The Attributer’s Blog – Autonomous

Gartner tells us in its Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2019(1) that autonomous things are number one in the list. Autonomous things use artificial intelligence (AI) to perform tasks traditionally done by humans. We are talking robotics on a new level of sophistication and with greater levels of autonomy than seen in previous generations of robot technology. The types […]

The Attributer’s Blog – Provenance Assured

“Trust but verify” – Russian proverb. Earlier this year The Attributer published an article entitled ‘Fake Protected’. This new article revisits the same topic but from a different perspective. We are living in a time of increasing outbreaks of ‘fake news’ in particular, and ‘fake information’ in general. How do we establish the provenance of data and the information that […]

The Attributer’s Blog – Quantum Ready

Quantum Cryptography Revolution Are you ready for the quantum revolution in secure communications? OK, so you’re not ready. Don’t panic, it’s still a long time coming. However, it is useful to be cognizant with the latest cryptographic developments and to get a glimpse of what is coming over the horizon. These developments will change the way we do things in […]

The Attributer’s Blog – Threat Modelled

The Attributer has become aware that threat modelling is enjoying some popularity at the moment. However, most of what is written and said about it makes little sense. It’s not the role of this column to ‘name and shame’, but if you doubt what is said here, just type the words ‘threat modelling’ into your favourite search engine and read […]

The Attributer’s Blog – Fake Protected

Selling fake goods is nothing new. It dates back to the beginning of commerce.  Making fraudulent claims about patent medicines was very common in the 18th and 19th centuries. In the 20th and 21st centuries regulations and laws started to limit the possibilities. The emergence of a consumer society during the late 20th century led to a vigorous trade in […]

The Attributer’s Blog – Trustable Execution

The recent revelations of the Meltdown and Spectre attacks on hardware CPUs brings us back to something that The Attributer has addressed in previous articles: emergent properties of complex systems. (See IB2 in 2016: the attribute Emergent). For those readers who might have missed that article, highly complex systems exhibit unexpected and unwanted behaviours that are the result of component […]

The Attributer’s Blog – Cyber Secured

Two years ago, in the last article of 2015, The Attributer previously published this same title. So why choose the title again? That previous article examined the global geo-political threat landscape and the reasons to take it seriously. In the final paragraph of the article The Attributer wrote: We need to shift into a different gear in our thinking and […]

The Attributer’s Blog – Private

The introduction of GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) in 2018 in the EU raises some new challenges for those involved in controlling and processing personal data, but it is also a great case study in risk ownership and governance. It demonstrates some concepts and principles that have long been central in the SABSA way of thinking. In this article we […]