C. Warren Axelrod

BlogInfoSec.com

To paraphrase an old saying: “One person’s prevention is another person’s protection.” This may well apply to the wearing of masks during the pandemic, the efficacy of which is still being hotly debated by some. Having gone through various iterations, the argument for wearing masks has been mainly to prevent ... Read More

Prevention lies somewhere between avoidance and protection, and preventative methods can belong to either. For example, what is stopping outsiders from entering your country or state or town in order to limit the spread of the novel coronavirus? Some might say that is avoidance. Others might consider it preventing the ... Read More

There are a number of confusing differences of opinion with respect to handling the COVID-19 pandemic. Some of the confusion seems to center around a common misunderstanding of the roles of various mitigation approaches. Perhaps this is a case where those managing the pandemic could benefit from the experiences of ... Read More

Like many others during this stay-at-home period, I have been sorting through old articles and reports, culling out those that are no longer of value. But, in the process, I came across a number of documents relevant to the current pandemic. One such document was “Scenario Update 3” of a ... Read More

The more “mature” among us may recall when decision-making under uncertainty was based on the concept of “rational economic man.” We estimated or calculated the probability and amount of a loss (or gain) of various courses of action, multiplied the numbers together to arrive at a range of expected losses ... Read More

Systems use negative feedback in order to converge to stability and equilibrium (a positive quest). Positive-feedback systems diverge, which leads to instability and sometimes surging out of control (usually a negative outcome). Negative feedback inhibits and positive feedback amplifies. Each has its role in nature. Body temperature, for example, is ... Read More

There is a cartoon in The New Yorker of March 30, 2020 showing four mobsters, one with a gun, sitting around a table. The caption reads: “For health and safety reasons, we’ll be transitioning to cyber crime.” You can see the cartoon at https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a24009 No kidding! The huge increase in ... Read More

There are a number of different types of models—and the output from each must be viewed and used differently depending on the form of the model. First, you have relationships derived from correlations—they show how one variable changes in concert with other variables, but do not claim cause-and-effect (if they ... Read More

Recently, I happened upon a short article about the demise of internal data centers in favor of cloud services. The article, by John Delaney, appeared on page 28 of the May 2020 edition of the Communications of the ACM, and has the title “The Shuttering of Corporate Datacenters.” The article ... Read More

We have discussed previously, such as in my May 18, 2020 BlogInfoSec column, some of the more challenging characteristics of data, such as those relating to value and uncertainty, which are generally not given adequate consideration. This is because these types of data may be much more costly and difficult ... Read More