Why you should never neglect physical security

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    It’s a common occurrence in today’s modern world that virtually all organisations have a considerable budget (or a strong focus on) information and cyber security. Often, larger organisations spend millions annually on significant improvements to their security program or framework, yet overlook arguably the most fundamental basics which should be (but are often not) the building blocks of any fortified stronghold.

    We’ve spent so much time concentrating on the virtual aspect of security and all that it encompasses, but seem to have lost sight of what should arguably be the first item on the list – physical security. It doesn’t matter how much money and effort you plough into designing and securing your estate when you consider how vulnerable and easily negated the program or framework is if you neglect the physical element. Modern cyber crime has evolved, and it’s the general consensus these days that the traditional perimeter as entry point is rapidly losing its appeal from the accessibility versus yield perspective. Today’s discerning criminal is much more inclined to go for a softer and predictable target in the form of users themselves rather than spend hours on reconnaissance and black box probing looking for backdoors or other associated weak points in a network or associated infrastructure.

    Physical vs virtual

    So does this mean you should be focusing your efforts on the physical elements solely, and ignoring the perimeter altogether ? Absolutely not – doing so would be commercial suicide. However, the physical element should not be neglected either, but instead factored into any security design at the outset instead of being an afterthought. I’ve worked for a variety of organisations over my career – each of them with differing views and attitudes to risk concerning physical security. From the banking and finance sector to manufacturing, they all have common weaknesses. Weaknesses that should, in fact, have been eliminated from the outset rather than being a part of the everyday activity. Take this as an example. In order to qualify for buildings and contents insurance, business with office space need to ensure that they have effective measures in place to secure that particular area. In most cases, modern security mechanisms dictate that proximity card readers are deployed at main entrances, rendering access impossible (when the locking mechanism is enforced) without a programmed access card or token. But how “impossible” is that access in reality ?

    Organisations often take an entire floor of a building, or at least a subset of it. This means that any doors dividing floors or areas occupied by other tenants must be secured against unauthorised access. Quite often, these floors have more than one exit point for a variety of health and safety / fire regulation reasons, and it’s this particular scenario that often goes unnoticed, or unintentionally overlooked. Human nature dictates that it’s quicker to take the side exit when leaving the building rather than the main entrance, and the last employee leaving (in an ideal world) has the responsibility of ensuring that the door is locked behind them when they leave. However, the reality is often the case instead where the door is held open by a fire extinguisher for example. Whilst this facilitates effective and easy access during the day, it has a significant impact to your physical security if that same door remains open and unattended all night. I’ve seen this particular offence repeatedly committed over months – not days or weeks – in most organisations I’ve worked for. In fact, this exact situation allowed thieves to steal a laptop left on the desk in an office of a finance firm I previously worked at.

    Theft in general is mostly based around opportunity. As a paradigm, you could leave a £20 note / $20 bill on your desk and see how long it remained there before it went missing. I’m not implying here that anyone in particular is a thief, but again, it’s about opportunity. The same process can be aligned to Information security. It’s commonplace to secure information systems with passwords, least privilege access, locked server rooms, and all the other usual mechanisms, but what about the physical elements ? It’s not just door locks. It’s anything else that could be classed as sensitive, such as printed documents left on copiers long since forgotten and unloved, personally identifiable information left out on desks, misplaced smartphones, or even keys to restricted areas such as usually locked doors or cupboards. That 30 second window could be all that would be required to trigger a breach of security – and even worse, of information classed as sensitive. Not only could your insurance refuse to pay out if you could not demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt that you had the basic physical security measures in place, but (in the EU) you would have to notify the regulator (in this case, the ICO) that information had been stolen. Not only would it be of significant embarrassment to any firm that a “chancer” was able to casually stroll in and take anything they wanted unchallenged, but significant in terms of the severity of such an information breach – and the resultant fines imposed by the ICO or SEC (from the regulatory perspective – in this case, GDPR) – at €20m or 4% of annual global (yes, global) turnover (if you were part of a larger organisation, then that is actually 4% of the parent entity turnover – not just your firm) – whichever is the highest. Of equal significance is the need to notify the ICO within 72 hours of a discovered breach. In the event of electronic systems, you could gain intelligence about what was taken from a centralised logging system (if you have one – that’s another horror story altogether if you don’t and you are breached) from the “electronic” angle of any breach via traditional cyber channels, but do you know exactly what information has taken residence on desks ? Simple answer ? No.

