ComMetrics, a division of CyTRAP Labs GmbH, focuses on competitive benchmarking and social media analytics (e.g., developing the FT ComMetrics Blog Index – the industry standard for ranking corporate blogs of FT Global 500 and Fortune 500 companies’ blogs).

We have several job openings. Consider applying and read more about these opportunities below.

Who you are

- You are a student who has worked on some IT projects, possibly designing, implementing and supporting web-based software, blogs, etc.

What you will be doing
Your job entails support of CyTRAP Labs GmbH and the ComMetrics production infrastructure, including but not limited to the list below.

- Provide ongoing support of existing production infrastructures.
- Work with the Projects Manager and the Chief Technology Officer on planning and scheduling assigned service improvement projects and initiatives.

To make this a bit easier we have created two positions. Either one might be suitable for you. If you have a different combination of skills than listed below, please do not hesitate to apply anyway and talk to us about it… we always need motivated staff and your skills are valuable to us.

What you can do: Job A

- Web application development and server maintenance with emphasis on Apache and Debian-Linux.
-PHP, JavaScript and Java.

What you can do: Job B

- Design, CSS, HTML.
- Knowledge of CSS and remote server administration via FTP.

Other skills such as working with databases and SSH, are an asset but not a requirement.

These jobs can be done from anywhere in the world with a working internet connection, since our virtual team collaborates through the world-wide web. Since they are part-time, they perfectly suit any student looking to apply some of the skills you may be learning in school. And as a bonus, the jobs can help you pay those pesky bills!

Submit your application and apply TODAY!

To see what we do and find out more about us, register your blog at My.ComMetrics.com, and begin benchmarking your blog for FREE.

CyTRAP Labs GmbH focuses on developing tools and services addressing risk management and corporate governance. Our subsidiary ComMetrics is a trail blazer in social media analytics (e.g., developing the FT ComMetrics Blog Index – the industry standard for ranking corporate blogs of FT Global 500 and Fortune 500 companies).

Through My.ComMetrics.com, ComMetrics offers its clients the use of web-based software. Like the dashboard of your car, when used correctly, My.ComMetrics.com helps you make your corporate blogger’s journey through cyberspace safely and in a timely fashion, all while getting great gas mileage.

To help you blog more effectively, we provide you with SMART metrics (specific, manageable, actionable, relevant, trending performance measures) that follow the KISS principle (keep it simple, stupid).

Visit My.ComMetrics.com to register yourself, claim your blog and start tracking your performance – a straightforward dashboard for straightforward answers.

If you lack management support for your social media initiatives, then competitive intelligence is your new best friend.

My.ComMetrics.com provides with relevant blog metrics for diary, personal and business blogs – why not gain  insight instead of hindsight? Join our many satisfied customers (e.g., Financial Times case study).

Discover ComMetrics by taking advantage of our risk-free trial option now ==> it takes less than 5 minutes to start getting results.

Step 1: Sign up
Step 2: Claim your blog
Step 3: Begin benchmarking to improve

How it works – Watch the instructional videos!

Join our team – job openings

Article source:  CyTRAP Labs GmbH – ComMetrics – What we do well

Please read latest post about job openings ==> current job openings

To see what we do, register your blog at My.ComMetrics.com – benchmark your blog – sign up for FREE.

We have several job openings. Consider applying and read more about this opportunity below.

Who you are

- You have IT experience designing, implementing and supporting web-based software, high availability systems, and customer solutions.
- You have created web-based software solutions for all phases of a custom software systems development life cycle (SDLC).
- You bring knowledge of software testing practices and version control systems.
- You are comfortable taking the lead creating and improving technical solutions for the established business needs of the company.
- You have excellent verbal, written and visual communication skills.
- You can articulately communicate concepts and have the ability to clearly explain complex technology solutions to non-technical audiences when necessary.
- You place a premium on customer satisfaction.

What you will be doing
Your job entails support of CyTRAP Labs GmbH and the ComMetrics production infrastructure, including but not limited to the list below.

- Provide ongoing support of existing production infrastructures and ensure their day-to-day availability and health.
- Respond to alerts and take corrective action to ensure high-availability of our production environments.
- Create and maintain controlled repeatable QA environments and procedures.
- Measuring and ensure ongoing performance metrics are maintained for our production application.
- Support all security-related solutions, including as firewalls, vulnerability testing and intruder detection and response.
- Implement new technology solutions that support ongoing business needs.
- Work with the Projects Manager and the Chief Technology Officer on planning and scheduling assigned service improvement projects and initiatives.

