John Lawlor

Just some removable devices

The recent loss by PA Consulting of data about criminals in Britain raises many questions about data security and highlights the difficult of guaranteeing privacy and security of data.  With the proliferation of portable storage devices, coupled with their increasing capacity and low cost, the challenges of maintaining data privacy and security are considerable.

I expect that PA signed all the necessary confidentiality agreements, security policies, data management policies, etc, when agreeing the contract with the Home Office. I expect that they also provided the necessary assurances to the client when negotiating the work. And I expect that the client took assurance from all of this. And yet, despite that, a significant breach of confidentiality and data security occurred, exposing both the contractor and the Home Office to being sued.  So, if policies and procedures, signed declaration and undertakings aren’t adequate protections, what can a client do when engaging third parties, or, indeed, protecting data from disclosure by staff? Continue reading ‘Data loss by PA Consulting’ »

I recently downloaded a free open source software system called Mindtouch Deki from California-based company, Mindtouch. More than just a wiki, Mindtouch Deki is a web-based collaboration tool that enables teams to work together and share files and information over the Internet.

John Lawlor at TCD

I am currently involved in a project involving four organisations in Ireland; one in Cork, one in Galway and two in Dublin. There are about 10 people in the team and we use Mindtouch Deki (pesonal PRO version – see below) to post documents and comments. I set up a private web site so that only subscribed users have access. Having worked with the same people on several collaborative projects in the past, our normal way of exchanging files and information was through email. Mindtouch Deki makes the collaboration effort simpler and more efficient. We even use it during meetings to upload files as we work on them.

The software provides a lot more functionality than we are using, and we are only “scratching the surface” at the moment but, nevertheless, it is doing what we want. Visit the Mindtouch site to see demos of its wider capability. The software is very easy to download, set up, administer and use and I certainly recommend it as a very straightforward collaboration tool.

A number of installation options are available, including:

• Free hosted personal wiki with 100 Mb of storage
• Personal “PRO” hosted version with 10 Gb of storage costing $99 per year
• Enterprise solutions ranging in price from $2,500 to $20,000 per server per year, depending on the level of service required
• Enterprise hosted solutions at additional costs over the enterprise solution ranging from $1,200 to $7,200, depending on the size of the hosted environment required.

Well done, Mindtouch!