UK.gov lobs another fistful of change at SME infosec nightmares

Re: Politicians and Technology - water & oil

The German way seems to be that every cabinet minister has a degree in whatever his or her position entails. I'm not sure how exactly that happens but on the face of it it seems to be a good idea, unless there are political schools which churn out hundreds of prospective trade ministers or are they just worthless honorary degrees.

Re: Politicians and Technology - water & oil

When are these politicians going to learn that they are not experts

They'll learn no such thing. They'll just tell the media that they knew it all along, South Today will make a big fuss about how hard $pol is working for all of us :-(

Vic.

Re: It never usually goes to the SMEs...

...but at least it will be a value-for-money press release by historical standards.

Quite. I did a photo call a few years ago where some local funding body was bunging £5000 at a tech skills training centre for school leavers. Normally this would have entailed a modest quantity of samosas or sandwiches "to encourage attendance" from a local cafe, paid for, naturally from the aforementioned grant. But in this case a junior minister (William Hague if I recall) was gracing the occasion, so they threw the kitchen sink at it and got the catering from a flash new local deli, who turned up with a vanload of fine food, including a couple of sides exotic looking salmon. All to feed 100 attendees max, mostly public sector employees, local politicians and a few press which included me. I was told later the bill was £2000, and those clearing up carted home enough for a few rather plump meals each. Irony was, the trainees funding ended up 60 percent of the original grant, but only two carefully selected examples were invited to mix with the 'dignitaries' and get a crack at the food.

I used to do a few of those a week, most paid from the public purse, but this was the only one I found out the costs, although a fair few were equally extravagant. Draw your own conclusions about value for money.

Re: It never usually goes to the SMEs...

Probably wouldn't achieve much even if spent wisely. 4.9 million SMEs. 82p each.

Re: "Getting their computers seized as evidence"

How would you get that done with skiddies in other countries, pray tell ?

Not to rain on your parade, I would dearly like to see such an initiative, but the fact remains that it is currently impossible to legally attain a miscreant if he is not operating in your own country - and that is not typically the case since it would appear that about 75% of such activity is managed either from the US or from China (I'm sure you can throw Russia in the pot too).

So you'll be doing all that hard detective work and, nine times out of ten, you'll hit the brick wall of "oh, he's operating from outside the country, well that's it then, next case...".

It's quite discouraging, really.