World of a classical Designer and a Software Designer

I recently attended Pune Design Festival (PDF) organized by ADI (Association of Designers of India), Pune Chapter. Having relieved myself of the organisational responsibilities at TiE Pune and Mojo Networks, I felt I have more bandwidth for me to soak into the ADI world.

At the outset, I must say the objective of soaking with ‘Designers’ and breathing the same air was achieved. I came out ‘thinking’ more about ‘Design’ as ADI Designers think and ‘Design’ in software that that has occupied my mind for the past 35 years or so.

‘Design’ may mean many things to many people. It appeared to me that Designers from ADI express their design as an artefact, a physical object, a sketch or a drawing or a painting, with colours, contours, styles, typefaces etc. Designs were very visible. You can touch and feel these. And, I must say everything was artistic and beautiful. Aesthetics was in abundance. At times designs intended to tell a story, convey a philosophy and even build a brand, very serious and difficult endeavour. Some of the work combined rich and diverse arts and artisans in India with the contemporary world. It was amazing. There was also a session on applying principles of Design to designing businesses. Art was part of the discussion. Someone said, “Design evolves to an art”.

While soaking in Designers’ world, the idea was to get a better understanding of the design of an ADI Designer world and the world of a software designer.

Explicit expression is ingrained in the Designer world. While in software, many aspects of design are often implicit. In software, somehow we feel we are dealing with the inanimate world. So the beauty of design does not seem to find an expression. Beauty and aesthetics may be far from software designers’ mind while dealing with aspects like reliability, scalability and extendibility. ADI Designers are more live with their creations. Simplicity and elegance of design is prevalent in both.

Designers create objects and many were on display at the PDF Expo. An object whether it's a logo or classy furniture is intuitive to Designers. On the other hand, software ‘object’ was not so evident to software designers. Its birth took a long time and even longer for it to be adopted by the community.  While it has evolved, its expression is still incomplete.

A well designed algorithm, workflow, specification of a program is a work of art. If there is mathematics at the core of such a design, it's a work of art. Researchers and designers of advanced techniques like machine learning are creating profound mathematical objects de art and must be having the same feeling. Even routine software presents significant challenges and good design can be an object de art.

This must interest not only to people whose profession is ‘Design” but also CEOs, CTOs, other corporate executives and entrepreneurs as technology not just enables or supports a business, technology is the business. And software is the kernel of any technology today.

Leaning from Designers, we in software world should celebrate Software Designers. My soaking continues.

Dear Honourable Prime Minister of India,

Series of events after elections in Maharashtra, specially in past 72 hours prompt me to write to you.

Sir, let me share some data points with you. I live in Pune and have lived here since 1996. The maid in our household commented that political parties including BJP have not only disappointed people but made fool of themselves. My driver who has been my companion in numerous car rides said, none of these politicians deserve to be ministers leave alone fighting for the position of CM. You will want to note that families of our driver and maid are well educated.  My driver’s son is a Electronics Engg graduate and works for a technology company while our maid’s son took admission for a undergraduate program in Energy Management. This is not an exception but often a norm in today’s Maharashtra – Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur, Kolhapur, Satara, Karad, Nasik, Aurangabad and other towns and villages.

Maharashtra is not only a prosperous State, it has a literate population right down to lowest economic strata of the society. There is a long tradition of women literacy. Local political leaders have behaved in the most despicable manner and made mockery of representative democracy. It has not gone un-noticed.

Sir, while local politicians can be criticised, the complaint is with you. Governor of a State is the custodian of the Indian Constitution as well as some of the conventions in Government formation post election. You must be aware of debates in the Constituent Assembly on the office of Governor. In a State where Governors have been people like Vijaya Laxmi Pandit, Ali Yavar Jung, Dr. Shankar Dayal Sharma and PC Alexandar, current Maharashtra Governor has been a big disappointment. If parties have to rush to Supreme Court, it's the failure of the Governor. Now, President appoints Governors as recommended by the Union Cabinet. Should people of Maharashtra not ask you how current Maharashtra Governor was recommended.  

The mandate was for BJP and Shiv Sena, not for BJP and NCP, not for BJP to sit in opposition and certainly not for Shiv Sena, NCP and Congress to form a rag tag coalition. And why did BJP allow such as a drama of administering the oath of office to Mr. Fadavanis.If BJP, Shiv Sena cant form the Government, constitutional proprietary demands that elections be held again for people to give a fresh mandate. This ugly engineering of numbers and naked dance witnessed in Maharashtra has made a big dent to your reputation. Even people who are your die hard supporters and followers are thinking.

Sir, its time for you to introspect. What is going wrong and what will be your legacy, specially as some one who came from very ordinary background, captured the imagination of people to become the Prime Minister and promised major changes in India.