    It’s for this very reason that several firms operate a “clean desk” policy. Not just for aesthetic reasons, but for information security reasons. Paper shredders are a great invention, but they lack AI and machine learning to wheel themselves around your office looking for sensitive hard copy (printed) data to destroy in order for you to remain compliant with your information security policy (now there’s an invention…).

    But how secure are these “unbreakable” locks ? Despite the furore around physical security in the form of smart locks, thieves seem to be able to bypass these “security measures” with little effort. Here’s a short video courtesy of ABC news detailing just how easy it was (and still is in some cases) to gain access to hotel rooms using cheap technology, tools, and “how-to” articles from YouTube.

    Surveillance systems aren’t exempt either. As an example, a camera system can be rendered useless with a can of spray paint or even something as simple as a grocery bag if it’s in full view. Admittedly, this would require some previous reconnaissance to determine the camera locations before committing any offence, but it’s certainly a viable prospect of that system is not monitored regularly. Additionally, (in the UK at least) the usage of CCTV in a commercial setting requires a written visible notice to be displayed informing those affected that they are in fact being recorded (along with an impact assessment around the usage), and is also subject to various other controls around privacy, usage, security, and retention periods.

    Unbreakable locks ?

    Then there’s the “unbreakable” door lock. Tapplock advertised their “unbreakable smart lock” only to find that it was vulnerable to the most basic of all forced entry – the screwdriver. Have a look at this article courtesy of “The Register”. In all seriousness, there aren’t that many locks that cannot be effectively bypassed. Now, I know what you’re thinking. If the lock cannot be effectively opened, then how do you gain entry ? It’s much simpler than you think. For a great demonstration, we’ll hand over to a scene from “RED” that shows exactly how this would work. The lock itself may have pass-code that “…changes every 6 hours…” and is “unbreakable”, but that doesn’t extend to the material that holds both the door and the access panel for the lock itself.

    And so onto the actual point. Unless your “unbreakable” door lock is housed within fortified brick or concrete walls and impervious to drills, oxy-acetylene cutting equipment, and proximity explosive charges (ok, that’s a little over the top…), it should not be classed as “secure”. Some of the best examples I’ve seen are a metal door housed in a plasterboard / false wall. Personally, if I wanted access to the room that badly, I’d go through the wall with the nearest fire extinguisher rather than fiddle with the lock itself. All it takes is to tap on the wall, and you’ll know for sure if it’s hollow just by the sound it makes. Finally, there’s the even more ridiculous – where you have a reinforced door lock with a viewing pane (of course, glass). Why bother with the lock when you can simply shatter the glass, put your hand through, and unlock the door ?

    Conclusion

    There’s always a variety of reasons as to why you wouldn’t build your comms room out of brick or concrete – mostly attributed to building and landlord regulations in premises that businesses occupy. Arguably, if you wanted to build something like this, and occupied the ground floor, then yes, you could indeed carry out this work if it was permitted. Most data centres that are truly secure are patrolled 24 x 7 by security, are located underground, or within heavily fortified surroundings. Here is an example of one of the most physically secure data centres in the world.

    https://www.identiv.com/resources/blog/the-worlds-most-secure-buildings-bahnhof-data-center

    Virtually all physical security aspects eventually circle back to two common topics – budget, and attitude to risk. The real question here is what value you place on your data – particularly if you are a custodian of it, but the data relates to others. Leaking data because of exceptionally weak security practices in today’s modern age is an unfortunate risk – one that you cannot afford to overlook.

    What are your thoughts around physical security ?