What you can do

- Web and server development with emphasis on Apache and Debian-Linux.
- Scripting, PHP5, CSS, HTML, JavaScript and Java.
- MySQL database administration, troubleshooting and (fine-)tuning.
- Experience with CSS, SEO and remote server administration via SSH or FTP.
- Experience and demonstrated understanding of best-practice approaches to maintaining full-time, high availability, online web servers and back end database servers.
- Experience working with external software vendors and obtaining service and support.

Please note that we will not be sponsoring or relocating candidates for this part-time position.

Submit your application and apply TODAY!

Find out more about job openings and what happens after you apply.

Related to this post: our favorite WordPress plugins and what’s new at My.ComMetrics.com.

How do you rank compared to your competitors? This question is answered in part by the FT ComMetrics Blog Index, which ranks FT Global 500 and Fortune 500 firms’ corporate blogs. It will appear in the Financial Times newspaper’s regular supplement on Digital Business as well as on its webpage on Thursday, May 14.

You can download this document as a PDF file here:

-  Press Release – CyTRAP Labs and the Financial Times release the FT ComMetrics Blog Index (FTCBI)

More information about the index can also be found here: FT ComMetrics Blog Index – case studies (Kleenex, Coca-Cola, Daimler, Nike, Wells Fargo, etc.)

Our press releases are available here:  CyTRAP Labs – press releases

Relevant blog metrics for diary, personal and business blogs
Please subscribe now so you can claim your personal and/or corporate blog AND trace those that you want to compare yourself to.
For Twitter, please use #hashtag ➡ #FTCBI

My.ComMetrics.com – measuring blog performance

April 16, 2009 – progress report

Work on the FT ComMetrics Blog Index, which ranks FT Global 500 and Fortune 500 companies’ corporate blogs.

The 2009 index will appear in the Financial Times newspaper’s regular supplement on Digital Business as well as on its webpage (www.ft.com/digitalbusiness) on Wednesday, May 13.

What is My.ComMetrics.com useful for?
Bloggers, media and marketing experts use the web-based software at My.ComMetrics.com to

- benchmark and compare themselves against other blogs (chosen by the user), and
- measure blogs against standardized metrics.

This allows anyone to find out how well a blog is performing and what needs to be improved to increase your influence in the blogosphere.

How can My.ComMetrics.com help you?
My.ComMetrics.com provides you with benchmarks and statistics that are grounded in:

- the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) principle, and provide
- SMART (Specific, Manageable, Actionable, Relevant, Trending) metrics for web and blog analytics.

Our SMART metrics provide information that helps you make intelligent decisions to improve blogging effectiveness, as well as save time and resources.

You can register yourself so you can claim your personal and/or corporate blog. Even if you do not have a blog to benchmark, you can trace and track those blogs that you find interesting and see how they compare against others of your choice.

Registered users of My.ComMetrics.com can get a first peek at the FT ComMetrics Blog Index results RIGHT NOW. If you need more information about the FT ComMetrics Blog Index or the My.ComMetrics.com web-based benchmarking tool, please contact us:

For more information please contact:
Urs E. Gattiker, CyTRAP Labs, +41 (0)44 272 1876
Melanie Sartori, CyTRAP Labs, +1 (403) 381 0009

download this document as a pdf file

CyTRAP Labs has recently conducted on behalf of ENISA a stock taking of national policy and regulatory environments of 23 countries. Protecting our e-communication networks is critical in a society where we are becoming ever more dependent on communicating and exchanging data as well as information. Here we present you with the results of another dependability, reliability and resilience study about public e-communication networks we conducted on behalf of ENISA involving 21 Member States and 2 EFTA member countries.

ENISA is helping the European Commission, the Member States and the business community to address, respond and especially to prevent Network and Information Security problems.
Resilience of e-communication networks – particularly dependability and reliability – has been one of the core activities undertaken by CyTRAP Labs GmbH On behalf of ENISA we recently conducted a study regarding policy, technical and resilience issues for improving dependability of public e-communication networks.

