My First Video Interview

CEO

Last month my job title got changed from CTO to CEO.  I wasn't really looking for a new job and I am going to keep all the old tasks I had before, but I am still a bit excited about it. Chief Executive Officer sounds pretty cool and I am really looking forward to the big corner office, personal assistant, private jet, huge mansion…  –Hehe… not yet.

OK, so in reality, it might not be such a huge difference from my old job here at Versatile Security. I co-founded the company in 2007. I have been on the board and worked as CTO since the start. I have had plenty of influence on the large decisions in the company all the time. Now I think I need to focus on the small things, the small things that make the company execute as well as possible. Maybe that is what the E in CEO should stand for, Execution.

My team is fantastic. The individuals are motivated, skilled and hard working. The organizational changes needed are really very minor. We of course need to hire more resources, but first I will focus on transforming this fantastic team into a well-oiled money-making machine. My plan is to do this mainly by improving and expanding communication in all parts of the organization.

Check http://versatilesecurity.com/versatilesecurity-news.php or follow us on twitter (@versasec) to see how I and Versatile Security are doing. And, please wish me good luck with this new job, I've never done it before, so I might need it!

PS. Check out this article and learn about the similarities between ABBA and Versatile Security (?): http://www.getwakefield.com/2012/09/27/a-startup-follows-in-abbas-footsteps/

New York, NY

I’ve relocated to Manhattan and there are even press releases about it! :-)

Swedish press release: http://www.mynewsdesk.com/se/pressroom/versasec/pressrelease/view/versatile-security-och-omegapoint-samarbetar-i-usa-755889

English press release: http://www.mynewsdesk.com/pressroom/versasec/pressrelease/view/versatile-security-and-omegapoint-announce-joint-operations-in-the-us-755890

Here is the new office:

http://weworklabs.com/

Come visit me!

Press Releases and Quotes

Lately I have been tasked with doing press releases for my company. It is very interesting work, but not really what they taught us at KTH (my university), at least not in the classes I took. So, trial and error, as usual! A lot of the “errors” have been around the quotes; how they are formulated, by whom and exactly how the syntax should be.

Today we issued a press release, with a quote from a very prominent person… myself. : -) See it here:

English: http://www.mynewsdesk.com/pressroom/versasec/pressrelease/view/test-versatile-security-s-new-smart-card-management-demo-748876

Swedish: http://www.mynewsdesk.com/se/pressroom/versasec/pressrelease/view/testa-versatile-securitys-nya-smartkort-demo-748868

Just as I say in the press release, I am very excited about that we managed to make our demo easier to use, and that it is now quicker to get to test the important features. Of course the CEO likes that too, but maybe he is slightly less excited about the technical aspects, and we decided that a quote from me would be more fitting this time. Logical, but what is the correct way to do it? In some ways it is always most interesting with a statement from the CEO. If so, always get quotes from the CEO independent of the subject? Or should you use whoever has the highest klout score at a given time? I hope that there is no strict rule and that common sense is the way to do it, but I am not certain!   

Lukas is Back!

My dog Lukas is back! He arrived 24h later than expected at EWR today. SAS managed to forget to load him onto the plane at ARN when we traveled from Stockholm to New York yesterday!!! I was pretty close to freaking out when they told me while we were getting ready to land. I thought the steward was making a really poor joke when he said that he had some bad news and that my dog was still in Stockholm! I know that luggage can get lost during short connections and stuff, but how the hell can you lose a dog on a direct flight!?! SAS has some serious explaining and sucking up to do before we’ll ever fly with them again!

Fortunately Lukas the dog seems to have managed this challenge better than the rest of us and is now resting after his long journey. Great to have you back Lukas!

Less Content Makes a Great Web Site!

A nice and clean web site like this one http://www.wanglers.se looks great ! (Unfortunately the example I picked only have one page, so I guess the bounce rate must be very close to 100%… :-) But still, the point is that I prefer to visit very clean web sites with few links, no ads and not having to discover yet another “groundbreaking” menu navigation system. But I also have tons of content that I want to present on my web site... Maybe the days of building huge portals are over and we should just do separate pages and leave the navigation to the social networks. This is how I already surf the web most of the time: see something on twitter and click on it, determine that it is old news and back to twitter until the bus arrives or whatever reason I had for idling on twitter in the first place. –Just a thought and probably not a great SEO tactic.

Defining ’Smart Card Management System’

This week I found that Wikipedia didn’t include one of the most (if not the most) important terms in the world: ”smart card management system”. OK, it is not the most important in the world for most people, but for someone like me, who focus most of my time on this topic, it feels kind of important!

So, I decided to write an article on Wikipedia – my first. More work than I expected. I think it turned out OK, but maybe the references could have been better or removed. But the friendly reviewer kept asking for more references.

Here it is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_card_management_system

Please, if you have any comments, let me know!

Cheers,
Joakim

iPhone 5 Disappointment

Been looking forward to getting a new phone this fall - but it is not going to be an iPhone 5 apparently... -Disappointing! The iPhone 4S may be better than the previous model, but it still looks like a remote or a calculator. Maybe time to go back to SonyEricsson and get a new exciting and almost functional device every 6 months! Or is it time to go back to a phone with Microsoft OS. Don't like any of the alternatives, but staying with the iPhone 3GS now is just not OK for someone who loves new technology.

Hardware Secured Certificate Services Starting at €199

You setup a certificate authority in your domain to increase the level of security. But are you aware of the risks of not protecting the certificate authority’s keys? -If an attacker gets hold of the keys, the attacker has complete ownership of the domain, as all domain accounts can be impersonated.

The vSEC:ID Server Key product from Versatile Security, secures your certificate authority by using smart cards. Evaluate vSEC:ID Server Key for free from the Versatile Security web site:
http://versatilesecurity.com/versatilesecurity-vsec-id-serverkey.php