Two highly recommended pieces of media content related to information security captivated me during the past 2 weeks:

• Seymour Hersh’s Nov. 1 New Yorker article, “The Online Threat: Should We Be Worried About a Cyber War,” questions whether instances of cyber espionage have been overstated to stoke fears of cyber warfare (to stoke U.S. Defense Department spending, to help enrich consultants and other defense contractors); and

• The Social Network, the flick about the creation of Facebook, which I totally enjoyed as a tech-business procedural, with its warning about our New Privacy, US Weekly-esque look at Harvard’s elite culture, and psychological profile of the Silicon Valley inventor-entrepreneur mind-set. And I’m not even on Facebook.

The 13th annual Ernst & Young Global Information Security Survey suggests that I’m far from the only person thinking hard about information security right now. more

At the AFP Conference in San Antonio, 959 attendees offered their thoughts on the business impact of the recent elections and a second round of quantitative easing. Some highlights:

Just over half – 51 percent – said that the election would enhance their own business’s prospects over the coming year. Slightly more said that the results would boost business overall.

Respondents split on the impact of another round of quantitative easing, or QE2, with 42 percent saying that it would enhance their business’s prospects and 43 percent saying that it would have no impact.

Access to credit over the past year improved for 42 percent of respondents and was unchanged for 54 percent.

The primary factors keeping businesses from investing for expansion over the past year were weak consumer demand (40 percent), adversity to risk in the current business climate (39 percent), and uncertainty concerning business regulations, at 33 percent.

More results are available at http://www.afponline.org. ###

Without a doubt, the bond market has shown several signs of being bubble-bound over the past year or so. Investors have piled into the market, prompting returns to drop to levels not seen in decades. Yields on two-year Treasuries are barely in positive territory, while corporate bonds, with yields at 4.68 percent, are at the lowest level they’ve been in at least 30 years. Articles in publications from BusinessWeek to SmartMoney have discussed investment strategies for a bubbled bond market.

However, the bubble metaphor doesn’t really apply, one fixed income expert says. “We would argue that it is unlikely that a bubble has emerged,” writes Barry Julien, managing director of fixed income with First Western Capital Management, in his September report “Bond Bubbleology.” more

“People like blood sausage, too …”

So says TV weatherman Phil Connors, played by Bill Murray, in the 1993 film Ground Hog Day. Phil is cursed (or blessed) to live the same day over and over again largely because he has lost faith in his fellow humans.

I thought of Phil’s observation when I got a taste of the results of PwC Saratoga’s 2010-2011 U.S. Human Capital Effectiveness Report. The results made me wonder whether those who manage organizational risk are underestimating people and/or giving human capital risk less attention than it deserves. more