Royal Friday

TGIF.

The whole Royal Wedding thing is almost over.  I think the party’s about to start for the newlyweds somewhere in London, and here I am in sunny Austin, Texas, wishing it was a bank holiday here in the U.S. as well.

If you missed all the action, fear not.  Fortunately, I caught the highlights on the DVR (thank God for technology), and no matter how hard hearted you might be, it was a sweet and beautiful ceremony, and all the pomp and circumstance, and the fact that it went off without a hitch (or was that, with a hitch), made it all that more fun.

Not so much fun, however, has been the horrors of the destruction wrought by all those tornadoes here in the American South.  Fortunately, I’ve never experienced a tornado firsthand, but I have relatives who have, and I’ve certainly come close.

I’m most saddened by the reports of so many people killed or injured, and of course, by the massive destruction the storms have wrought.

For those of you who may have been asking yourselves the question, “How can I help?,” this link from Good provides a few answers.  It provides opportunities to contribute via the United Way, Feeding America, the American Red Cross, and even several local churches.

Remember, if you’re in the area, lots of folks are also going to need food and clothing, many having lost everything in the storms.

It seems trivial to transition from the horrible storms to technology, but often the two are tied one to the other, and Amazon has certainly experienced some stormy weather of its own over the past week.

Following up on last Friday’s post about the ups and downs of the cloud, Amazon has now published a summary of its EC2 and Amazon RDS disruption from last week.  The statement includes a thorough forensic analysis of what went wrong, as well as an apology.  At 5,600+ words, that’s a whole lot of explanation.

Also with some explaining to do, Sony, whose PlayStation network was hacked last week and the hackers for which are apparently trying to sell off customer credit card lists from the attack for upwards of $100,000, so reports the New York Times Bits blog.

This was one of the largest data breaches ever, and also led to the outage of the PlayStation Network for nearly a week.  The story goes on to report that the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s San Diego office is helping Sony with its inquiry into the hacking incident.

Probably not a bad idea to have the Feds helping where they can, as Sony faces global legal action over the data theft, suggests Reuters.  The breakdown has “infuriated” gamers, and Sony stock saw a nearly 5 percent decline in Tokyo yesterday.

Just in case anyone was wondering about the dramatic, and often negative, bottom line impact security breaches can have.

Me, I’m all about actionable intelligence.

If such incidences have you thinking about your own security situation, take this security self-assessment  and see what steps your company might need to take to strengthen its own security posture.

Meanwhile, winding down, and back to the bright side of life, for those of you in the U.K., here’s wishing you a nice long banking holiday weekend. ‘

Whether you’re in the royal wedding mode or not, it’s gotta be nice to have some down time to spend with family and friends.

Particularly after this week.