Using radio jammers to stop WiFi networks

Last week a cyber security consultant called me to ask if Mojo Networks (the company I co-founded) can provide WiFi jammers. He mentioned the need was to protect Electronic Voting Machines or EVMs from WiFi based attacks. These EVMs from recent legislative assembly elections in Maharashtra and Haryana were placed inside a facility with physical security. Apparently, someone was concerned about the possibility that WiFi may be used to hack these machines. As I understand, these machines are not connected to any network; were kept lock & key and are very difficult not easy to access. Anyway I reminded him that civilians cannot deploy radio jammers. More important, there is no need to use jammers to create protection against WiFi based attacks. It can be achieved by deploying a state of the art wireless intrusion prevention system (WIPS).

However, knowledge of WiFi security is feeble even among computer networking professionals. In addition, there is lack of awareness on the regulatory guidelines that exist in India such as Ministry of Communications & Information Technology (MCIT) regulation, Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) guidelines, and RBI IT Governance guidelines, to name a few.

Fundamental to wireless security is the sensor technology. WIPS sensors detect all WiFi in the air; figure out which networks are authorized as well as those those that are external. The system then prevents internal users from connecting to external networks and quarantines devices that are un-authorized but are on users’ network. While a single sensor can scan entire WiFi radio spectrum, sensors can be dedicated to select channels to massively strengthen the security cover.

The notion of “No WiFi” is an interesting use case. In a “no WiFi” environment there is no WiFi access point on users’ network and none of the users are connected to WiFi network of any kind. Such an environment is often required in data centers, military locations and even organizations with high security posture such as banks, IT/ITES companies. Besides creating a blanket “No WiFi” scenario inside a data center or a military installation, interesting situations can emerge in case of WiFi in Smart Cities where a No WiFi and public WiFi will need to coexist at the same time.

Among above regulations, MHA seems to be specific about the use of WIPS. A News item appeared on MHA guidelines in Express Computers in 2009 (https://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others-do-not-use/citing-safety-govt-bans-wifi-in-key-offices-missions/). According to the News item, MHA mandates use of WIPS is in sensitive Central Government ministries and missions. Another article appeared in the December 2009 issue of the Indian Police Journal on “WiFi Network - A Challenge to Security Agencies”. (http://www.bprd.nic.in/WriteReadData/userfiles/file/5493026775-oct-dec.pdf).

It is noteworthy that neither of these asks for radio jamming. On the contrary, some IT administrators often ask if they can use jammers. That's like saying can I go thru a RED Light. Its not allowed unless there is a regulator of traffic (like a traffic cop) there and allows you to go. I must mention that security consultant who called me was fully aware of WIPS and how to use it.

WiFi has evolved a great deal since these articles appeared, has become ubiquitous and a de-facto mode for end users to connect to their network and Internet. WiFi is also making great strides in public arena. However, preparedness of business and Government remains far from adequate. And, there have been attacks using WiFi. While we are fixated on security threats emanating from backdoors in 3G/4G/5G network equipment, we are leaving front doors open by not deploying WIPS at sensitive locations be it corporate, Government and even public. Network and security administrators carry the primary responsibility for this. It also necessitates a policy intervention on this front.

Coming to EVMs, they have done their job well. It is now for the political parties to figure out Government formation, a non-trivial activity given the fractured mandate and those with smaller share of seats aiming for bigger slice of the Government pie.

Disaster Management & Opportunities for Entrepreneurs

Few months back, I received a call my friend Professor Kavi Arya from IIT Bombay for being a co-faculty for a workshop on disaster management he was organizing in Bhutan. Kavi’s team also included Dr. Vinod Menon, Founder Member of NDMA (National Disaster Management Authority) of India. Bhutan workshop gave me enough opportunity interact with Vinod and pick his brains on disasters. And sure enough, Vinod poured his insights and wisdom on various types of disasters from earthquakes to fires, frequency and ferocity with which disasters strike, relief measures and most important Indian expertise in disaster management. I also learnt that minimising life and property loss through early warning systems is critical. Government spends a lot of money on relief but smarter way would be prevention. We have witnessed fury of nature in this monsoon season. And the phenomenon is global. Summer in Northern hemisphere has been severe. 

Vinod classified into floods, Landslide, Glacier Lake Out Floods (GLOFs), earthquakes, windstorms, forest fires, epidemics & biological disasters. Disasters today are result of climate change caused by massive human mistakes as well as shortsighted approaches by people coupled with laxity of city managements as was evident in water flooding witnessed in Pune recently. 

I understood that sensors (vibration, sound, thermal, magnetic radio and more) a couple with early warning systems are key to building technology and systems to monitor manage and mitigate losses from disasters. Presence of Dr. Samit Sen of IITB, an expert on Geo Spatial technologies, Raghu Iyer of Nevis Networks, one of the few who work on electronics hardware and of course Kavi a computer science expert ensured that we conceptualised what can be called as the strawman of technologies for early warning systems for disasters. 

Being an entrepreneur and part of TiE, I started looking for opportunities for entrepreneurs build systems to help Disaster Management. I am glad that FutureTech an industry vertical oriented conference by @TiEPune on Oct 18-19, 2019 has a special track on Disaster Management. The conference should open the door for entrepreneurs to leverage this massive opportunity.