IT Security Finland

The Mitnick formula

The Mitnick formula states that the security is a combination of proper technology, sufficient training and suitable policy.

Code (photo-1542831371-32f555c86880)

I think that nowadays it’s important to know about the security threats, different risks and also how to act when they happen.
I’m not so sure about the general situation in Finland, what I can refer is my own experiences and what I have read. Even thought Finland has a high level of knowledge, skills and strong expertise in the IT field there is something still missing.. What I have read from the news and heard is that the level of the security in Finland is not so good as people think it is.

For the last year you could have read from the Finnish news that several people have got phishing emails, calls and text messages asking their passwords and other information. My personal risky experience was with one of these calls last year, when I got a call from Microsoft IT support. Here is a link for that:  Microsoft IT support fraud.  

Before that I wasn’t aware of these kind of calls and also I just had one technical Microsoft problem in my work computer to which I was waiting for a call form our IT department.
It was a sum of coincidences. Luckily I had a bit experience of IT and security and at the time the ”Professional Microsoft IT Technician” started asking my email passwords and bank accounts I got suspicious and ended the call. I have to admit he had done his homework and was truly believable. He explained everything to me very precisely and as simple as possible.
Another "attack"  happened to me couple days ago, when I got text message from the ”post office” of Finland and they told that my package is arrived and I should sign some document thought some link…no thanks, I haven’t ordered anything.

What comes to the training part, all the information that I have got is from school mainly and from my previous job. I was working for a IT company for two years and they had an online security training pretty often, they could have been better but at least something.
Most of the trainings usually focused on the main threats and how they occur, I think it would be also important to know how to act and get away safely when it happens.

Recent cases that I found that have happened in Finland are the hacking of psychotherapy center Vastaamo in 2020, where the hackers hijacked and published mental health data of hundreds of patients. Another one was flying company Finnair that was hacked and the frequent flyer data was hacked, it affected around 200,000 members of the Finnair Plus programme. Finnish politicians email accounts were hacked in 2020 too.

Sources:

https://www.foreigner.fi/articulo/national/scandal-over-the-hijack-and-and-publication-of-private-mental-health-data/20201023121903008599.html (published 23.10.2020, accessed 01.04.2021)

https://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/finnair_frequent_flyer_data_hacked/11820715

(published 04.03.2021, accessed 01.04.2021)

https://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/police_finns_lose_1m_to_online_fraudsters_so_far_this_year/11804957 (published 23.02.2021, accessed 01.04.2021)

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-28/finnish-politicians-email-accounts-targeted-by-cyber-attack (published 28.12.2020, accessed 01.04.2021)

https://www.kyberturvallisuuskeskus.fi/fi/ (accessed 01.04.2021)

IT Professionalism in Finland

"Professionalism is a powerful quality. It allows you to fulfill your role to the best of your ability. It helps you to impress and inspire others. And it gives you a deep sense of satisfaction and self-worth." - MindTools 

https://unsplash.com/photos/5fNmWej4tAA

In IT the knowledge and experience of several types of programs and programming languages comes handy. It’s like in real world too, the more you know the better and what comes learning multiple different languages, that’s great.

Nowadays technology has became even bigger part of our daily life and also replaced many of our jobs too. IT which stand for information technology is major part of it. Everyday there is created new and easier ways to handle things and also softwares that we use, are developed to be more and more effectives. The problem with it is that we are not born with the skills and knowledge of IT. We have to learn it by ourselves and what's the better way to learn than listen professionals like highly educated teachers. Nowadays professionalism comes in several shapes and it is hard to describe. I think professionalism is set of various skills and also ability to share your knowledge and experiences to others. Depending on a field different skills and knowledge is needed, sometimes we are luckily able to combine different skills and knowledge to achieve better results too. According to Piia Vilander the most needed and valued skills that was needed in IT in year 2015 were communication skills and networking, internationality and also marketing skills.

In Finland IT has been one of the popular fields all the time, Finnish people have always been interested in technology and especially in designing. Finland is famous of Linux by Linus Torvalds, Nokia, anti-virus development like McAfee , game development like Angry Birds from Rovio and many others. There is almost endless possibilities in IT field in Finland, in the job market they are searching all the time people for developing, testing and design purposes. 

Almost in every university or university in applied sciences you are able to learn/choose something that is related to IT. In general or more in specific way.

The courses are separated into different fields, there are for example business information technology,  software and systems engineering, computer applications, cyber security  etc. According to Barona in 2018 there was stated that there is around 1600 people to be trained for IT-field per year in Finland, now in 2021 it’s probably much more. But still it's not enough. According to Helsinki Times many Finnish companies are interested in hiring specialist people from overseas to fill their positions and help bring the technology field to life. Many companies do, however, have a hard time finding workers from overseas as most of those workers don't speak Finnish or are reluctant to move due to concerns regarding the strained housing market

Personally I haven’t been studying IT in Finland but according to my other studying experiences there I believe the level of IT studies in Finland are very high level too.

