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)

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

Influence of Facebook

 ”New media is any media – from newspaper articles and blogs to music and podcasts – that are delivered digitally.” - Cote, Southern New Hampshire University 2020

New media is always changing and giving us new ways to develop ourselves and maintain our relationships. Facebook one of the largest social media platforms with 2.8 billion users in 2020 and gives us plenty of possibilities to use our free time. Before digging too deeply on the impact and purpose of Facebook I would like to start by exploring the time before Facebook.

Facebook (photo-1563986768494-4dee2763ff3f)

In my opinion before Facebook people used to socialize more and have more face-to-face meetings with each others. They used to call more to each others and even visit just to change few words. I remember when I was kid and I walked couple kilometers to my friend’s home just to ask if they have time to play with me even I didn’t know are they home even.

Before Facebook people were using traditional communication tools and more different social media platform to share content and entertain themselves. Back then Friendster, Myspace and Second Life among others were popular but so many people wasn’t as engaged with them and didn’t share their daily stuff as much as they do nowadays with Facebook.

”On February 4, 2004, a Harvard sophomore named Mark Zuckerberg launches The Facebook, a social media website he had built in order to connect Harvard students with one another. By the next day, over a thousand people had registered, and that was only the beginning.” - History.com

After launching Facebook and it started to spread, first from university to university and then across the world, becoming not only an incredibly valuable company but also one of the most important institutions of the early 21st century. The site (originally called Facemash) grew in size and students from other colleges and high schools were allowed to join. In September 2006, the site was opened up for everyone to register. Like other sites, you can put up your own profile and share pictures and videos. However, Facebook has a clever system of networks and groups that you can belong to. Many of these are based around college and work networks but there are quirky common interest groups.

Facebook and its Messenger have made our communication to more efficient level than it used to be on it’s own way, it gives us a possibility to send messages fast and share our ideas immediately when we get them. Helps to maintain our relationships to our long-distance friends and relatives.
First Facebook’s main purpose was to connect the students of Harvard but then like all good inventions it started to spread and people got to know about it fast. 
Simplelearn.com listed that people share their information to entertain others, define theirselves, to grow and nourish theirs relationships. To get to know about different brands and to write reviews on them.

 Nowadays the personal engagement and social interactions are the core purposes of Facebook. It’s build to be addictive and entertaining. It’s a place we want to open again and again to keep on track of everything. 

Even thought Facebook has brought a lot of good changes to our daily even hourly life it has brought plenty of downsides too. These are isolation, jealousy, strong addiction, cyberbullying and lack of privacy among others.

The burning question here is, is Facebook connecting us more or just tearing us apart ?

Sources:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly-active-facebook-users-worldwide/ (accessed 15.02.2021)
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/facebook-launches-mark-zuckerberg (accessed 13.02.2021, published 24.10.2019)
https://www.simplilearn.com/real-impact-social-media-article (accessed 13.02.2021, published 04.02.2021)
https://www.snhu.edu/about-us/newsroom/2020/02/what-is-new-media (accessed 13.02.2021, published 24.02.2020)
https://blogs.unimelb.edu.au/sciencecommunication/2018/09/07/how-facebook-has-changed-the-way-we-socialize/ (accessed 13.02.2021, published 07.09.2018)
https://medium.com/@lisa_jewell/facebook-fad-or-the-future-4a69c9305482 (accessed 15.02.2021, published 17.08.2019)

Week 1: Three IT Failures

This post is about IT failures. I selected to evaluate Lily Camera Drone, Samsung Galaxy Fold-phone and Google Glass.

Lily Camera Drone

Lily Camera drone was published by Lily Robotics in 2015 first with the price of $499 and later $899. The company released a promotional video to it’s social media platforms and got millions of views. Currently it has 12 639 532 views in the end of January 2021.

It had 34 million dollars pre-sales and 15 million dollars in investment.

It was said to be the world’s first self-flying, throw-and-shoot camera/drone, which practically means that you just have to throw the camera to air and it starts working and also filming immediately. It was told that Lily is totally water-proof, works without controller, easy to carry around and takes HD quality material. All you needed was the drone and a bracelet with GPS function. It just sounds too good to true.

   Lily camera Drone (465466-lily-drone.jpg)

After launching, it got millions of dollars worth of preorders and a lot of questions how it is possible to have that kind of camera drone in the market in 2015.

On 12th January 2017 it was announced that the company were shut down because of money problems and not even single product were shipped, no one ever got this miraculous invention.

Lily Robotics managed to get a lawsuit of the device with the reasons of false and misleading promotion video, unkept promises about shipping and delays.

According to the article, ”How the Lily Camera Took the Internet by Storm, Then Imploded” by Joel Hruska in 2017, the founders Balaresque and Bradlow spent money in all the wrong places, underestimated the difficulty of building both the hardware and the software required to turn the Lily Camera into a product.