Our team members were:

• Helga Treiber
• Outi Alapekkala
• Urs E. Gattiker

The study surveyed 21 EU Member States and 2 EFTA countries regarding their policies and activities for improving dependability and resilience of public e-communication networks. Since this information is now public we thought we share it with you. You can have a look at the ENISA webpage that provides you with a short summary about this project here:

Improving Resilience in European e-Communication Networks – ENISA presents its “Stock Taking of Regulatory and Policy Issues related to Resilience of public eCommunications Networks”

alternative download if above is too busy  (ENISA – 2 page summary about project – pdf)

If you want to have a look at the complete report – ideal for doing some searches on the pdf document – you can download the study from ENISA for free, of course, right here:

ENISA – Stock Taking of Member States’ Policies and Regulations related to Resilience of public eCommunications Networks – 318 pages – done by CyTRAP Labs GmbH on behalf of ENISA alternative download if above is too busy (ENISA report – 318 pages – pdf)

For each country the report shows you a summary at the beginning including: – who participated in the study, – which agencies are involved with network resilience in the country surveyed, At the end of each country report of between 12 to 18 or more pages you find more pertinent information such as: – reference list with urls to find the laws and regulations pertaining to resilience and public e-communication networks, and – additional resources – with urls. In turn, just browsing through this document and searching for some keywords will get you in adea what is happening across Europe. As well every country report where possible: – points out some of the things countries want to change to improve dependapility of public e-communication networks. Going through these pages provides you a rare glimpse at what is happening across Europe when it comes to improving robustness or dependability of public e-communciation networks. CAVEAT Each country approved the summary we included in the report. Hence, sometimes the words were ours sometimes not. As well, sometimes the responses might be straight forward and other times a bit more general to reflect political realities.

Measures are based on empiricism while metrics are a composite of measures. This affects how we benchmark social media efforts.

So what about your CEO’s blog is it worth the effort? We are working on tools that will help you answer these questions including metrics, benchmarks and rankings

Find out – read on we tell you the story.

The Financial Times has been publishing a few articles about Web 2.0 developments from experts in the field. I was asked to prepare an article myself and it just got published. So I thought I share the information with you.

Download the version as a pdf file here:

Financial Times – Is blogging good value for the C-suite? 2-pages

Get ComMetrics now! Contact us

Or read the article online here:

Read more on the Financial Times website

What is your thought on this?

Check out our social media blog that keeps you informed about the latest trends, tools and technologies – ComMetrics.com (enter e-mail – upper right and get it delivered directly to your in-box)

As part of ENISA Work Programme 2008, CyTRAP Labs has secured a contract from ENISA.

The work involves stock taking of the NIS (network and information security) regulatory framework related to the resilience of the public e-communications in the EU Member States.

Below we tell you more about this exciting job AND the CyTRAP Lab team delivering the output for this project.

Recently the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) sent us documentation regarding their call for tender: “for Stock Taking of the NIS Regulatory Framework related to the resilience of Public eCommunications in the Member States.”
We submitted a bid and were informed on May 15 that we had won. The kick-off meeting was held in Brussels on May 26.

What will we do for ENISA?

The work CyTRAP Labs will perform for ENISA is part of the Enisa Work Programme 2008 – 2.1 MB pdf file.

The study CyTRAP Labs will be conducting during Summer and Fall 08 is part of the
– MTP 1: Improving resilience in European e-Communication networks

Our services will focus on taking stock regarding regulatory work and challenges experienced by Member States and listed as WP1.1 (Work Package).

You can find more information about WP 1.1 by downloading this 2 pages out of the ENISA Work Programme 2008.

Stock Taking of the NIS Regulatory Framework related to the resilience of Public eCommunications in the Member States

Who is a member of our ENISA project team?

For this project we have a three member team that brings several decades of experience and in depth knowledge about the subject to this assignment. Members of the team are:

• Helga Treiber – senior consultant
• Outi Alapekkala – senior analyst
• Urs E. Gattiker – CTO

If you watch these pages or subscribe to the e-mail or RSS feed (subscribe) you will receive reports about this work in the future as they appear here in this part of cyberspace.

Also of interest:
InfoSec – follow us on Twitter	sign up to our alerts about zero-day exploits and newsletters here
CASEScontact follow us on Twitter	What is Twitter good for

Previously we addressed the blogosphere or mediasphere challenge:

7 reasons why building and hosting your corporate Wordpress blog is the best choice7 steps to success – organic web traffic that matters

expertise-driven blog versus content-driven marketing site – that is the question

Should you use a corporate blog ?

