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Jobs, who needs them?

This has been an interesting month full of gruesome logic failures, a maniacal lack of common sense, some potentially positive happenings, an international answer to user authentication issues (admittedly that’s been in the works for a while), all of which make for some interesting news. Sadly, due to our deadlines, some of the juicy bits you will have seen online or you will have to wait for the April issue to find out more.

If you subscribe to the Hi-Tech Security Solutions e-zine, you will have read that the ownership issue, part of the PSIRA Amendment Bill that was taken out and then sneaked back in when nobody was looking has been passed by the Portfolio Committee of Police. Apart from the regular stupidity, the bill includes limitations on foreign ownership of South African security companies. Why only destroy the mining industry when the second largest employer in the country is ripe for job destruction?

I could go on, but why? More intelligent people than I have succeeded in getting themselves heard and changes promised, only to have their time and effort surreptitiously cancelled with no explanation or debate. It seems logical arguments, economic realities and job creation are the last things on this government’s agenda.

Moving onto more interesting news, you have probably heard that ASSA ABLOY, through its HID Global subsidiary has bought Lumidigm. If you were of the opinion that biometrics wasn’t a big deal then you should take note. The terms of the deal were not publicised, but it’s estimated that the price was in the region of $60 million – not bad for a company with 33 employees and expected sales this year of $25 million. On a slightly smaller scale, we saw IDS buying GSC last year so South Africa isn’t behind the global trends. I wonder if another well-known local biometrics manufacturer is up for grabs?

And on the topic of biometrics, I will be reporting on an interview I had recently with a board member of the FIDO Alliance. FIDO is short for Fast IDentity Online. This organisation has developed a unique standard for strong authentication for all online transactions, making it possible for consumers and businesses to accurately authenticate identities in order to secure transactions.

Among the benefits of the FIDO approach is that it keeps the individual’s credentials – such as biometrics, tokens etc. – on a local device and uses public key cryptography to create a trusted connection to the target site. There is naturally more to it than this brief description, which I will expand on in the next issue. Safe to say, with luminaries like Lenovo, Microsoft, PayPal, MasterCard and many more on the board, the FIDO standards are destined to make things difficult for cyber criminals.

And when it comes to the next issue, our April magazine will have the 2014 CCTV Handbook bundled with it. As I peer through the chaos, I think it may just be something worth reading. I will also include in the April issue a couple of comments I received from readers on last month’s article on wireless jamming.

As always, please let me have any comments, criticisms, rumours and opinions on [email protected]

Andrew Seldon

Editor

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