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    @crazycells good question. Gmail being provided by Google is going to be one of the more secure by default out of the box, although you have to bear in mind that you can have the best security in the world, but that is easily diluted by user decision.

    Obviously, it makes sense to secure all cloud based services with at least 2fa protection, or better still, biometric if available, but email still remains vastly unprotected (unless enforced in the sense of 2fa, which I know Sendgrid do) because of user choice (in the sense that users will always go for the path of least resistance when it comes to security to make their lives easier). The ultimate side effect of taking this route is being vulnerable to credentials theft via phishing attacks and social engineering.

    The same principle would easily apply to Proton Mail, who also (from memory) do not enforce 2fa. Based on this fact, neither product is more secure than the other without one form of additional authentication at least being imposed.

    In terms of direct attack on the servers holding mail accounts themselves, this is a far less common type of attack these days as tricking the user is so much simpler than brute forcing a server where you are very likely to be detected by perimeter security (IDS / IPS etc).

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    @DownPW 🙂 most of this really depends on your desired security model. In all cases with firewalls, less is always more, although it’s never as clear cut as that, and there are always bespoke ports you’ll need to open periodically.

    Heztner’s DDoS protection is superior, and I know they have invested a lot of time, effort, and money into making it extremely effective. However, if you consider that the largest ever DDoS attack hit Cloudflare at 71m rps (and they were able to deflect it), and each attack can last anywhere between 8-24 hours which really depends on how determined the attacker(s) is/are, you can never be fully prepared - nor can you trace it’s true origin.

    DDoS attacks by their nature (Distributed Denial of Service) are conducted by large numbers of devices whom have become part of a “bot army” - and in most cases, the owners of these devices are blissfully unaware that they have been attacked and are under command and control from a nefarious resource. Given that the attacks originate from multiple sources, this allows the real attacker to observe from a distance whilst concealing their own identity and origin in the process.

    If you consider the desired effect of DDoS, it is not an attempt to access ports that are typically closed, but to flood (and eventually overwhelm) the target (such as a website) with millions of requests per second in an attempt to force it offline. Victims of DDoS attacks are often financial services for example, with either extortion or financial gain being the primary objective - in other words, pay for the originator to stop the attack.

    It’s even possible to get DDoS as a service these days - with a credit card, a few clicks of a mouse and a target IP, you can have your own proxy campaign running in minutes which typically involves “booters” or “stressers” - see below for more

    https://heimdalsecurity.com/blog/ddos-as-a-service-attacks-what-are-they-and-how-do-they-work

    @DownPW said in Setting for high load and prevent DDoS (sysctl, iptables, crowdsec or other):

    in short if you have any advice to give to secure the best.

    It’s not just about DDos or firewalls. There are a number of vulnerabilities on all systems that if not patched, will expose that same system to exploit. One of my favourite online testers which does a lot more than most basic ones is below

    https://www.immuniweb.com/websec/

    I’d start with the findings reported here and use that to branch outwards.

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    Missed out on this deal ? Windscribe offer a limited free version. More about that here
    https://sudonix.org/topic/13/which-product-is-the-best-for-vpn/164?_=1652206628456

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    @mike-jones Hi Mike,

    There are multiple answers to this, so I’m going to provide some of the most important ones here

    JS is a client side library, so you shouldn’t rely on it solely for validation. Any values collected by JS will need to be passed back to the PHP backend for processing, and will need to be fully sanitised first to ensure that your database is not exposed to SQL injection. In order to pass back those values into PHP, you’ll need to use something like

    <script> var myvalue = $('#id').val(); $(document).ready(function() { $.ajax({ type: "POST", url: "https://myserver/myfile.php?id=" + myvalue, success: function() { $("#targetdiv").load('myfile.php?id=myvalue #targetdiv', function() {}); }, //error: ajaxError }); return false; }); </script>

