Enterprise Risk Management Israel data + Google cloud = STUPIDITY

ISRAEL JUST MADE A DEAL WITH Amazon and Google to store all ministries data in a “cloud.” ^{1, 2, 3}

As an Enterprise Risk Management practitioner I am against commercial “cloud” storage, especially when the”cloud” is owned by someone else. The data in the cloud is at risk: the vendor could fail, the vendor’s security may be lax; the vendor may simply hold the data for ransom.

The REAL concern for this scrivener about Israel using any commercial “cloud” — but especially Google’s — is the number of anti-Israel employees at all levels at Google ^{4, 5, 6} — who might use their access to share Israel's data with others of their ilk?

 

ACCORDING TO NEWS stories,

Israel has selected Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud as the winners of a $1 billion-plus project to deliver a public cloud infrastructure for the country’s government ministries and defense forces.

AWS and Google edged out IBM, Microsoft and Oracle in the bidding for the “Project Nimbus” contract and will develop cloud data center sites within Israel under an initial 4 billion-shekel investment -- the equivalent of $1.22 billion, Reuters reported today, citing an announcement from Israel’s finance ministry. The cloud sites will keep the government and military data within Israel’s borders to adhere to strict data security regulations, the report said. ¹

Anti-Semite heads Diversity team

Google is the company that named Kamau Bobb, global lead for diversity strategy and research in 2018. Apparently Google failed to google it’s employee.

Bobb wrote in a now-deleted 2007 blog post that if he were Jewish, he “would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself,” and referred to Jews’ “increasing insensitivity to the suffering (of) others.”⁷

According to a Google puff piece,

"These writings are unquestionably hurtful. The author acknowledges this and has apologised. He will no longer be part of our diversity team... and will focus on his Stem [science, technology, engineering and maths] work.” ⁸

Secure data regs?

Amazon and Google are to “adhere to strict data security regulations.”

If U.S. government data on U.S. government computers can be hacked, imagine how easy it will be for someone from inside Google (or Amazon) to access Israeli data in the “cloud.”

Right: Al Capp's Joe Bfstplk and his cloud

Data security regulations are, as Napoleon is alleged to have said about treaties, “just a piece of paper.”

Who is going to enforce the regulations? Who will assure that the BDSers inside Google — and if news reports are true, there are several hundred BDSers at Google HQ alone ^{4, 5, 6} — abide by Israel's "strict data security regulations?”

Is anyone foolish enough to think that even in Israel there are no anti-Israel Jews (and non-Jews)?

Is Israel so technologically backward that it must job out “cloud” services to vendors over which it has little or no “absolute” control?

Once data is in the “cloud,” the data’s owner no longer has control of the data and who accesses the data, regardless of “ strict data security regulations”.

”Civilian” data also at risk

All Israeli adult citizens have a national ID number, similar to Social Security in the United States.

Almost everything an Israeli citizen does — buy a home, a car, get a loan, see a doctor, go to the hospital, go to school — is linked to that ID number.

Not only does the number identify an individual, it also identifies members of the person’s family: spouse, children.

How can I trust anyone with my data? I don’t.

Why should Israel trust anyone with its general information, let alone military secrets.

There are enough Israeli — Jewish and non-Jewish — “Kim” Philby’s ⁹ who gladly will steal and share state (and personal) secrets for money or belief that making it easier to access by renting space from Google, in particular, borders not only on “foolish,” but, IMO, “unmitigated stupidity.”

Call me paranoid, but as an Enterprise Risk Management practitioner, I don’t trust “clouds.” If I cannot control access to my data, that data won’t be mine for long.

Final thought We all learned in elementary school that clouds are water vapor. Water is sent heavenward by heat (evaporation). What goes up, must come down. Where is goes up and where it comes down may be distant from one another.

Likewise data to the cloud.

I send data to the cloud and someone else — perhaps someone who should not have access to my data — beings it down.

A cloud is permeable; it leaks.

That’s not a good thing for secrets.