Some people have very strong opinions about this such Jakob Nielsen who says:

Blog postings will always be commodity content: there’s a limit to the value you can provide with a short comment on somebody else’s work. Such postings are good for generating controversy and short-term traffic, and they’re definitely easy to write. But they don’t build sustainable value.

Jakob Nielsen – Write Articles, Not Blog Postings

Do geographical location and language matter

We have pointed out in our previous post that in Europe at least, people are less likely to check corporate e-mail on weekends than during Tue through Thur. For other regions this might differ.

When will the blog be successful?

Apparently it’s really easy to get zillions of subscribers to any corporate blog. Just follow a few steps, work hard and write good content. I know this, because I read it every week on various pro-blogging sites which are keen to dispense the wisdom of their own success whilst making you feel inferior for having less than 20,000 RSS subscribers.

Get two good viewpoints about this challenge here:

Bryan Eisenberg

Jakob Nielsen

Bottom Line or WHAT IT MEANS FOR US BLOGGERS OUT THERE

What it comes down to is to is to provide

- in-depth versus superficial content

- original and primary postings versus derivative or reflective musings about other people’s research, AND

- driven by your staff’s expertise versus being driven by other news sites or outside events.

A philosophy we have been following with our benchmarking and ranking blog over here:

ComMetrics – measure the rest against the rest

And no:

Google, Digg.com and Twitter: Why such Drive-By Traffic is of Little Value

kind of traffic may do little to improve your sales.

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CyTRAP Labs invites you to get info about zero-day exploits, tools, benchmarking and regulatory intell, SEO marketing.

BETTER, just become one of our readers by subscribing right now to one or more of our highly acclaimed services.

====>

More information on this topic you can find here:

How to Move From Blogger to Wordpress in 7 Easy Steps

Thoughts on The Future of WordPress and MovableType

The Ultimate SEO Tool – Wordpress?
====>

We have talked about risk management before and shown you images about the near crashes by the SAS Dash 8 Q400 planes manufactured by Bombardier here:

- SAS risk management – after 2 crashes we expected proper risk assessment but got another crash-landing instead (UPDATE 1)

- risk assessment and risk management – Scandinavian Airlines fails to use the six-step process

- SAS risk management – after 3 near-crashes investors are paying the price for bad risk assessment

Last weekend Northern Europe was experiencing a low pressure system that caused strong winds. The storm, dubbed “Emma,” caused millions of euros in damage across Europe. It caused the deaths of at least 13 people.

Saturday an A320 from Lufthansa had a rough time trying to land at Hamburg-Airport.

See the video and some text right here:

- video captures near crash during x-wind landing of A320 in Hamburg

Incidentally, the footage shown with the above link is unlikely to make it into any commercials for Lufthansa.

Tata will make 500,000 of these Nano cars each year and once they become available used in India, they might cost little more than a motorbyke. But we have had affordable vehicles in the past that have been produced in the millions.

The Volkswagen Beetle made it to number 1 with 21mio, while the Ford T is a not so close number 2 with 15mio being sold.

If you cannot view the above image click – timeline with cars

The above timeline (taken from the FT (Jan 11, 2008, p. 3) is interesting because it also shows the car prices using converted exchange rates at the time. These prices were all well below Chery, Maruti or even the Tata Nano

The “People’s Car” is also the cheapest in the world at 100,000 rupees ($2500) – the same price as the DVD player in a Lexus.

Hence, while the Tata Nano seems to cost little compared to other cars sold today, it is quite pricey compared to the VW Beetle or the Fiat 500. So does it add many features that warrant such a steep price increased compared to the Trabant manufactured in East Germany at the time?

If you cannot view the above image click – Chery,Maruti and Tata Nano

So what do you get for your money? Well, the Tata Nano is 3 metres long, seats four comfortably or five at a squeeze (how many on its rough – remember Indian trains?), does 65 mph and aims to revolutionise travel for millions.

Tata cut costs by minimising components, particularly steel, and taking advantage of India’s low production costs. Because of its size, it uses less sheet metal, has a smaller and lighter engine than other cars, smaller tube-less tyres and a no-frills interior. The company has applied for 34 patents to cover its innovations.

But let us be clear, the lowest price version offers little more than just the basics and will, in its current form, unlikely to be sold anywhere else than India soon. But does it matter, the 500,000 annual production will easily be sold out to the growing Indian middle class.

CyTRAP Labs’ take on this

We think that the Tata Nano will have a great impact upon India’s already congested roads.

No doubt about it but how they might affect gasoline consumption considering how far ahead the U.S. is (see below) remains to be seen.

