Quote for the day:
"Great leaders do not desire to lead but to serve." -- Myles Munroe
Managing Technical Debt the Right Way
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: most executives don’t care about technical
purity, but they do care about value leakage. If your team can’t deliver new
features fast enough, if outages are too frequent, if security holes are piling
up, that is financial debt—just wearing a hoodie instead of a suit. The BTABoK
approach is to make debt visible in the same way accountants handle real
liabilities. Use canvases, views, and roadmaps to connect the hidden cost of
debt to business outcomes. Translate debt into velocity lost, time to market,
and risk exposure. Then prioritize it just like any other investment. ... If
your architects can’t tie debt decisions to value, risk, and strategy, then
they’re not yet professionals. Training and certification are not about passing
an exam. They are about proving you can handle debt like a surgeon handles
risk—deliberately, transparently, and with the trust of society. ... Let’s not
sugarcoat it: some executives will always see debt as “nerd whining.” But when
you put it into the lifecycle, into the transformation plan, and onto the
balance sheet, it becomes a business issue. This is the same lesson learned in
finance: debt can be a powerful tool if managed, or a silent killer if ignored.
BTABoK doesn’t give you magic bullets. It gives you a discipline and a language
to make debt a first-class concern in architectural practice. The rest is
courage—the courage to say no to shortcuts that aren’t really shortcuts, to show
leadership the cost of delay, and to treat architectural decisions with the
seriousness they deserve.How National AI Clouds Undermine Democracy
The rapid spread of sovereign AI clouds unintentionally creates a new form of
unchecked power. It combines state authority with corporate technology in
unclear public-private partnerships. This combination centralizes surveillance
and decision-making power, extending far beyond effective democratic oversight.
The pursuit of national sovereignty undermines the civic sovereignty of
individuals. ... The unique and overlooked danger is the rise of a permanent,
unelected techno-bureaucracy. Unlike traditional government agencies, these
hybrid entities are shielded from democratic pressures. Their technical
complexity acts as a barrier against public understanding and journalistic
inquiry. ... no sovereign cloud should operate without a corresponding
legislative data charter. This charter, passed by the national legislature, must
clearly define citizens' rights against algorithmic discrimination, set explicit
limits on data use, and create transparent processes for individuals harmed by
the system. It should recognize data portability as an essential right, not just
a technical feature. ... every sovereign AI initiative should be mandated
to serve the public good. These systems must legally demonstrate that they
fulfill publicly defined goals, with their performance measured and reported
openly. This directs the significant power of AI toward applications that
benefit the public, such as enhancing healthcare outcomes or building climate
resilience.
IT’s renaissance risks losing steam
IT-enabled value creation will etiolate without the sustained light of
stakeholder attention. CIOs need to manage IT signals, symbols, and suppositions
with an eye toward recapturing stakeholder headspace. Every IT employee needs to
get busy defanging the devouring demons of apathy and ignorance surrounding IT
operations today. ... We need to move beyond our “hero on horseback” obsession
with single actors. Instead we need to return our efforts forcefully to
l’histoire des mentalités — the study of the mental universe of ordinary people.
How is l’homme moyen sensual (the man on the street) dealing with the
technological choices arrayed before him? ... The IT pundits’ much discussed
promise of “technology transformation” will never materialize if appropriate
exothermic — i.e., behavior-inducing and energy creating — IT ideas have no mass
following among those working at the screens around the world. ... As CIO,
have you articulated a clear vision of what you want IT to achieve during your
tenure? Have you calmed the anger of unmet expectations, repaired the wounds of
system outages, alleviated the doubts about career paths, charted a
filled-with-benefits road forward and embodied the hopes of all stakeholders?
... The cognitive elephant in the room that no one appears willing to talk about
is the widespread technological illiteracy of the world’s population.
How One Bad Password Ended a 158-Year-Old Business
KNP's story illustrates a weakness that continues to plague organizations across
the globe. Research from Kaspersky analyzing 193 million compromised passwords
found that 45% could be cracked by hackers within a minute. And when attackers
can simply guess or quickly crack credentials, even the most established
businesses become vulnerable. Individual security lapses can have
organization-wide consequences that extend far beyond the person who chose
"Password123" or left their birthday as their login credential. ... KNP's
collapse demonstrates that ransomware attacks create consequences far beyond an
immediate financial loss. Seven hundred families lost their primary income
source. A company with nearly two centuries of history disappeared overnight.
And Northamptonshire's economy lost a significant employer and service provider.
For companies that survive ransomware attacks, reputational damage often
compounds the initial blow. Organizations face ongoing scrutiny from customers,
partners, and regulators who question their security practices. Stakeholders
seek accountability for data breaches and operational failures, leading to legal
liabilities. ... KNP joins an estimated 19,000 UK businesses that suffered
ransomware attacks last year, according to government surveys. High-profile
victims have included major retailers like M&S, Co-op, and Harrods,
demonstrating that no organization is too large or established to be
targeted.Has the UK’s Cyber Essentials scheme failed?
There are several reasons why larger organisations may steer clear of CE in its
current form, explains Kearns. “They typically operate complex, often
geographically dispersed networks, where basic technical controls driven by CE
do not satisfy organisational appetite to drive down risk and improve
resilience,” she says. “The CE control set is also ‘absolute’ and does not allow
for the use of compensating controls. Large complex environments, on the other
hand, often operate legacy systems that require compensating controls to reduce
risk, which prevents compliance with CE.” The point-in-time nature of assessment
is also a poor fit for today’s dynamic IT infrastructure and threat
environments, argues Pierre Noel, field CISO EMEA at security vendor Expel. ...
