Made it though the day although flagging a little now… This is a good sign, hopefully I’ll manage to sleep on the flight for most of it 
Though, looking at the picture I was sent by the other half… The garden is a little damp.
Nearly flight time
Final day – still not on the time zone :)
The final day in Houston is upon me. I’ve been here in this fantastic city since the 17th April, and despite my best efforts and attempting the many tips from colleagues, I’ve still not been able to sleep in beyond 3am.
What is odd, is that waking at such a ridiculous time in the morning has still felt like a lay in. There are added benefits to this too:
- The gym in the hotel is empty, so I don’t have to witness the look of pain on the gym rat who is clearly trying to lift too much weight.
- the hotel still has hot water in the system so the power shower after the workout is refreshing.
- the breakfast bars are all empty and there are fewer staff on hand meaning I can read leisurely
The other distinct plus in the Houston area, is that there is no traffic. A journey that takes my colleagues 45 minute to an hour, is only 10 minutes and a cheaper taxi ride.
Two weeks in this city has been great, but the time comes where I’m ready to head home. They say “absence makes the heart grow fonder” and this is true for both family, friends and home town it seems.
I’ve missed the UK, and in particular my two favourite cities of Brighton and London. I miss the unpredictable weather, the dull miserable faces on the journey to work, the delayed trains and the quaint little things that make it home.
Having spent the last three days holed up in a risk managers workshop, I’m glad of the imminent release.
I thank the wonderful people in my US team for their wonderful hospitality, sharing the sights and sounds of their home city and their good humour in wishing this miserable-morning Brit “have an awesome day” whenever I’ve seemed sleepy.
When you’re in the UK I look forward to returning the favour. Although, for the record, the 28 degree “cold weather” that I had in Texas… Is the British Summer, and I like it
One final set of meetings to complete, and I’ll be winging my way back to the little rock. From what I’ve read on the news, it appears there may be a market for Ikea to sell a modern Ark!
Time zone conversion – would be nice at some stage
Okay… Not fun anymore!
I’m now four days into my business trip to Houston, and still waking up at 3am local time. Okay, it means I get the gym out of the way really early in the day, it also means hanging around in the hotel room until the office actually opens.
Knowing my luck the time conversion will start to take effect in the middle of next week, just in time for my return home
I’m hearing lots of news about torrential rain over in the UK. I guess for the time being this means my garden doesn’t need watering, but if we can have hot and sunny when I return it would be most appreciated.
The week so far over in Texas is proving to be productive. Ironing out the risk acceptance process is proving to be a slow process as we try and bring third party suppliers along for the ride. At present, the process is being used to try and “excuse” suppliers of their SLA obligations which is something I’m unable to allow to continue.
I’ve also been behaving well on the food front. No steaks yet! – the only naughty indulgences so far have been the breakfast Kolace (Hotdog, Egg and Jalapeño) and the Dippin’dots. – it wouldn’t be the same without these two items!
Speaking of which, it’s breakfast time
Room with a view…Downtown Houston Style
Well… By the end of the week, I suspect I’ll have a good idea on the number of bricks in my view. Something tells me I’m not going to be spending too much time in this hotel room – head out and explore is going to be the only way.
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Weekend races by and now for two weeks overseas
I’m not too sure where time goes these days. I remember time dragging on as a kid, but these days the weeks just seem to fly by. Last week was no exception, it started with the best of intentions – all planned and organised – but ended with the list of planned items still outstanding.
Even a dose of man-flu couldn’t be allowed to disrupt the urgent tasks of the week, and before I knew it the weekend was upon me.
Fortunately, I took the weekend off – with two weeks away from home on the cards, it is important to spend quality time with my partner, friends and family. Mark and I had the first of the seasons barbecues on Saturday – I’m not entirely sure how much food we cooked and shared with the group of friends, but know I managed to work my way through 13kg of charcoal over a four hour period.
Sunday the 15th April saw the Brighton Marathon taking place. It was an inspiring sight to see so many people taking part again this year. Know a few people who ran in it for some really amazing causes, and pleased they all finished.
Sunday night involved a nice quiet meal with Mark, before travels. We went along to a new place in town – “Hove bank Steak & Ribs”. We’ve been to the original place in Kemptown and were pleasantly surprised that the new Hove restaurant has its own unique character with the same great food and wine menus.
The Hove bank opened up a couple of weeks ago, with little advertising or ceremony, but it has a steady stream of customers coming through the doors. The staff in the restaurant were friendly and attentive and as per the sister venue in Kemptown, the food is superb. I highly recommend the HOT chicken wings… Half a pound of pure fire that leaves your lips tingling for a good time after the last mouthful.
Alas the weekend came to an end, and I now find myself sitting in the Lounge at Heathrow Terminal 5, following a rude awakening at 03:00 am. I now have two weeks in The US to meet up with and work alongside my team. It’ll be a good two weeks but it’s never easy being away from home and family for that period.
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Tagged Business Travel, Hove Bank Steak and Ribs, Lazy Weekends
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Third party code and risk – a good night with other security professions
Wow… It seems I picked a stunning week to take annual leave, sometimes the “take it or lose it” policy can pay dividends.
After a week of pottering about in Sussex, yesterday I attended an event held by Veracode to discuss and share ideas on management of risk in third party application development.