A lot has changed during past 20 years and what comes to IT, the core idea has stayed the same but the devices, the ways we use it and what for we used has changed a lot.

I think how IT professionalism is changed in Finland is that is nowadays so called professionals share their information more and are willing to train people more that it used to be. Before people had to search more information by themselves from internet or from library.

Sources:

https://blog.barona.fi/it-alan-osaajamarkkina-nyt-ja-tulevaisuudessa (published 11.11.2019, accessed 18.03.2021)

https://ahkfinnland.de/fi/tietopankki/ajankohtaista/news-details-fi/it-ala-suomen-viennin-kaerjessae (published 26.03.2020, accessed 18.03.2021)

https://www.theseus.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/87538/Vilander_Piia.pdf?sequence=1 (published 2015, accessed 18.03.2021)

https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/professionalism.htm (accessed 21.03.2021)

Treat others the way you want to be treated.

 

”Netiquette" is network etiquette, the do's and don'ts of online communication. Netiquette covers both common courtesy online and the informal "rules of the road" of cyberspace.”

 - Virginia Shea

The internet is dichotomous environment, it has a lot of positive vibes and reactions, but then there is also the people who doesn’t care and doesn’t know how to behave.

Like in every situation we have a some kind of patterns and rules how to behave and how not, I think it’s important to have same kind of set of rules in the online environment too.

When reading about the Netiquette by Virginia Shea I think the one of the most important point is the ”Adhere to the same standards of behavior online that you follow in real life”

That people would remember who they are, their powers and knowledge, the people behind the screens and that everyone has feelings.

Think Before You Post EQ9xn3cWoAEuL4y.jpg

People should think what they post online and also how and where they do it. Every platform have their own audience and people who see and are able to react to the post.

For example the post that the person writes to Facebook might get more publicity and reactions than a post in Instagram, it also depends the target audience a lot.

The way how you write and express yourself online is a critical point too when publishing something public, because everyone might not understand what did you originally mean and this can lead a huge misunderstandings, which are pretty usually in the web.

In real life people are more careful of their actions and their opinions but in web, where they are not so easily to be identified, they might forget all the manners and think that they can behave and say whatever they like. Luckily nowadays this kind of behavior has decreased a lot from what it used to be and people have learned more how to behave also online, but there will always be those who don't want to agree with these rules. If everyone would follow the rules of Netiquette and respect others also in the web we wouldn't have major problems like cyberbullying and fake news.

Also nowadays the security and the surveillance has increased in the web, for example Youtube is checking and controlling the videos and comments that are created and one good example from Finland (the only one that I'm familiar with) are the effective internet police officers (Nettipoliisi), whose work is to go around these popular social media platforms and report of any malicious action.

There is many examples in the popular social media platforms, like Facebook, Youtube and Instagram (that I personally use daily), where you are able to see the variety of people’s opinions and how they affect to others.

One hot topic currently is the use of masks and to take or not to take the vaccine for COVID-19.

My Facebook is full of different kind of posts, where people are arguing the pros and cons about the current situation. Some even call that the whole COVID-19 is based on a conspiracy theory, for example that it’s happening because of 5G or the previous actions of Bill Gates.

Often when surfing around internet and especially some places where some kind of chat or forum is involved I feel like people forget easily that there is another human being front of the screen.

I personally think that the Netiquette should be more shared and that everyone should read it at least once. Maybe in someday it’s made a compulsory piece of reading in high school or even before you are able to access internet.

Sources:

http://albion.com/netiquette/ (accessed 11.03.2021)

https://allianceforscience.cornell.edu/blog/2020/04/covid-top-10-current-conspiracy-theories/ (published 20.04.2020,accessed 11.03.2021))

Review of the Challenges of the global information society

"Challenge - The situation of being faced with something that needs great mental or physical effort in order to be done successfully and therefore tests a person's ability” - Cambridge Dictionary  

The tittle “Challenges of the global information society” serves the text more than well. It tells the reader already what subject the text is going to handle. It's written by Pekka Himanen in 2004. The text was prepared for the Finnish Parliment's Committee for the Future and it discusses about the current status,  future issues and development opportunities of Finnish information society in 2004. The original report, on which Himanen's report is based was focused on the challenges related to the reform of the “Finnish model”, which is a combination of the welfare society and the information society. The review is written in 2004 and at the beginning of the text it’s said that most of the predicted to happen before and/or the year 2010. The text includes multiple sections, graphical maps, charts and detailed lists.

