Friday 5 June 2020

Semaphore Signals

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or LinkedIn here https://uk.linkedin.com/in/tonysmiththathousingitguy


Its becoming a perennial problem, retrieving data from old storage media.

I suppose its not new, think the Cascajal Block, Rosetta Stone, papyrus, Roman stone tablets, wax cylinders, typed documents, One Inch tape reels, DAT tapes, Eight Inch, 5 and a quarter, 3.5 inch and zip disks.

The CD/DVD has just persevered so far. All of these historic formats pose different problems, yet all can (at a pinch and with some time expended) pretty much be turned into something readable by humans or trawled via a search engine.

Popularity of the Internet Archive (at https://archive.org ), shows to me the value of getting all that data accessible.

Having our data in old historic media formats, does pose a problem and particularly I have seen many organisations, successfully digitise historic formats and realise space savings, often enough to add a gym for staff. (Do ask me about that one!).

Bringing ourselves pretty much up to date, we are using cloud hosted apps, such as Twitter, Facebook and others to have interactions, that should probably have an audit trail to assist and protect all parties. These apps do allow reasonable tracking of conversations, not for sinister purposes, but to reasonably solve issues.

Putting my cards on the table, I hear of a number of issues where this is not the case, which is very disappointing and not what I generally see. In fairness I am generally working with organisations, looking to improve processes and systems, so I rarely encounter this with social housing landlords, in my working life. I have done my best however, where I encounter this, to point residents in the right direction. It’s the right thing to do.

Some apps these days do not allow access to a clear audit trail. More and more apps are brought into CRM interactions and this area is ever changing. Customer service bods need to be constantly aware of what’s popular.

The Signal Messenger App, is one such (https://signal.org/en/). Since 2018, encrypted end to end messaging. Signal has another interesting feature, that it can self-destruct messages send to users, from five seconds to a week once read. Once messages are gone, they are really gone, forever. So even beyond GDPR. Without taking this into account, much of a valuable audit trail can be lost.

Keen scholars of GDPR will be aware that wilful manual deletion after a freedom of information request is made, is a criminal offense under the FOIA. However, if a message or data was already deleted, or deleted automatically, no crime has been committed. 

From an organisation viewpoint therefore, a separate audit trail would be needed from Signal, if in use.

Spookily enough,  I was interested to hear that Signal was becoming popular with our current batch of newly installed Tory MP’s in the UK. It allows a bigger group than WhatsApp, and I would think the automatic deletion of messages might be a definite advantage, in the current Corona Virus environment and Brexit progressing before the end of the year.

Usually, sensitive documents and media can be restricted for 30 years, before release. It would be very convenient that some decisions are labelled ‘restricted’, about the pandemic response etc. Am I the only one suspecting in 30 years time there might just be a folder, named ‘Signal’, completely empty.

If there is ‘nothing to hide’, lets hope that an audit trail is maintained…. 

Related Post: UAT - I have seen clients fudge testing and it never turns out well...
 

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I would be pleased to connect with you on LinkedIn - http://uk.linkedin.com/in/tonysmiththathousingitguy Message me with any issues or queries, you would like to be explored in this blog. We generally receive a couple of suggestions each month.

Wreckless Eric - Semaphore SignalsWreckless Eric - Semaphore Signals.
(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk 07854-655009


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