One evening last week I clicked on “Click here to chat” just out of curiosity. I don’t know if there was a fanfare of trumpets (I keep my sound off) or there was an announcement such as “Julie Dawn has entered the building” etc, but all heads turned around and I could see I was being addressed by those who were already in the chat room. I think I have mentioned before that this is the first forum I have ever joined. I have never been in a chat room before and quite frankly I could not see where to post a reply. After a few moments I hit the “close” button in the top right corner. I had no wish to appear ill-mannered by ignoring those who were addressing me in the chat room. I have since been back into the chat room when no one else was in there and found out how to post comments. The difference in contrast between the curser and the background, plus the curser is so small that I could not see it on that first visit.
I know some may think I’m somewhat naïve with regard to surfing the internet and I will be the first to agree. I have spent the past 40 odd years in a rather parochial environment designing and building production lines, and the past 20 odd years programming the PLC systems that control those production lines. In order to maintain the highest security from viruses etc. I would not allow any of the pc’s used as terminals for programming PLC’s to be connected to the internet. The office pc’s of course were connected to the company network through which access to the internet is available. Naturally, to comply with company policy, restrictions on what sites could be accessed were in place. (There are whole areas of the internet that I have no experience off, but at least my digital thumb print is very small). This restriction could sometimes lead to problems, for example on one occasion I wished to research the suitability to the application and purchase industrial vibrators, and vibration sensors (accelerometers), but found I could not access any vibrator sites at all. (I’m sure you can work out why). When I made a request to the IT manager for access he asked “which site do you wish to access?” Of course at that early stage in my research I didn’t have a clue, so I did the research on my home ancient computer with dial up connection running W95.
The trend today is to interface PLC’s to the internet so that monitoring and diagnosis of problems may be performed remotely. I have always been uneasy about opening the door to possible compromise of several million pounds worth of production plant and would not implement such a practice on my watch. I am un-ashamedably a belt and braces person, (suspenders) to some.
In support of my argument on this point albeit on a larger scale, check out some of the links below:
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE64B5T420100512 U.S. struggles to ward off evolving cyber threat
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11528371 UK infrastructure faces cyber threat, says GCHQ chief
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11545040 define rules of cyber war
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11531657 two million US pc’s infected
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8010729.stm Botnet 'ensnares government PCs'
We have an expression around here, “I’m not showing my a*s* in Lewis’s window on Saturday morning”. In others words I’m not getting caught with my pants down. (I haven’t used this expression for some time meanwhile Lewis’s department store has closed for the last time, another expression obsolete)!
