Friday, February 24, 2017

Sit Ye Down and Mardle...

It Is Time For Some Serious
Conflabs At The Mardling Seat.
by Nick Ashton, CEO/CIO, CommSmart Global Group

When was the last time you sat down and had a good old serious discussion? No holding back, laying it all on the table on how you feel, when was it?  

Really it is that long!

You need a good old Mardle!  I lived in Norfolk, England some many moons ago and one village, had a Mardling Seat, I think it was Ludham or Mundesley, where locals would go, sit and when joined by others, discussed the problems of the world.  It was like getting it off your chest and expressing how you really felt.  The way people are morons or governments were a donkey's rear ends.  The real down to earth things that need to be talked about.  The whole silly problems of the world have been argued, discussed and solved on the now many Mardling Seats of Norfolk, England.

You need a Mardling Seat in your city, where you can go and share with a small group of four or five, the daily rigmarole of life and why we have to change now, or all be swallowed up by the insanity of deception.

Tell you what, I will start and you can follow.  

So Sit Ye Down and Mardle...

To the point, this city, any city is going to hell in a hand basket!  Once upon a time, the inner city problems were just that, in the center of the city and only a few blocks of problems.  It was contained and dealt with according.  Now, it stretches for tens, if not hundreds of miles and never seems to end.  The problems are more than a blight, they are a deep penetrating stain on all of us alike.

Sweeping the issues under the carpet only causes a lump in the carpet and we are all tripping over it, basically ignoring the impending doom.  City leaders, politicians, business leaders and down to earth citizens have tripped and done nothing for too long!

Where is the PrideRespect, and Trust in us all?  
  • Can it be clawed back?  
  • Can we pick up the pieces and change for the better?  
  • Do we just keep kicking the can down the road to another neighborhood and make it their problem?
Passing law after law, making, even more, laws regarding the laws already on the books, it is insanity extraordinaire!

PreachersPoliticians, and Ego-Centered Businessmen are not what is needed or required.  It is common folks who CareConsider and Challenge the broken social system that are the only ones who, as a cohesive team, can and will make the difference.  Importantly they can organize in a spirited way.  

I suppose my thoughts go back to World War II and the bombing of London and how from the Royals down, everyone fought for the pride from within, to overcome the adversity and be able to lift themselves from the rubble of tragedy.

Folks, this is worse than the days of bombs and bullets from an outside enemy, it is attacking us all from within.  The ignorance is standing on the horizon looking down on the commotion, confusion and sheer desperation that is crying from within our hearts and souls.  

Who in their right mind thought that Detroit would fall?

The leadership is broken on all sides and like Lemmings, we are being lead to fall or be pushed over a cliff, committing social suicide.  

Hope left decades ago and with heaviness we drag our sorry arses through the day, lying to ourselves that it will be sorted out in the end.  People pop pills to sleep, wake up, work and be happy.  Trying to forget that outside their four walls they call home if they are lucky to have a home, is a battlefield of despair.  Dead, dying and confused people who really have nowhere to go.  A mindless spiral of dead-end democracy.

Which side of the insanity are you and I really on?  

There is a path out of this diabolical mess and it will take a simple yes or no.

Which is?

It is not religion, unions or some cult or sect, it is the pure heartfelt act of doing something for yourself, others and a possible future of prosperity.  

It is about caring...

I simply repeat an earlier statement:

Where is the PrideRespect, and Trust in us all?  
  • Can it be clawed back?  
  • Can we pick up the pieces and change for the better?  
  • Do we just keep kicking the can down the road to another neighborhood and make it their problem?

Your Turn!

So Sit Ye Down and Mardle...



Copyright 2017

Privacy - The Hitchhikers Guide To The Viral Galaxy Or Who Is Stealing My Data And Why…

The Hitchhikers Guide To The Viral Galaxy
Or Who Is Stealing My data And Why…
By Nick Ashton, CEO/CTO, CommSmart Global Group 

All of our lives are surrounded by digital devices, you cannot miss or avoid them.  Each of us carries some form of smart device or computer every moment of the day, they have encircled us in an electronic cage and control us in ways we believe is them, not us.