If you cannot see the above graphic you can get it here US is guzzling more than all the others (thanks to the Economist for creating this nice graphic)

The left bar above shows how much the U.S. consumes compared to many other countries. One explanation is surely the low price Americans pay at the gas pump to fill their Honda Civic. The bar chart on the right side of the above figure shows how much it costs to fill up a Honda Civic’s tank at the gas pump. Turks pay a hefty price compared to Saudi or US drivers.

Just to keep in mind, India does have (on average) the world’s most densely populated urban areas. It is exceeded only by Hong Kong and Macao, which are part of China.

Considering this, we wonder if Tata Nano driver’s will ever be able to drive at top speeds on those congested roads in India’s cities?

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PS 1. Who says Tata cannot produce quality products. Tata software helps Ferari’s F1 cars gain an edge over such rivals as McLaren Mercedes or Renault.

PS 2. The word Tata is an endearment for Grandfather in Mexico.

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If this post was helpful to you, please consider stumbling it or subscribing to feeds from CyTRAP Labs. Cheers.

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Derk-Jan Eppink, a Dutch civil servant and a journalist has written an account of his years working for the European Commission in Brussels. His book got some rave reviews from such illustrous people as Gideon Rachman (Financial Times). Rachman attests the author rare insight and having a witty conversational writing style that makes this book something special.Well we put it to the test and asked for a copy from the publisher in Belgium to check out and enjoy, so we thought. Originally, this book was written in Dutch to be translated into English (398 pages). So some things might have gotten changed during the translation process.We read the book from beginning to the end and must say that in various places Eppink has managed to take something that sounds very dull – European postal directive – and make it far more fun to read (going out with postal union representatives in Strassburg discussing the matter, of course)

But not all is fun. While calling the Commission ‘the Princess’ is funny for the first 50 pages it starts to grate after a while.

Eppink points a picture of the Commission that can be horrifying to a non-bureaucrat but when comparing his examples to what happens in Member States’ own agencies things might not be that bad.

On p. 337 Eppink talks about the CDU / CSU party apparachiks such as Helmut Stoiber or Angela Merkel and comes to the interesting conclusion (to put it politely) that thanks to their contacts in Brussels and wooing the people there these savvy people could claim an election victory in state elections.

Herr Roland Koch running a tough compaign right now to be re-elected in Hessen. His platform based on recent news reports about youth brutality in subway stations deals with crime prevention. Neither his visits to and contacts within the Commission will make him win or loose his re-election. Reading p. 338 of Eppink’s book, one could believe that it is the bureacr4ats in Brussels that will make the difference… We prefer to wait and see how the ballots will look like.

On p. 264-267 Eppink talks about a visit he made with his Commissioner Frits Bolkestein to Zurich having been invited bei the Neue Zuercher Zeitung (a well respected daily) to talk to some invited guests. His account of the visit is quite funny but at the same time he seems a bit full of himself. For instance, just because the Neue Zuercher Zeitung puts the Commissioner’s speech on p. 2 (grated a few days after he visited and made the speech) instead of p. 1 he seems a bit miffed. But even some of the illustrous speakers at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week did not make it on p. 1.

Most of what Eppink writes is quite interesting but besides being sometimes witty it is often without much depth and reminds us of children’s play chatter, part of the game but not necessarily earth shaking. As well, throughout the book we get a few anectodes from his younger days about how the young Eppink managed to start writing speeches’ ins for local politicians at a rather early age (e.g., p. 250).

If you know how the Commission works, this book will give you little what you do not already know. If you lack any insights about the ‘Princess’ workings, do not fear Eppink is hear. So this is a nice book to read before you fall asleep and if you withstand the fluff that comes up from time to time, take a chance and have a look

I passed on my copy to a European mandarin to read certain passages I had marked for her. She found them amusing but seems tto concurr that the book begins to grate after a while. hence, we disagree with Gideon Rachman that Eppink has written a genuinly entertaining book about the European Commission. While entertaining it might be on a few pages for sure, unfortunately, it lacks the substance and beef to bring it beyond a very personal and jaded account.

Life of a European mandarin
Inside the Commission
Derk-Jan Eppink, Lannoo, Brussels: Euro 24.95 plus shipping.