“For large enterprises with complex IT environments, CE may not be comprehensive
enough to address their specific security needs,” says Andy Kays, CEO of MSSP
Socura. “Despite these limitations, it still serves a valuable purpose as a
baseline, especially for supply chain assurance where larger companies want to
ensure their smaller partners have a minimum level of security.” Richard Starnes
is an experienced CISO and chair of the WCIT security panel. He agrees that
large enterprises should require CE+ certification in their supplier contracts,
where it makes sense. “This requirement should also include a contract flow-down
to ensure that their suppliers’ downstream partners are also certified,” says
Starnes.
Is Your Data Generating Value or Collecting Digital Dust?
Economic uncertainty is prompting many companies to think about how to do more
with less. But what if they’re actually positioned to do more with more and just
don’t realize it? Many organizations already have the resources they need to
improve efficiency and resilience in challenging times. Close to two-thirds of
organizations manage 1 petabyte or more of data, which represents enough data
to cover 500 billion standard pages of text. More than 40% of companies store
even more data. Much of that data sits unanalyzed while it incurs costs related
to collection, compliance, and storage. It also poses data breach risks that
require expensive security measures to prevent. ... Engaging with too many apps
often makes employees less efficient than they could be. In 2024, companies used
an average of 21 apps just for HR tasks. Multiply that across different
functions, and it’s easy to see how finding ways to reduce the total could bring
down costs. Trimming the number of apps can also increase productivity by
reducing employee overwhelm. Constantly switching between different apps and
systems has been shown to distract employees while increasing their levels of
stress and frustration. Across the organization, switching among tasks and apps
consumes 9% of the average employee’s time at work by chipping away at their
attention and ability to focus a few seconds at a time with each of the
hundreds of tasks switches they perform every day.The history and future of software development
For any significant piece of software back then, you needed stacks of punch
cards. Yes, 1000 lines of code needed 1000 cards. And you needed to have them in
order. Now, imagine dropping that stack of 1000 cards! It would take me ages to
get them back in order. Devs back then experienced this a lot—so some of them
went ahead and had creative ways of indicating the order of these cards. ... y
the mid 1970s affordable home computers were starting to become a reality.
Instead of a computer just being a work thing, hobbyists started using computers
for personal things—maybe we can call these, I don't know...personal computers.
... Assembler and assembly tend to be used interchangeably. But are in reality
two different things. Assembly would be the actual language, syntax—instructions
being used and would be tightly coupled to the architecture. While the assembler
is the piece of software that assembles your assembly code into machine code—the
thing your computer knows how to execute. ... What about writing the software?
Did they use git back then? No, git only came out in 2005, so back then software
version control was quite the manual effort. From developers having their own
way of managing source code locally to even having wall charts where developers
can "claim" ownership of certain source code files. For those that were able to
work on a shared (multi-user) system, or have an early version of some networked
storage—Source code sharing was as easy as handing out floppy disks.
Why the operating system is no longer just plumbing
Many enterprises still think of the operating system as a “static” or background layer that doesn’t need active evolution. The reality is that modern operating systems like Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) are dynamic, intelligent platforms that actively enable and optimize everything running on top of them. Whether you're training AI models, deploying cloud-native applications, or managing edge devices, the OS is making thousands of critical decisions every second about resource allocation, security enforcement, and performance optimization. ... With image mode deployments, zero-downtime updates, and optimized container support, RHEL ensures that even resource-constrained environments can maintain enterprise-grade reliability. We’ve also focused heavily on security—confidential computing, quantum-resistant cryptography, and compliance automation—because edge environments are often exposed to greater risk. These choices allow RHEL to deliver resilience in conditions where compute power, space, and connectivity are limited. ... We don't just take community code and ship it — we validate, harden, and test everything extensively. Red Hat bridges this gap by being an active contributor upstream while serving as an enterprise-grade curator downstream. Our ecosystem partnerships ensure that when new technologies emerge, they work reliably with RHEL from day one.Ransomware now targeting backups, warns Google’s APAC security chief
Backups often contain sensitive data such as personal information, intellectual
property, and financial records. Pereira warned that attackers can use this data
as extra leverage or sell it on the dark web. The shift in focus to backup
systems underscores how ransomware has become less about disruption and more
about business pressure. If an organisation cannot restore its systems
independently, it has little choice but to consider paying a ransom. ... Another
troubling trend is “cloud-native extortion,” where attackers abuse built-in
cloud features, such as encryption or storage snapshots, to hold systems
hostage. Pereira explained that many organisations in the region are adapting by
shifting to identity-focused security models. “Cloud environments have become
the new perimeter, and attackers have been weaponising cloud-native tools,” he
said. “We now need to enforce strict cloud security hygiene, such as robust MFA,
least privilege access, proactively monitoring of role access changes or
credential leaks, using automation to detect and remediate misconfigurations,
and anomaly detection tools for cloud activities.” He pointed to rising
investments in identity and access management tools, with organisations
recognising their role in cutting down the risk of identity-based attacks. For
APAC businesses, this means moving away from legacy perimeter defences and
embracing cloud-native safeguards that assume breaches are inevitable but limit
the damage.
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