Articles by 'Ken Phelan'

By Ken Phelan, Posted in Uncategorized

It’s a longstanding joke among technologists. The only problem with technology is the people who use it. I think the joke needs an update. The only problem with technology platforms is applications. I was talking to some of my virtual desktop friends the other day. We were talking about their challenges in keeping a stable platform in the face of the corporate chaos. Every day brings new underlying challenges. There are new applications. There are new security requirements on a regular basis. Even the fo... read more.

• September 08, 2015

By Ken Phelan, Posted in Uncategorized

I was out at Black Hat last week and I thought I’d sum up some of the things I learned for those of you who couldn’t make it - Top 10 things I learned at Black Hat: Hackers don’t look like they do in the movies. Well, some do, but not the majority of them. Hacking is less emo than you think. It’s also more boring than it looks on the movies. It’s really a long process of finding vulnerabilities in an environment and matching them to exploits. It’s more like data analysis than playing some kind of vid... read more.

• August 19, 2015

By Ken Phelan, Posted in Security

If you are in a position where you either give or receive IT Security audits, please stop what you’re doing and read this right now (if you haven’t already). It’s the 2014 security audit by OPM’s inspector general office of audits. Katherine Archuleta resigned last Friday as head of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management and I’m guessing she wishes she had read it a little more carefully. My experience indicates that a large of percentage of people reading this line ignored my admonition to read the... read more.

• July 17, 2015

By Ken Phelan, Posted in Virtualization

My daughter Joyce is graduating this week with a Master’s Degree in Occupational Therapy (#joytheot). Joyce has spent some time educating me on Occupational Therapy, and one of the concepts that I really like is OT’s position on Client Centered Care. I think there is a message there for us in the IT industry. Client Centered Care starts with getting its goals directly from the client. If I was to be in some kind of accident, the healthcare industry would work to put me back together. They would try to re... read more.

• June 02, 2015

By Ken Phelan, Posted in Security

I was at the RSA Conference in San Francisco last week and I’d like to report that the Information Security economy is booming. With record numbers of attendees and exhibitors, the buzz around security has never been stronger. All of the news regarding attacks has created a lot of momentum. Most of Gotham’s large customers deal with significant incidents on a near daily basis, and even smaller clients have seen serious incidents over the last year. This increased pressure on cyber security now has boa... read more.

• April 30, 2015

By Ken Phelan, Posted in Virtualization

Gotham rolled out this self-assessment at an event this week, and I thought I would share it with our Blog followers. First of all, let me clarify my use of the term DaaS. DaaS does not refer specifically to an outsourced or cloud Desktop. DaaS is your internal desktop offering, offered as a service. This can be delivered via traditional internal methods, cloud methods, or some hybrid. The important inflection to DaaS is that you’re offering your users a Desktop Service. It’s a productization issue. Your... read more.

• March 17, 2015

By Ken Phelan, Posted in Security

I was out to dinner with my parents the other night and my mother started getting on my case. You know, the way mothers do. “Kenneth.” Yes, I’m a grown man and my mother still calls me Kenneth when she’s angry with me. “I’ve been reading the paper and there are all these security problems all the time. Aren’t you supposed to be fixing this? There must be something you can do to stop it. It seems like quite a problem.” Mothers. How is it that they can bundle up a wonderful compliment (I’m capable... read more.

• February 25, 2015

By Ken Phelan, Posted in Uncategorized

In the New York area we’re continuing to deal with very real and personal impacts of Sandy. The sheer magnitude of the loss is frankly overwhelming. Many lives were lost, thousands of people remain displaced as their homes are either gone or condemned, huge pieces of the local infrastructure are still not functioning, and many local shoreline treasures are potentially damaged beyond repair. At Gotham, we don’t do anything particularly heroic in the face of disasters. We don’t rush into burning buildings... read more.

• November 20, 2012