Brisbane Zombie Walk

The annual Zombie walk has taken place in Brisbane today. I might join in next year. I won't need any make-up - I always look like that first thing in the morning. I'm not a morning person!

April Fools

I completely forgot about April Fools this morning. Pity - as Rach just loves me winding her up, not!

The Sunday papers didn't forget though, here's a few of the April Fools stories in the papers today:

Several events in the 2012 London Olympics - including the opening ceremony - will be "farmed out" to Paris to save money. Eurostar carriages will be adapted so that athletes can continue training and stretching. (Sunday Telegraph)

A legion of tiny clay soldiers has been dug up near Hadrian's Wall, and archeologists have dubbed them the Terracotta "Toon" Army. (Sunday Express)

The world's first "Robot Ethics Charter", to be drafted at a conference next week, will prevent robots from being abused. (Independent on Sunday)

Tony Blair is to become an actor when he leaves Downing Street and has been cast in Arthur Miller's The Crucible by his friend Kevin Spacey. (Observer)

A revolutionary square dart board will be introduced to the sport at this year's World Darts Championship. World champion Phil Taylor said: "I've had a practice on it, and it will take some getting used to." (News of the World)

Councils are to introduce compulsory £5 'carbon offsets' for anyone wishing to have a barbecue in their garden this summer. (Mail on Sunday)

A German company has launched "digital Lederhosen" with a built-in MP3 player and mobile phone. (Independent on Sunday)

Compost bins in a range of Farrow & Ball colours have gone on sale for £150 each. (Observer)

Garden centres are being "besieged" by men after it was discovered that winter-flowering heather has the same properties as Viagra. (Independent on Sunday)

Thirteen plainclothes traffic wardens have already been assaulted after an undercover scheme was launched in Soho. (The First Post)

Courtousy of The First Post

Free Hugs

This won most inspirational video at the You Tube awards. I thought it might be Danny Wallace at first - certainly the kind of thing that he would do:

30+ hacks and extensions for Gmail

I've been a Gmail user for 15 months now so these hacks and extensions could be quite useful.

Oz weather

Great article comparing the weather between the major cities. Rach is set on that we're moving to Brisbane but I'm still open to the possibility of trying out other areas. I guess I better make my mind up soon, if all goes well we've only got 3 months to go!

TK Maxx security breach comes as no suprise

The security breach at TJX, owners of TK Maxx, which has led to the disclosure of 45 million customer's credit and debit card information comes as no surprise to us in the IT Security community.

Unlike banks, insurance companies and they're like who are regulated by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) in the UK, there are very little legislative and regulatory pressures on the retail industry to operate best practice security, which given that they have infrastructure in place to take payment card details is something we should all be worried about, to say the least.

The only reason we know about this security breach is 1) because the breach is too large to hide, and 2) the parent company has obligations under certain State law in the US to divulge security breaches. There's no such obligations for UK companies. Unless of course you count the 2006 Fraud Act which gives banks (not retail companies) the obligation for reporting losses due to fraud involving payment cards (however many banks know that they can easily get around this).

There's the Data Protection Act of course, but the Information Commissioner is pretty toothless. You don't hear of companies being fined £1 million by the Information Commissioner, like Nationwide was last month by the FSA.

From my experience, companies only implement good security controls if they've either been impacted by a security incident which has cost them a lot of money, or they've been audited by a regulatory board or client and have been forced to improve security. It's shocking to see the lack of protection around customer information in retail companies. Many retail companies don't even have any standard security monitoring devices on their network or servers, so for all we know, our information could be being disclosed every day and the companies aren't even aware of it, never mind us, their customers.

Security features in the new £20

It may have the feel of monopoly money but apparently the security features built into the new £20 note are quite good. Here's a handy guide for checking for forgeries:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6444003.stm#graphic