It was told in the article ”What happened to the Lily camera drone?” Written by April Glaser in 2017,  during the time the promotional video was filmed the company didn’t have a single Lily Camera prototypes ready that had all the functions that was mentioned in the promotional video.

Samsung Galaxy Fold

”The review units that broke, the launch that was delayed, the newly fixed version, the sky-high price — all of it is well-known and well-documented. But Samsung is selling the Fold, albeit in very limited quantities, as though it is perfectly normal and reasonable to stroll into an AT&T store and buy a fragile, experimental device for $1,980.” - Dieter Bohn, The Verge 2019

Samsung Galaxy Fold (CGmFQfe62Li6XE5z6EGox6-1024-80.jpg)

The Samsung Galaxy Fold, the first folding phone released by Samsung looks handy with the new folding function with 2000 dollar price tag included. Phone and a mini-tablet together.

The phone was said to be world changing product but in the end it was just a big flop. 

One of the down sides of the phone is also that the screen breaks after over 100,000 folds. When Fold was announced, Samsung claimed that the phone should hold at least 200,000 folding times. #fakenews.

According to the review article by Lauren Goode in 2019, at the beginning many users reported that they had several issues with the screen, it was flickering, crashing and also breaking when using the phone. It wasn’t ready phone to sell for the general public. After these reports Samsung postponed the official release date to fix these screen problems but it didn’t change the situation much. It removed the screen issues but came back with punch of warnings and that got people to be afraid to buy the phone anymore.

”Samsung couldn’t exactly reinvent the folding phone wheel at that point. This OLED display and its flexible polymer layers had been in the works for years, and Samsung wasn’t about to start from scratch. But it did shrink the gap between the phone’s hinge and its two halves and added additional metal layers beneath the bendy display to make it stronger” -peopleandtech.org

According to the Lauren Goode's review again, after the fixing the biggest screen issues the phone worked properly and was nice to use even to it was big, heavy and sometimes awkward to use.

Google Glass

Google Glass or the "future glasses" meant to be a fashion thing that we couldn't leave the house with. Google Glass is wearable pair of glasses, which has various functions inside it. The glasses will work with using voice commands and eye gestures by tracking eye movement of the user. They were published to the general public in 2014 with a price of $1500. Google also offered an compatible application for the glasses. 

Google Glass (_96985515_mediaitem96985508.jpg)

Functions that the device:

• touch pad, which helps to control the device and choose a functions.
• camera, with 5 megapixel still/720p video.
• display, which allows user to check the weather, make phone calls, see photos/videos and check social media notifications.

"Google Glass did not provide enough advancement for users compared to older technologies making the product a useless supplementation to their daily lives." - Crala Yoon, Medium 2018.

The Google Glasses has/had several problems with it. Not all users are happy to wear them all day and they don't feel so comfortable for everyone to wear. Also what comes to the possible health problems that may occur when you are just staring the small screen just a front of your eyes the whole day.

Other critical concerns that was early raised was the high price, safety, and privacy. People caused accidents because of using the glasses and filmed improper places like in cinemas. Then came the problem with poor battery life. The device was intended to be worn all day long but the battery life could hold up only 3-5 hours. Not a good combination.

Luckily you are still able to buy this magnificent device to yourself from at least from eBay and Amazon, also In 2017 Google announced next version of Google Glass which hold a name of Google Glass Enterprise Edition.

With the glasses the user is able to see internet and messages front of his eyes, film and take pictures just with a specific voice command. This like previously introduced Lily drone sounds just too good to be true. Maybe we are just not ready for this kind of futuristic technology....yet.

Sources: 

https://www.vox.com/2017/1/16/14274254/lily-drone-lawsuit-refunds (published 16.01.2017, accessed 27.01.2021)

https://www.extremetech.com/electronics/253265-lily-camera-took-internet-storm-imploded (published 28.07.2017, accessed 27.01.2021)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vGcH0Bk3hg (published 12.05.2015, accessed 27.01.2021)

https://www.wired.com/review/samsung-galaxy-fold/ (published 24.10.2019, accessed 27.01.2021)

https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/4/20898484/samsung-galaxy-fold-folding-test-failure-durability (published 04.10.2019, accessed 27.01.2021)

https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/30/20938653/samsung-galaxy-fold-review-updated-android-price-specs-features-hinge (published 30.10.2019 ,accessed 27.01.2021)

https://peopleandtech.org/samsung-galaxy-fold-review-the-future-wont-fit-in-your-pants/ 

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/052115/how-why-google-glass-failed.asp (published 08.03.2020 ,accessed 02.02.2021)

https://medium.com/nyc-design/the-assumptions-that-led-to-failures-of-google-glass-8b40a07cfa1e (published 03.08.2018 ,accessed 02.02.2021)

https://www.business2community.com/tech-gadgets/5-reasons-google-glass-miserable-failure-01462398  (published 28.02.2016 ,accessed 02.02.2021)