Today I found a small article in my daily RSS feeds titled "Miracle Battery-Saver App Harvests Email Addresses for Spamming". The article is a brief analysis of a malicious application that tricks the user by pretending to do something great for saving his/her mobile phone battery life.
It immediately raised a foundational question in my mind: Why do people still trust those type of miracle offers, even clicking on "allow" to the application's permission request to read the user's contacts data (in order to acquire the personal data) and the second permission asks to access the Internet (in order to upload the personal data)?

Theoretically, Spam and its associated malicious code should be extinct already, because every computer user should be aware more or less that this bad stuff exist, and should be suspicious...

The Cloud Services market is already a big battlefield. As Forrester forecasts that the global market for cloud computing will grow from $40.7 billion in 2011 to more than $241 billion in 2020, more and more companies are entering this market in order to get a BIG piece of the cake.

Of course Cloud represents a significant opportunity for Telcos and Communications Service Providers (CSPs) as well. Their traditional voice revenue is flat or even declining for sometime and cloud services offered to their customers can promise a turnaround. Indeed CSPs are in a superb position to add cloud services to their existing portfolio. Their huge customer base, the IT infrastructure based on data centers, customer care centers and billing systems, their networks and a great services roadmap starting from their traditional communication business provide an excellent starting point. One of their biggest advantages is the trust they have built in the past with strong Service Level...

The more I'm on the road meeting with customers, partners and industry colleagues, the more I'm convinced we've come to a crossroads, where traditional client server IT is now finally giving way to a more flexible and accessible information-driven alternative.

This may be familiar to many already; however there’s no doubt that a sea change is taking place in the conversations on this subject from a year ago compared with where we are today. The underpinnings of that change are not entirely driven by technology but by the world of the Digital Native. The Digital Native was born into a world of Internet, readily available access to all information and having an "always connected" lens on the world. The Digital Native uses his or her social networks to communicate, is open about it, and only engages with the enterprise if enabled to interact in this relatively new form. 

Why, you might think is this relevant to a discussion...

Late January 2012, the EU Commission presented the first proposal of a comprehensive reform of the existing EU Data Protection Directive. No doubt, the current Data Protection Directive requires more than just a slight refreshment, it requires a significant re-design. It has been established in 1995, when less than 1% of the EU population used the Internet. Now 17 years later we are faced with a globally connected world with all its benefits and challenges.

The new proposal has the ambitious goal to harmonise the patchwork of different laws in force across the EU countries. It is complex and large, and is just the beginning of the process to enact new rules changing the existing data protection regime, which will likely take two years from now, or even more.

Not just since the date of presenting the proposal but even started before, there is an ongoing discussion about how...