    Then collect that with PHP via a POST / GET request such as

    <?php $myvalue= $_GET['id']; echo "The value is " . $myvalue; ?>

    Of course, the above is a basic example, but is fully functional. Here, the risk level is low in the sense that you are not attempting to manipulate data, but simply request it. However, this in itself would still be vulnerable to SQL injection attack if the request is not sent as OOP (Object Orientated Programming). Here’s an example of how to get the data safely

    <?php function getid($theid) { global $db; $stmt = $db->prepare("SELECT *FROM data where id = ?"); $stmt->execute([$theid]); while ($result= $stmt->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC)){ $name = $result['name']; $address = $result['address']; $zip = $result['zip']; } return array( 'name' => $name, 'address' => $address, 'zip' => $zip ); } ?>

    Essentially, using the OOP method, we send placeholders rather than actual values. The job of the function is to check the request and automatically sanitise it to ensure we only return what is being asked for, and nothing else. This prevents typical injections such as “AND 1=1” which of course would land up returning everything which isn’t what you want at all for security reasons.

    When calling the function, you’d simply use

    <?php echo getid($myvalue); ?>

    @mike-jones said in Securing javascript -> PHP mysql calls on Website:

    i am pretty sure the user could just use the path to the php file and just type a web address into the search bar

    This is correct, although with no parameters, no data would be returned. You can actually prevent the PHP script from being called directly using something like

    <?php if(!defined('MyConst')) { die('Direct access not permitted'); } ?>

    then on the pages that you need to include it

    <?php define('MyConst', TRUE); ?>

    Obviously, access requests coming directly are not going via your chosen route, therefore, the connection will die because MyConst does not equal TRUE

    @mike-jones said in Securing javascript -> PHP mysql calls on Website:

    Would it be enough to just check if the number are a number 1-100 and if the drop down is one of the 5 specific words and then just not run the rest of the code if it doesn’t fit one of those perameters?

    In my view, no, as this will expose the PHP file to SQL injection attack without any server side checking.

    Hope this is of some use to start with. Happy to elaborate if you’d like.

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    It surprises me (well, actually, dismays me in most cases) that new websites appear online all the time who have clearly spent an inordinate amount of time on cosmetics / appearance, and decent hosting, yet failed to address the elephant in the room when it comes to actually securing the site itself. Almost all the time, when I perform a quick security audit using something simple like the below

    https://securityheaders.io

    I often see something like this

    Not a pretty sight. Not only does this expose your site to unprecedented risk, but also looks bad when others decide to perform a simple (and very public) check. Worse still is the sheer number of so called “security experts” who claim to solve all of your security issues with their “silver bullet” solution (sarcasm intended), yet have neglected to get their own house in order. So that can you do to resolve this issue ? It’s actually much easier than it seems. Dependant on the web server you are running, you can include these headers.

    Apache <IfModule mod_headers.c> Header set X-Frame-Options "SAMEORIGIN" header set X-XSS-Protection "1; mode=block" Header set X-Download-Options "noopen" Header set X-Content-Type-Options "nosniff" Header set Content-Security-Policy "upgrade-insecure-requests" Header set Referrer-Policy 'no-referrer' add Header set Feature-Policy "geolocation 'self' https://yourdomain.com" Header set Permissions-Policy "geolocation=(),midi=(),sync-xhr=(),microphone=(),camera=(),magnetometer=(),gyroscope=(),fullscreen=(self),payment=()" Header set X-Powered-By "Whatever text you want to appear here" Header set Access-Control-Allow-Origin "https://yourdomain.com" Header set X-Permitted-Cross-Domain-Policies "none" Header set Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=63072000; includeSubDomains; preload" </IfModule> NGINX add_header X-Frame-Options "SAMEORIGIN" always; add_header X-XSS-Protection "1; mode=block"; add_header X-Download-Options "noopen" always; add_header X-Content-Type-Options "nosniff" always; add_header Content-Security-Policy "upgrade-insecure-requests" always; add_header Referrer-Policy 'no-referrer' always; add_header Feature-Policy "geolocation 'self' https://yourdomain.com" always; add_header Permissions-Policy "geolocation=(),midi=(),sync-xhr=(),microphone=(),camera=(),magnetometer=(),gyroscope=(),fullscreen=(self),payment=();"; add_header X-Powered-By "Whatever text you want to appear here" always; add_header Access-Control-Allow-Origin "https://yourdomain.com" always; add_header X-Permitted-Cross-Domain-Policies "none" always; add_header Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=63072000; includeSubdomains;" always;

    Note, that https://yourdomain.com should be changed to reflect your actual domain. This is just a placeholder to demonstrate how the headers need to be structured.

