The Bonn conference of the Risk & Assurance Group (RAG), hosted by Deutsche Telekom last week, received a positive response from attendees, with many commenting on the strength of the agenda. The audience was also impressed that five major collaboration programs were launched or upgraded.
The RAG Wangiri Blockchain Ledger
The ledger will maintain a common global record of the originating numbers used for wangiri attacks, as supplied by trusted telcos and maintained using a cryptographically secure distributed database that anyone will be able to access. A demonstration of the prototype system was shown to the audience at Bonn. Several telcos have already agreed to participate in a live trial of the technology, and some more volunteered during RAG Bonn.
The RAG Wangiri Blockchain Ledger is powered by technology from Orillion Solutions, and the program leader is Anthony Sani, co-founder of Orillion. Tony wrote about the reasons to use blockchain to mitigate wangiri here. If you want to take part in the pilot, you can contact Tony at: anthony.sani@orillionsolutions.com.
Certificates for Students of RAG Learning
Beginning with the interconnect course, users of the RAG Learning online education platform can now obtain a PDF certificate that records the completion of a course in exchange for making a USD25 donation to the running costs of this service. Payment is made by PayPal and students will need to electronically submit an ID document, such as a passport, in order to verify their identity.
Certificates of completion are being introduced in response to tremendous demand from registered users of RAG Learning. It will be extended to more courses over the coming weeks.
Demand for new RAG Learning courses greatly exceeds the current supply. RAG is introducing new content providers like Blackfoot UK, who will supply cybersecurity training, but more vendors and consultants are encouraged to contact RAG and discuss how they may educate professionals worldwide.
Global Benchmark Survey Based on a New Version of the RAG Business Assurance Leakage Catalog
The crowdsourced RAG Revenue and Cost Leakage Catalog has been given a major upgrade to version 2.0, and also boasts a refreshed name that reflects its widened scope. It is the telecoms industry’s most comprehensive inventory of potential leakage points and suggested mitigations. Version 2.0 of the catalog can be obtained from here.
As well as using the catalog to highlight gaps in controls, business assurance practitioners will now be able to benchmark the extent of their leakage coverage compared to other telcos. A new global coverage survey has begun, with questions derived from the leakage catalog. The survey offers a different way for telcos to use the inventory of leakage points, providing them with an objective score for their control coverage. Telcos may freely respond to the global coverage benchmark survey until the end of November, and then the anonymized headline results will be published. You will find the survey questionnaire here.
The RAG Business Assurance Leakage Catalog is sponsored by Symmetry Solutions and the program leader is Geoff Ibbett, a Director of Symmetry. Many telcos and vendors have already made additions to the catalog, but Geoff is always looking for more. If you want to contribute, you can reach Geoff at: geoff.ibbett@riskandassurancegroup.org.
Upgrade of A1 Telekom Austria’s Risk Modeling Software
A1 Telekom Austria first released their free open source leakage risk modeling software at RAG Bonn 2017, and lead developer Kostadin Taneski returned to RAG Bonn 2019 to unveil an upgrade that incorporates version 2.0 of the RAG Business Assurance Leakage Catalog. The software uses the leakage catalog as reference data, from which it creates a map of each telco’s leakage risks, based on the value of revenues generated by different services and the controls that have already been implemented.
You can learn more about A1 Telekom Austria’s risk modeling software from here, or jump straight to the GitHub repository to obtain the code, including the upgrade to version 2.0 of the leakage catalog.
Because the software is open source, new collaborators are always welcome to develop it, subject to the terms of its MIT License.
RAG TV
RAG conferences are always designed to foster collaboration, but not everyone can travel to every conference. RAG Bonn 2019 witnessed many great talks from experts, and lots of interaction with the audience, but how might we reach professionals with more limited travel budgets? The solution will be RAG TV, an internet channel for live video streams of presentations and interviews. A demonstration of RAG TV was shown to the audience at RAG Bonn, illustrating how a video call between two remote participants was embedded into a live stream that also incorporated diagrams, webpages, and other visual content in real time.
RAG TV progresses RAG’s core objective of providing education and networking for telecoms risk and assurance professionals by bringing the same kind of content they enjoy at conferences to the screen of their computer, tablet or phone. Viewers of RAG TV will be able to submit questions in real time, just like they do at RAG conferences. The live stream will also be recorded so it can be replayed at a time of the viewer’s choosing.
The next stage for RAG TV is to line up a series of webinars and interviews to be streamed live. Making these arrangements will likely take more time than the development of the video streaming functionality; it is no good advertising to the world that there will be an interview at 10am tomorrow if the main speaker intends to cancel at 7pm the night before. Although RAG Bonn had a strong agenda, past experience shows a significant proportion of speakers drop out, so RAG TV needs an even higher degree of commitment to be viable. If you would like to participate in the first season of RAG TV shows, then get in touch here.