I personally go back to the Middle Ages of computers, 1976, it was then we had Computer-Mart in England and were the first to bring the micro-computer to the business masses who saw the light and had the money to invest in this extremely new technology.  All software had to be written, there were no off the shelf programming or an app for that!  It was a different time and a different pace that we all walked back then.

In 1982/84 I was President, Commercial Data Banks, the first ever, what we call today as an email company.  Yes, the first and a very slow system that served Washington D.C. and the politicians.  We used Texas Instrument dumb terminals and a 300 baud telephone line.  Think where we have come today!
To think, thirty plus years ago since I was introduced to computers, programming and the manufacture of the Oriel 2000 which was our first and a great success in microcomputer creation.  No one had concerns about people wanting to do harm or steal your data or personal information.

Every single device is an access portal, an open gate for a hacker to enter and just like life, it is vulnerable because of humans and their insatiable desires for information.  Yes, you, you leave the door unlocked and allow these morons to steal your data and enter any other connection you make thereafter. 

The whole ability of access that the consumer requests and requires is causing the issues and access for the criminals to steal from us all.  Just like we leave doors ajar, water boiling in a pot on stove, take our eye off our children for a mire second or leave the keys in the car with the engine running, whilst you run inside, we are at fault and it is the human factor that is causing the meltdown in criminality on the Internet.

This can be stopped dead in its tracks and we shall guide you in the right direction and no, this is not some hair brain idea, it is a fact and working worldwide successfully.  Before we go further, let us examine the issues in the corporate and retail world.

Trusted Remedy protects your online community’s data-in-motion against Man-in-the-Middle and Phishing attacks. Based on our patented automated distribution for short-lived client certificates, your users transfer data to your servers and the Cloud from their Trusted Remedy identified trusted devices using state-of-the-art daily changing encryption keys. All without significant administrative overhead for your Administration.  

In fact, it is BYOD (Bring Your Own Devices), yes the majority of devices will work with Trusted Remedy.

Man-in-the-Middle intrusions, and highly sensitive data transmission requirements:

Trusted Remedy is designed from the ground up to protect against Man-in-the-Middle intrusions without becoming a tough nut to crack in regard to client usage or management.   We have made it easy for top management down to understand the precise operation without having to have a degree in computer science or the IT department to explain in their technical terms.

Man-in-the-Middle is considered one of or even the toughest intrusions to defend against. It is frequently used by technologically advanced malicious parties such as black-hat hackers and rogue states to obtain digitally transmitted sensitive information. As in the retail intrusions just experienced by millions of US shoppers.

With Trusted Remedy creating client certificates on its own, or your existing Certificate Authority, you can be certain no third party can potentially fake your certificate authority.

Trusted Remedy uses an innovative secure communication channel over any untrusted Internet connection, over which it provides your user with a short lived client side certificate in a fully automated secure manner. The corresponding key-pair strength ranges from 2048 up to 4096 bit RSA encryption and changes with each renewed certificate.

With the client certificate being totally transparent to the end-user, a secure Man-in-the-Middle intrusion proof connection can be established using standard server configurations.

Using Trusted Remedy you can be certain that your sensitive data is being sent in the most secure possible manner between the client and server and vice versa. No matter if the data relates to privacy sensitive information such as medical, financial, corporate secrets, intellectual property, and criminal proceedings.

Phishing intrusions, and Multi-Factor Authentication issues

Trusted Remedy is capable of using any form of authentication as embraced by the company, your company using Trusted Remedy, and leveraging that authentication with trusted client device recognition. You can even choose to simply identify a device based on its name and hardware characteristics allowing trusted devices to connect to your network or cloud environment.

As a result, your users can only authenticate from devices set as 'trusted' based on their hardware characteristics. Trusted Remedy can be used with at least 17 different hardware identifiers, making each device truly unique. KeyTalk allows for up to 10 different 'trusted' devices per user, per authentication source and allows for unlimited authentication sources to be connected.

Phishing is, of course, social engineering and very hard to protect against. Authentication details obtained through Phishing can be protected against abuse by malicious third parties using Trusted Remedy's optional Multi-Factor Authentication layer based on our trusted client device identification.

Are interoperability and federated access a pain?

Do you need multiple geographically located departments to securely access the same information resources? Would you require multiple companies or agencies to securely share sensitive information?

