Comments for Practicing Law in the 21st Century-A Law & Technology Blog

Comment on The evolution of intermedia by Saqib Ali

Saqib Ali — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 15:28:47 +0000

Nicole, I have to disagree. As you alluded to in your blog post, the word inter has a negative connotation. Merriam Webster defines it as “to deposit (a dead body) in the earth or in a tomb”. With the social media, we are not really getting rid of the media, just making it bi-directional i.e. more social. Why not use the phrase emergent media? Saqib P.S. Also check out Prof. McAfee’s blog post titled The S Word

Comment on Print media must evolve by Thorne

Thorne — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 22:41:25 +0000

The writing’s on the . . . on the . . . .

Comment on Change is good by Saqib Ali

Saqib Ali — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 21:51:39 +0000

Excellent post!

I suppose the nay sayers (i.e. the people opposing emerging technologies) made similar arguments when the world moved from paper based memos to email for official use. The memos were filed in a in a locked filing cabinet. And any type of tampering was fairly evident. But once we moved electronic mail, there was no locked metal filing cabinet. Everything resided on a user’s PC, which could be infested with malware and rootkits. How do you know that some rootkit was not modifying or deleting the user’s emails?

The rules of investigation and evidence collection changed with the introduction of email, and same will happen when we move to other emerging technologies for communication and collaboration.

Things change.

Having said this, instead of changing attitudes, we need to influence the right attitude about emerging technologies.

Comment on Change is good by Divorce Solicitor Liverpool

Divorce Solicitor Liverpool — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 17:13:21 +0000

I think you hit the nail on the head there- ‘Change is good’ and getting people to realise it can be difficult at times.

Comment on Organize your law practice, and your life, online by Ronald

Ronald — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 10:26:21 +0000

HourDoc is tool for Time Tracking. http://www.HourDoc.com is right treatment for time and labor management processes has to be an easy-to-administer and affordable solution for Freelancers, supervisors, employees and HR and payroll managers. They offer free application to companies less than 50 employees.

Comment on Is cloud computing really less secure than the status quo? by thecybergeezer

thecybergeezer — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 00:49:38 +0000

I always say that the biggest risk of improper disclosure comes from Herbie in the file room. Anybody who really wants your information has only to convince Herbie to find it and give it to you. Since Herbie was most likely not vetted for security purposes a kind word and a great lunch may be the price of admission to your files.

Comment on Is cloud computing really less secure than the status quo? by Saqib Ali

Saqib Ali — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 21:06:38 +0000

I think it is more about control rather than security. People somehow feel more secure if their data is sitting on a computer under their desk, rather than at a properly secured data center in the cloud. The large firms that do employ encryption for securing in-house databases, rarely properly secure backups of those databases. The justification for not encrypting the backups is that it makes the recovery process easy. Go figure!

Note: Apart from some niche Cloud Storage providers, most Cloud Computing vendors don’t employ encryption for Data At Rest. Encrypting data at rest requires huge amount of computing power. But they employ other mechanisms, e.g. physical controls and data sharding to ensure that data is not recoverable from a improperly discarded media.

Comment on Is cloud computing really less secure than the status quo? by T. Marie Hilton

T. Marie Hilton — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:30:11 +0000

Having worked in several small law practices in my pre-virtual life, I agree wholeheartedly. I was shocked that the security measures in these offices were far less than those that I used on my personal computer at home. The computer equipment was horribly out-dated and only a handful of us bothered to do security updates for software and operating systems.
And that doesn’t even mention the open files left on desks and easily overheard phone conversations as clients, delivery people, realtors, etc. came and went.
Cloud computing would have increased the security of these firms drastically rather than put them at risk.
Excellent post!

Comment on Is cloud computing really less secure than the status quo? by Doug Cornelius

Doug Cornelius — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:21:18 +0000

The other comparison you should look at is cloud computing versus the lost laptop. I see many more discussion of security breaches from the lost laptop than I do for a breach of network security.

Comment on Does cloud computing compromise clients? by Saqib Ali

Saqib Ali — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 01:04:08 +0000

Mr. Burda,

I agree that the large clients usually have the means, resources and infrastructure to enforce communication over an encrypted channel, while smaller client and individuals may not have those resources. This is exactly why we need to build inexpensive, consumer based communication platforms in the “cloud” that can provide absolute confidentiality for the data. In my early comment, I hinted towards host-proof hosting (HTH) pattern for achieving this goal. Since HTH does not require infrastructure on either the receiver or the sender side, it seems like an appropriate solution for ad-hoc communication.

Other patterns for secure communication in the cloud will emerge soon.