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Sources

1. CRN: https://tinyurl.com/b2z4ceey **

2. Globes: https://tinyurl.com/9jjakx

3. Cloudtech: https://tinyurl.com/3sv46fwp

4. The Verge: https://tinyurl.com/yye35ss5

5. Israel HaYom: https://tinyurl.com/pcrxmu8k

6. DCD: https://tinyurl.com/34dwcud3

7. Forbes: https://tinyurl.com/vfs3cs

8. BBC: https://tinyurl.com/74xzp9et

9. "Kim" Philby: https://tinyurl.com/53r2wajh

 

 

 

 

 

PLAGIARISM is the act of appropriating the literary composition of another, or parts or passages of his writings, or the ideas or language of the same, and passing them off as the product of one’s own mind.

Truth is an absolute defense to defamation. Defamation is a false statement of fact. If the statement was accurate, then by definition it wasn’t defamatory.

Web sites (URLs) beginning https://tinyurl.com/ are generated by the free Tiny URL utility and reduce lengthy URLs to manageable size.

 

Comment on Cloud

Opuscula Forbidden words

NO, VIRGINIA, THIS IS NOT ABOUT “POLITICAL CORRECTNESS.”

It is about trademarks and what the trademark holders do to protect the mark.

ASPIRIN used to be a trademark. It is not a trademark any more.

What do you call a big yellow earth mover? When I worked for newspapers, if I called that earth mover a “Cat” or “Caterpillar” I might get a letter from Peoria IL that (a) Cat and Caterpillar are registered trademarks, (b) Caterpillar makes more than “just” tracked earth moving machines (see http://tinyurl.com/y7scxr2l), and although probably NOT mentioned in the letter, that (c) just because the earth moving machine was on tracks and was yellow does not necessarily mean it was a Caterpillar product.

If a writer wrote “catterpillar” with a lower case (small) “c,” the writer best be writing about a creepy-crawly.

All soft drinks are not Coke.

Call it a “soft drink” or “soda,” but calling a non-Coca-Cola drink a “coke” — or even a “Coke” with a capital “C” — is liable to get someone in Atlanta GA to compose a message explaining that Coke and Coca-Cola are registered trademarks and not to be used generically.

Some folks stick things together with “scotch tape.” Publish that and someone, possibly a lawyer, will let you know that it is “Scotch brand” cellophane tape from 3M and that it is a closely guarded trademark.

What do you call decaffeinated coffee? Many people simply ask for a “sanka.”

It’s OK to SAY “sanka,” but if it is written out, it is “Sanka” with capital “S.”

The coffee may not keep anyone awake at night, but a letter from the company might. Sanka, incidentally,was “born” in Germany but got its name in France where it was “sans caféine” (information from Wikipedia). Sanka, now owned by KraftHeinz Food Service, no longer demands that the name “Sanka” be followed by “Brand.”

What’s the big deal?

The big deal is trademark protection.

The thing that prompted this piece was an article on school security. (See School safety: Did anyone ask Risk professional? elsewhere on this site.)

I was about to write “taser,” but thinking of Cat , Coke, Scotch, and Sanka I thought it wise to check out the word.

It turns out that TASER

(a) stands for Thomas A. Swift's Electric Rifle
(b) is a registered trademark of Axon, nee’ Taser International, which insists that the Taser (with a capital “T”) is not a “generic stun gun.”

According to Business Insider (http://tinyurl.com/y9unsu54), there are more than 31 trademarked names that have become “household” words, words that have, through common usage and modification (e.g., Google to “googled” and “Xerox” to “xeroxed”) lost their value as trademarks. It’s an article worth reading.

As long as the owners of these trademarked names continue to send out communications advising people who “misuse” the name, the owners maintain some standing in court should the communication fail to correct the problem.

It may be a losing battle for the trademark owner, but it can be an expensive win for the writer.

If in doubt, use a search engine to check (but do not “google”) if the term is trademarked.

One final thought and credit where it is due: the “tinyurl” in the links used on this site is a trademark of TinyURL, Inc.

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PLAGIARISM is the act of appropriating the literary composition of another, or parts or passages of his writings, or the ideas or language of the same, and passing them off as the product of one’s own mind.

Truth is an absolute defense to defamation. Defamation is a false statement of fact. If the statement was accurate, then by definition it wasn’t defamatory.

BCPLANNER: Comments on (Trademarks)