    Restart Apache or NGINX, and then perform the test again.


    That’s better !

    More detail around these headers can be found here

    https://webdock.io/en/docs/how-guides/security-guides/how-to-configure-security-headers-in-nginx-and-apache

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    Anyone who uses dating agencies or even social media itself should be aware of the risk that a “catfish” poses. However, despite all of the media attention, catfish are constantly successful in their campaigns, and it seems as though everyday there is yet another victim. But why is this persistent campaign so successful ? In order to understand how a catfish scam operates, we first need to look at who they target, and why. Trust is gained as quickly as possible as the risk of being caught out very early in the process is much too high. Catfish campaigns tend to target individuals – particularly those considered vulnerable. But how do they know that these individuals are vulnerable and a healthy target in the first place ? More on that later. For now, let’s look at how a catfish will apply their skills on unsuspecting victims. By far the most common type of attack is via online dating, and seeing as there appears to be plenty of choice in terms of platforms and users adopting their services, the fruit on the tree is plentiful, and replenished at an alarming rate.

    How does a catfish select a target ?

    The more experienced catfish will have multiple targets and campaigns running concurrently. Adopting this approach as a “beginner” is actually unwise, as there is too much detail to remember in order to pull off an effective deception without raising suspicion. Can you imagine grooming a target then getting their name wrong, or other key information they may have unwittingly provided ? No. For this exact reason, the novice catfish will target one individual at a time. Whilst this doesn’t sound very enterprising, the experienced catfish, however, will operate multiple campaigns simultaneously. This produces a significantly higher yield, but it also means that the risk of exposure is greater. Based on this, each campaign is carefully tracked and “scripted” - in fact, each campaign has a written story - pretext if you will, that is simply copied and pasted in communications. This provides the assurance that the particular “story” being used does not stray off course, or arouse suspicion unintentionally. Based on official evidence, the origin of where most catfish campaigns originate from is Nigeria. In fact, it’s big business - well over USD 2bn in fact.

    Here’s a video courtesy of ABC that describes some of the techniques I have mentioned above - including the “scripted” mechanism.

    The catfish selects their target based on a number of factors – with social skills being top the list. A personality of a wet blanket is seldom effective, so the catfish must create an online persona (usually a Facebook profile) that is credible, and can be reinforced and intertwined with real life events. Such an example of this is a soldier serving in Afghanistan (there are many others, although this is an active campaign which is known to succeed). It would appear that the military lifestyle, the uniform, and the exciting stories are enough to entice a lonely individual looking for friendship and romance. A vital component of the scam is that the occupation of a soldier allows multiple periods where contact can be minimal for various “military” reasons that the catfish informs their target they cannot divulge for official secrecy reasons.

    This actually provides the perfect cover in order for the scam to progress. Time is required in order to plan the next stages of the campaign if it is to succeed. Another important element to remember is that the catfish needs to be mindful of time zones – you cannot be based in Nigeria and use the same timezone when you are supposedly stationed in Afghanistan, for example. The catfish would have collected enough intelligence about their target to remain one step ahead at all times. This typically involves research, with most of the required information sadly provided by social media. This includes dates and places of birth, interests, hobbies, and a myriad of other useful data that all adds up to the success of the campaign. The catfish uses this information to form trust with the target, and, coupled with the online persona created previously, the wheels are firmly attached. The con is on, so to speak. Using the data collected earlier, the catfish makes use of a variety of techniques in order to gain confidence and trust, with the social element being of utmost importance. Another key point for the catfish is the ability to engage in discussion, be articulate, and most of all, come across as being intelligent. Spelling is important, as is the ability to use grammar and punctuation correctly.