Pekka Himanen, author (himanen.png)

It was highlighted that there is a clear difference between the terms information society and information network and also internet program. First in the information society they try to focus on improving technology and also focusing how to operate them in different ways. At first the global trends of 2004 was introduced, for example “increased international tax competition”,“the rise of bio-industries” and “the new global division of labour”.
Now in 2021, when thinking about those three trends mentioned before, they have actually became true. The tax competition has increased all over the world, bio-industries and bio-culture has become a massive part of our life - everyday we try to separate our garbages and buy more eco-friendly clothes and other items. Last but not least the labour have indeed transferred more and more to cheaper countries like China and India. Companies benefit this a lot, when they don’t have to pay for the production as much as they would pay in their countries. Of course it affects to the quality of their products and the working circumstances for the cheap workers are not the best even still in 2021.
In short, the idea of the information society can be defined as a creative society that is based on interaction. What is most important to the information society is not new technology but a new way of doing things. After describing the global trends is told the possible future development scenarios for them, main differences and how the leading areas are responding to these challenges in their own way.
According to the text there is three dynamic models in terms of technology and economy, those are the Silicon Valley model, the Singapore model and the Finnish model. All these models have their good sides but also they have several issues with them too, for example the Silicon Valley model is full of opportunities but if you don’t have enough money then you are in trouble. In tax based Singapore model the whole company is moved out of the original city because of the taxes, for example to China and by that it leaves a huge blank spot to the economy. The other problems mentioned in the Singapore model is lack of freedom, which is mostly controlled by the government. In the Finnish model the main risk is the envy of society.
Then the text describes also well the values of reforming the general European model. The basis for the continued combination of the welfare and the information society are explained briefly in the text and told their impact to welfare and information society. Those possible basis values are care, confidence, communality, encouragement, freedom, creativity, courage, visionaries, balance and meaningfulness. There is described well in each section how different elements affect to the general atmosphere, like the restrictions on freedom and creativity create an atmosphere of control. After the brief descriptions of the basic values in different sections, there is presented simple pyramid scheme of these values from the psychological perspective. This pyramid shows that we can affect to our choices and quality of life.
The next chapter tells about the key concepts of social development, which are a creative economy, a creative welfare society, humanly meaningful development and global culture. The main purpose of these key elements are described in their own sections and what kind of actions should be taken to consideration to respond the global trends.
It includes great and detailed graphs which helps the reader to understand more the key elements of the text and gives a possibility to go in depth with the subject.

”Interaction between IT, culture and welfare will also generate completely new opportunities.”

”If people feel that work is nothing but a miserable duty and that the main point is to fulfill orders, they do not feel a creative pas- sion towards their work, and yet this passion would make it possible for the company to continually improve its operations and stay ahead of the competition.”

The review shows well how everything is connected to everything and lack of something affects always somehow, either negatively or positively to other elements. To maintain the state of welfare society, there is need of new ways of promoting it as socially, mentally, physically and culturally balanced development. 
Furthermore the review discusses about social balance, mental balance, physical balance and cultural balance - their purposes, consequences of lack of them and possible development ways.

”Having more exercise would have a considerable positive effect not only on the health of those who exercise, but also on society’s welfare expenses as a whole. ”
”The maintenance of our creative culture also requires such a more open-minded culture. ”

Next Himanen writes about the importance of culture and immigration. The importance to stay open for everyone, having no prejudges and maintain good international relationships. He reminds that everyone should have given a possibility to live where they want to live and feel like home without any harassment. People should focus more into caring and sustainable development. 

Last paragraph discusses about reciprocity and justice. The main purposes of these are caring and sustainable the development. It was mentioned in the text that people should pay more attention to consider globalization to be a reciprocal process from which they could benefit but for which they must give something in turn too.
In the end there is an text written by Dr Paula Tiihonen and it’s about the committee for the future. What it is and how they operate. The committee is one of the Parliament of Finland’s 15 standing committees and it had 17 members in 2004. They analyse Finland's future, and the environment which will determine that future, from a broad perspective, in a longer-term time frame. The committee has a long and colorful history behind it and they have several different tasks to do, for example to make statements to other parliamentary committees as required on future-related issues and to undertake analyses pertaining to future-related research and IT methodology 
The review gives a wide and detailed descriptions of the situation in 2004 and well-explained future vision, what would probably come true and also what should be done to achieve them. It discusses about several aspects of the current situation of 2004 and the possibilities that there can be achieved in the future if everything is planned and organized properly.
 


Sources:
https://web.archive.org/web/20170221105053/https://www.eduskunta.fi/FI/tietoaeduskunnasta/julkaisut/Documents/tuvje_1+2004.pdf
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/challenge