A great evening of discussion with fellow risk and security professionals showed the different approaches being used between organisations, and that a more joined up approach to supplier risk was needed.
An interesting question posed by the CEO of Veracode on how to sell to organisations and help them buy. Many good thoughts on this by my peers in other companies, however for me it is about building the relationship, becoming a trusted advisor and then engaging on the end result that we will gain after using the product or service.
Also learned a lot from Andy, of Kent NHS trust – fascinating operations he runs, and has many parallels with the challenges we face in a large global company.
Now… Back to annual leave and a day of sun, beaches and photography.
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Risk, Suppliers and Community Partnership
A mixed bag this week, working on several projects and the new risk assessment and management process for use within Trading IT.
Sometimes, as a risk manager or security professional, we have to make a decision that is initially unpopular with other IT professionals or the business. It is a fine line sometimes between managing risk and allowing flexibility – and this week that line played out in the selection of suppliers.
Sometimes, the gap with third party organisations is just too big for the relationship to be successful at this moment in time. This doesn’t mean the security manager said “no” – it means we need to work with the potential supplier collaboratively, and slowly work to get to know each other to enable future projects to be more likely.
The week also brought about discussions in relation to threats that we face as a business over the coming months. This provoked a lot of good discussion on the threats out there in the world, but as with any discussion that leads to risk, we cannot focus on only that which threatens us, we have to also consider the business impact and the vulnerability of our business processes.
A few key concepts need to be understood to make risk assessment more meaningful to the business that we support.
Risk Principles
- Risk is not a failed or missing control.
- Vulnerability is not a failed or missing control
- Risk IS the Probability of an Event and it’s consequences
To keep risk simple:
Threats exploit Vulnerabilities causing Incidents/Events which lead to Business Impact
Next we have to consider the likelihood of the risk, which is where there are dangers. The main dangers we face are:
- Negativity Bias – we tends to over estimate negative events and forget the positive
- Recency Bias – we tend to over estimate risks that have recently happened
- Probability versus Possibility People sometimes confuse the two
On the final point, probability versus possibility there can be a marked difference.
It is possible that I win the lottery – fairly binary, I win or I don’t.
it is not probable that I’ll win the lottery 14,000,000:1 – a tax on those who skipped math?
Outside of work, I received great feedback on the first of the Personal Safety courses that I delivered for Arun District Council. It was a pleasure to work with such a great team on the day and a real honour to be able to deliver the training on behalf of Sussex Police, as part of the community safety partnership.
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Tagged community safety, Risk, Risk Awareness, third party relationships
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Monday Monday… So good to me :)
Today started with the trauma of blackberry failure on the way into London, just before the point where I’d managed to plan my day and diary… Cue look of abject horror on my face, clear for all commuters to see.
Alas, fears were unfounded and I arrived at work with an hour of time to myself to complete my day and week planning.
Had a bit of feedback today, on my use of email… You see, I have a deep seated hate relationship with my email. All too often it is abused as a communication medium, where I find others offload their work into my inbox, with no consultation on agreement on tasking and priority. I’ve always treated email as the medium of last resort… By all means email me with tasks, but don’t class that the same as “communicating” with me unless I’ve acknowledged it.
Receiving anywhere between 120 and 180 emails a day, I find it very easy to lose things in amongst the general churn of the mail box.
In the times where it is all too easy to get distracted in a stream of electronic communications, I’ve always applied some basic principles as to how I work:-
- just because the ball is thrown, don’t assume I’ll catch it.
- where it is important to you that I respond in short timelines, talk to me but…
- be prepared to understand how the high priority of yours, may not fit in my own priority list.
- if you need my attention, send the email to me rather than cc me… I get cc’d on too much noise
- email is a tool to aid me, not something that runs my life… Phone and face time is my priority.
So…. I struggle on, I started the day with a chock full mailbox. I cleared it down to allow me to work through some responses, and by the time I got home – my mailbox is full again.
Anyone have any tips on email management or gems on how to avoid the pitfalls?
The Hobby – Playing with the new photoshop as it rained
Well… as it spent most of today hammering it down with rain, after the chores were done it left me time to have a play with Photoshop.
Plenty of time to experiment today, using some of my stock images from around Brighton to see what effects I could come up with in between showers
Below are my favourites of the days results.
Training for conflict
I had the privilege of training staff from a district council on Friday, working with their front line staff to teach conflict management, communications and self defence skills to a team of nine people.
The training sparked a good deal of healthy debate in amongst the group, particularly when I introduced them to Betari’s box. At some stage, I’ll upload the actual diagram, but in short, Betari’s box states a few basic concepts:
- MY Attitude affects MY Behaviour
- MY Behaviour affects YOUR Attitude
- YOUR attitude affects YOUR Behaviour
- YOUR Behaviour affects MY Attitude
It’s a cycle that forms during any interaction, and when conflict arises it takes one party to spot this cycle and break it. The concepts are equally important when we enter an encounter with a Pre-conceived idea of what it about to unfold. If we enter into communications with people, expecting trouble…we often get it! – but why is this?
A further look at the way we communicate shows that on communication with people the words we use account for only 7% of the content. 38% of the interaction is the flex and intonation of the voice, and 55% reflects our non verbal communication.
When we prejudge an encounter, our body language will give off subtle cues to the other party, and what then follows is a self fulfilling prophecy – We encounter what we predict !
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