauthorised modifications etc. Most of our staff now have a video camera in their pocket, in the form of a Smartphone. A 20 second video pre and post void works would work a treat. Possibly standing up in court too! Better still, if you have a mobile solution, have you considered incorporating that into your workflow?

Again a handy nudge would be to build a charging sheet and put the horrifying details on your website or Facebook pages, and explain that 99% of people vacate your tenancies without extra charge or being pursued in court. With costs of rectifying this type of void repair incident often over £3,000, just dissuading a third of tenants not to do it, makes a sizable difference.

In fairness, many of these incidents occur over time and can be picked up by staff (trades & otherwise) being the organisations eyes & ears. If your safeguarding training and systems to allow staff to easily report and track what they see are easy/convenient to use, void recharges can potentially be picked up before they happen.

Related Post: Are you & your users on the Qlikview bus?

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You can link with me on LinkedIn here - http://uk.linkedin.com/in/tonysmiththathousingitguy It would be great to connect !

Johnny Marr - Long Gone.
(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk 07854-655009

PS As usual, if there are subjects you might like me to tackle on this blog, or you could benefit from any of our services please get in touch and let me know!

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