    Those of us who are “grammar snobs” can easily spot a deception in the form of a social media message or email owing to the notoriously poor grammar – usually always the result of English not being the primary language in use. Bearing in mind that most initial contact is via instant messaging, online chat, and email, it is important for the catfish to avoid suspicion and early detection - and in essence, remain “under the radar” at all times.

    How much effort is involved ?

    The amount of effort a catfish will put in generally depends on multiple factors. The sole aim of the perpetrator is financial, and any seasoned criminal will be looking to gain trust quickly, and will always have a story prepared. The point here is that the target needs to be a willing participant – nobody is holding a gun to their head, and they must be convinced of the integrity of their new online beau in order to part with money of their own volition. The previously constructed story needs to be consistent, and plausible if the campaign is to succeed. Once the target is engaged, the catfish is then in a position to effectively “groom” the individual, and uses the response and personality of the target to gauge when the next part of the plan should be executed. This in itself can be a fine art depending on the target. If they are intelligent, it may take a considerable amount of time and effort to reel them in. Before the catfish makes this investment, they have to be sure it will be worth it. But how ? Again, social media to the rescue. You’d be hard pressed to believe this, but money and the associated social lifestyle it provides and promotes is a key focal point of social networking, and by definition, “engineering”.

    If the target regularly posts about dining out, drinking, holidays, etc., then this is a clear indicator that they are worth perusing and exploiting, as they clearly have money to spend. Once the catfish has been able to convince the target of their sincerity, the deception then proceeds to the next level. Using the tried and tested “soldier based in another country, shortly completing his tour of duty, and leaving the army” scam, this provides an ideal mechanism to extort money from the target after they have been convinced that the individual they have been talking to wants to start a business, and needs capital etc in order to get started. Another well-known and successful ruse is to claim that they have a sick child (or children) that need urgent hospital care, and they don’t have the money to finance this. Another additional means of topping up the “fund” is the additional ruse that the soldier is not a citizen in the target country, and wants to be with his “new partner”. The by now besotted target agrees to pay for air fare, visa costs, and other associated permits in order to make their dream romance a reality – without realising that they are parting with a significant sum that carries absolutely no guarantee that it will be delivered. In fact, this could not be further from the truth. In a cruel twist, the catfish instructs their target to pay the funds into an account setup and accessible by the criminals involved, where it is collected without delay - often by a “mule” (more on this later).

    The target is completely unaware this has taken place, and only realises what has happened after their romance never materialises, the person they trusted never arrives, and a gaping hole has appeared in their finances as a result. They are now left with the inevitable emotional and financial damage this scam creates, and they must somehow come to terms with the impact – and the associated consequences. The ultimate twist of fate is that the victim transferred their money of their own free will – it wasn’t stolen from them, and, believe it or not, no crime has been committed based on this fact (it sounds crazy, and it is absolutely fraud - but that’s the law). You will also find yourself hard pressed to convince any bank that you have not acted negligently.

    Reducing the risk

    So how can you reduce the risk ? Whilst the below list should start with “…never talk to strangers…”, its not that simple. The below points are guidelines, but should be used along with your own judgement. - Never engage in discussions of a financial or personal nature with people you do not know. The internet is a dangerous place, and the anonymity it provides only makes this worse.