Simply setup Trusted Remedy to securely connect to an authentication source trusted by the target department, company or agency you wish to collaborate with. Next, have Trusted Remedy issue them with a short-lived client certificate for highly secure access purposes to target a network or cloud source.

Authorization rights can be set on most servers and server-applications based on the credentials in the 'issued' client certificate. Trusted Remedy allows you to seamlessly map certificate fields to a database field or LDAP/AD attribute, making the addition of authorization rules very easy.

Is network integration hard?

Companies who are dealing with mergers and acquisitions know this pain. After the deal is done, you end up with 2 or more network environments using different, frequently incompatible network components and different authentication mechanisms. IT & Operations generally end up with a big configuration puzzle to solve which usually takes months while the business waits to be able to access the resources in both network environments which can negatively impacting the state of 'business as usual'.

Trusted Remedy provides end-users seamlessly with X.509v3 client certificates. This is the standard since 1988 and understood by all network components.

Configure Trusted Remedy to connect as the central hub between different authentication sources of the networks. Your users will continue to use their known authentication solution (optionally leveraged with our trusted hardware recognition) and based on the obtained client certificate granting them access to the different network environments.

Some of our testimonial customers managed to reduce network integration times after mergers and acquisitions from 6-9 months to less than a week.

My existing PKI is a pain to manage!

Companies who choose a Public Key Infrastructure usually do so for security reasons.

A full blown PKI is simply a bridge too far for some companies. The level of security is still required.

Trusted Remedy fills this gap between full blown PKI and regular multi-factor authentication by providing short lived certificates. Its similar technology compared to PKI, but without the huge overhead created by user certificate issuance, management and revocation lists.

Trusted Remedy's certificates are obtained based on any form of authentication without the user even needing to know that they use client certificates.

As a result there is no administration needed to keep track of revocation lists. With Trusted Remedy being automated, working with your existing authentication solution such as LDAP/AD or RADIUS based tokens, there is no requirement for management on Trusted Remedy since it doesn't create new data other than log files.

My payment wall is being circumvented and account sharing is getting out of hand

Businesses who use payment walls all know this problem: The vendor's offer of their valuable content behind the payment wall gets maliciously accessed through users simply sharing their paid accounts with others.

Most of these businesses put up some defenses by including browser-based device recognition or a simple MAC or IP address based pinning. These are unfortunately all relatively easy to circumvent.

Trusted Remedy allows for the binding of up to 10 unique devices based on many more hardware characteristics with the user account. As such, sharing becomes nearly impossible. This allows for the payment wall to become optimally effective and resulting in more revenue.

This should give some insight on why Trusted Remedy is your only solution in this unsociable world.  

CEO’s, Presidents, Chairman, protect what you have built, you and your customers deserve Trusted Remedy!  

If not... it will cost you more than you know...

WE are in the NOW and KEEP YOU; in the KNOW…


Telephone: +1 (330) 366.6860
Email: info@commsmart-global.com
copyright 2017


Thursday, February 23, 2017

Let Us Show the Continuum of Missed Communications or (Fake News) Since the 1700's & Why We Are Worse Off Today!

Let Us Show the Continuum of
Missed Communications or 
(Fake News) Since the 1700's
& Why We Are Worse Off Today!
by Nicholas Ashton, CEO/CIO, CommSmart Global Group - Virtual Crime Center

You know that our passion is law and law enforcement and how we must stabilize the downward spiral of events that are fueled by misinformation, rumors, and downright lies spread innocently and maliciously.

The words 'Fake News' are now front and center!  

They always have been!

Today it is manipulation, for whatever the diabolical personal gain it entails. Simply it is lies and more lies, changed stories for an advantage and particular by those that wish to undermine authority.

Back in the 1700's, the reasoning was simple, there were no technological abilities, no wristwatch, so the time was called out every hour and that 'all's well', we called it out, no written word, such as a regular newspaper.  

Even in 1860, the election of Lincoln took months for the whole country to know he was the next Present of the United States.  Communications were so antiquated, it was unreal.

The Industrial Revolution opened so many doors that we have sadly closed today and are suffering because of that action of slamming the door and lazily utilizing technology only.

So why today do we still have terrible communications?  Simple, hiding behind technology, 140 characters and human traits of undermining or bullying have increased exponentially.