    If you join a dating agency, ensure that all requests for contact are fully screened by the agency themselves before being sent on to you. Most agencies now insist on home visits to new clients in order to combat this growing trend. Never agree to setup a new bank account, or transfer cash – this is a smoking gun, and should be avoided at all costs. Never allow the discussions to continue “off platform” – in other words, always use the dating agency’s systems so that any conversations are captured and recorded. This means no texts, no personal messaging systems, and strictly no contact over social media If someone sends you a friend request on Facebook, ask yourself basic questions, such as “do I actually know this person ?” and “why are they contacting me ?”. If you don’t know them, don’t accept. Try to avoid being tempted by emotional flattery. Whilst we all like praise and the feelgood factor it brings, don’t be reeled in by a catfish. This is one of the core weapons in their arsenal, and they will deploy it whenever necessary Remember – relationships have their foundations firmly rooted in trust. This has to be earned and established over the course of time – it’s not something that appears overnight.
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    Over the years, I’ve been exposed to a variety of industries - one of these is aerospace engineering and manufacturing. During my time in this industry, I picked up a wealth of experience around processing, manufacturing, treatments, inspection, and various others. Sheet metal work within the aircraft industry is fine-limit. We’re not talking about millimeters here - we’re talking about thousands of an inch, or “thou” to be more precise. Sounds Imperial, right ? Correct. This has been a standard for years, and hasn’t really changed. The same applies to sheet metal thickness, typically measured using SWG (sheet / wire gauge). For example, 16 SWG is actually 1.6mm thick or thereabouts and the only way you’d get a true reading is with either a Vernier or a Micrometer. For those now totally baffled, one mm is around 40 thou or 25.4 micrometers (μm). Can you imagine having to work to such a minute limit where the work you’ve submitted is 2 thou out of tolerance, and as a result, fails first off inspection ?

    Welcome to precision engineering. It’s not all tech and fine-limit though. In every industry, you have to start somewhere. And typically, in engineering, you’d start as an apprentice in the store room learning the trade and associated materials.

    Anyone familiar with engineering will know exactly what I mean when I use terms such as Gasparini, Amada, CNC, Bridgeport, guillotine, and Donkey Saw. Whilst the Donkey Saw sounds like animal cruelty, it’s actually an automated mechanical saw who’s job it is to cut tough material (such as S99 bar, which is hardened stainless steel) simulating the back and forth action manually performed with a hacksaw. Typically, a barrel of coolant liquid was connected to the saw and periodically deposited liquid into the blade to prevent it from overheating and snapping. Where am I going with all this ?

    Well, through my tenure in engineering, I started at the bottom as “the boy” - the one you’d send to the stores to get a plastic hammer, a long weight (wait), a bubble for a spirit level, sky hooks, and just about any other imaginary or pointless tool you could think of. It was part of the initiation ceremony - and the learning process.

    One other extremely dull task was to cut “blanks’’ in the store room from 8’ X 4’ sheets of CRS (cold rolled steel) or L166 (1.6mm aerospace grade aluminium, poly coated on both sides). These would then be used to make parts according to the drawing and spec you had, or could be for tooling purposes. My particular “job” (if you could call it that) in this case was to press the footswitch to activate the guillotine blade after the sheet was placed into the guide. The problem is that after about 50 or so blanks, you only hear the trigger word requiring you to “react”. In this case, that particular word was “right”. This meant that the old guy I was working with had placed the sheet, and was ready for me to kick the switch to activate the guillotine. All very high tech and vitally important - not.

    And so, here it is. Jim walks into the store room where we’re cutting blanks, and asks George if he’d like coffee. After 10 minutes, Jim returns with a tray of drinks and shouts “George, coffee!”. George, fiddling with the guillotine guide responds with “right”…. See if you can guess the rest…

    George went as white as a sheet and almost fainted as the guillotine blade narrowly missed his fingers. It took more than one coffee laden with sugar to put the colour back into his cheeks and restore his ailing blood sugar level.

    The good news is that George finally retired with all his fingers intact, and I eventually progressed through the shop floor and learned a trade.

    The purpose of this post ? In an ever changing and evolving security environment, have your wits about you at all times. It’s not only your organisation’s information security, but clients who have entrusted you as a custodian of their information to keep it safe and prevent unauthorised access. Information Security is a 101 rule to be adhered to at all times - regardless of how experienced you think you are. Complacency is at the heart of most mistakes. By taking a more pragmatic approach, that risk is greatly reduced.

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    Well, just remember - No matter where ya’ go, there you are. 🏇 🐎 🐴