We like to explain why communications from the 1800's and specifically Sir Robert Peel and his Nine Peelian Principles is more important than ever.

We know the 10th Peelian Principle, Technology & Digital Policing is so important and why when used with the other nine, it makes absolute sense to save our society from this depressed path we are on.

Stay tuned and see how we can bring back Trust & Respect to our communities, which police officers are an integral part of.

The tide can and will be turned and importantly, you are a major part of that energy to make this happen!




Telephone: +1 (330) 366.6860

copyright 2016



Monday, February 20, 2017

Data Storage – Secure or a Lost Cause? - Swamp, Lake, Landfill, or Communication Nightmare? - Example: National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS)


Data Storage – Secure or a Lost Cause?
Swamp, Lake, Landfill, or Communication Nightmare?
Example: National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS)

Today’s data flow is so massive and fast, that most of the data is a lost cause.  Why would you not fully understand the information contained as it passes before your eyes?

No company can continue in this manner placing billions of pieces of physical information/data in storage which has not been sorted, examined and collated upon receipt.  Statistics that are created from this silo stored information is always so out of date, it is next to useless, especially crime data ‘live’ from the streets.

A perfect example of this problem of collection and what to do with it is the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), an incident-based reporting system for crimes known to the police. For each crime incident coming to the attention of law enforcement, a variety of data is collected about the incident.

Here lies the crux of the issue it is what is actually collected or failed to be collected, such as GPS location or even a physical address.

The data includes the nature and types of specific offenses in the incident, characteristics of the victim(s) and offender(s), types and value of property stolen and recovered, and characteristics of persons arrested in connection with a crime incident.

Phenomenal, if it was being used immediately and not placed in a data silo or a digital landfill, only to be accessed at year end, analyzed and a statistical report then created after months and months, then released to the agencies. 

Too late, wasted expense and the crime, criminal and opportunities have long gone.  No crime is ever solved with digital data never exposed or immediately available for crime analysts or street level officers, that is where we make the difference!

I know we sound like we are against NIBRS, we are not! We have an opportunity to enhance.

CommSmart Global Group, a LexisNexis Risk Solutions Partner, know more about data than you can imagine, it is our business, our daily bread!

Conversing with CommSmart Global Group, either face to face or electronically will demonstration in one fell swoop, our proven capabilities and success. What is so important is, we do not know it all and nor do you, we have something in common already, concerns.  

Together, we will achieve the targets, goals, and aspirations to succeed for the betterment of the agency and importantly, the community.

LexisNexis, our Risk Solutions Partner is no small company, part of the RELX Group which is a world-leading provider of information and analytics for professional and business customers across industries.

Helping scientists make new discoveries, lawyers win cases, doctors save lives and insurance companies offer customers lower prices. We save taxpayers and consumers money by preventing fraud and help executives forge commercial relationships with their clients.

Our goal is to help our customers make better decisions, get better results and be more productive. We do this by leveraging a deep understanding of our customers to create innovative solutions which combine content and data with analytics and technology in global platforms. These solutions often account for about 1% of our customers’ total cost base but can have a significant and positive impact on the economics of the remaining 99%.

The Group serves customers in more than 180 countries and has offices in about 40 countries. It employs approximately 30,000 people of whom half are in North America.

CommSmart Global Group was chosen as a partner to serve law enforcement globally because of our full understanding of world events and street smart law enforcement procedures, failures and demanded changes in a major transformational time.

The ability to collect information by all states is a picture of both success and failure. Some, like Iowa, are excellent in the collection, but where does it go and how are you using in the NOW?  NOW, immediacy is the priority and that is we can assist you with the growth of the NIBRS objective, creating extreme immediate value for the overall grant investments being offered by NIBRS.

We just need to simply communicate and converse on level terms, which is all we ask.

WE ARE IN THE NOW AND KEEP YOU; IN THE KNOW…

For more information, please converse with us via telephone or an email. 

Contact Us
Located Globally in Europe, U.K. & USA
U.S. Offices:
Ohio:  +1 (330) 366.6860
Iowa: +1 (515) 518.0190
U.K.:   +44 702 405 9420
Twitter: “posiqr”

                                        
COPYRIGHT 2017