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_qacct=”p-39jM4zKqGuxmA”;quantserve();

xEver more financial institutions such as Bank of America – thought SMS would help but, Jyske Bank, Sydbank and UBS want their customers to use e-banking facilities. This helps reduce transaction costs for the bank and client while, hopefully, making it also more convenient for clients.Nonetheless, these banks including Sparekasserne, Nordea or Danske Bank may have to improve their security levels to safeguard their customer’s trust in the security and reliability of internet banking.The experts from CyTRAP Labs were asked about their expert opinion on these issues, particularly as they pertain to Denmark and its 70 cases of fraud during 2007.

As a result we were quoted and re-quoted in various news media around the globe including but not limited to The Netherlands and Denmark.

============>As you can see, 2008 started with a few events that are of considerable interest to risk and security managers including compliance officers. You can find out more what the media says about CyTRAP Labs using the hyperlinks below:media and press

• in the media
  • 2006
  • 2007
  • 2008 (you can find more here – regularly updated)

• what others say about us

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NEWS THAT MAKE A DIFFERENCE

Alerts, zero-day exploits advisories, risk tools, regulatory intell and SEO marketing news from CyTRAP Labs are trusted by the experts.
For instance, FiRST’s CERT members receive much of this material via the FiRST news and threat alert service.
Why not become one of our readers by subscribing right now to one or more of our highly acclaimed services?

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Find more infos about this topic here:

Press Release – Urs+Nahum’s Security Checklist

2008 CyTRAP Labs in the media

Regulation that matters? Online banking services – survey says: antifraud measures insecure

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While building and hosting a server solution can be more difficult, there are a number of reasons why companies should choose to host their own blog instead. Some of those services (e.g., Blogger) offer a limited set of features and/or prohibit placing ads on your site. It can take months or years to build an audience. Rather than eventually moving your site away from one of these services, you are better off hosting it with a reliable web host under your corporate domain.

User-friendly hosted systems (like Blogger, TypePad and Wordpress.com) are one option versus server systems (like Movable Type and Wordpress.org).

The list of reasons why you should host your own blog below is not arranged in any particular order.

CONCLUSION OR CyTRAP Labs’ take on this

For corporations, blogs provide a low-cost, low-risk way to communicate their messages and distribute content to brand enthusiasts rather than just consumers.As such, corporations must rethink the purpose of their blog – shifting from sales support to brand advocacy. By doing so, corporate blogs become a channel to engage brand enthusiasts rather than just consumers.

They also become a conduit to reach online influentials including non-corporate bloggers and impact key brand metrics through their use and distribution of content across their own networks.

PS

Many things can be done by a manual job where experts are not needed, such as reading the posts we link in this story. What you might need us and our trained staff for is to exercise judgment – judgment that is overriding whatever a pre-fab check list can give you – 7 steps to success – organic web traffic that matters

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====>

More information on this topic you can find here:

How to Move From Blogger to Wordpress in 7 Easy Steps

Thoughts on The Future of WordPress and MovableType

The Ultimate SEO Tool – Wordpress?
====>

Cyprus, Ireland, and Switzerland are the top three countries in a league table of European tax systems compiled by KPMG International, in which major business organizations across Europe assessed the attractiveness of their domestic tax regimes.

All three countries were rated highly for their combination of consistency in interpreting tax legislation, stability in resisting frequent changes to tax laws, and comparatively low tax rate.

The three least attractive countries were the Czech Republic, Romania and Greece. All three lost support for having high volumes of complex legislation, with frequent changes.

DOES IT SAY ANYTHING NEW?

The only redeeming feature was this comment by Sue Bonney of KPMG:

I was interested to see that a complex tax regime is seen as a hindrance to competitiveness, but relatively few people felt that a simpler system with a low rate can help make businesses more competitive. Governments across the world have been using tax as a lever to encourage inward investment for many years, but these results help to confirm that a benign tax regime is only part of the package which makes a business competitive. Good infrastructure, a high quality workforce and access to raw materials and markets are all equally important.

That sounds about right but who pays for good infrastructure, a high quality workforce and access to raw materials and markets? That is a question she clearly did not ask herself or ignored the answer to. Ms. Bonney of KPMG also made the following prescription:

These results help to illustrate just how much businesses across Europe dislike uncertainty and complexity. The volume of tax legislation is huge and its interpretation is often opaque. Simplification presents a real challenge for European tax authorities.

Which is not, of course, what the survey found. But it is what KPMG wants. KPMG is, after all, the biggest tax haven operator in the Big 4. We can agree with her statement that the volume of tax legislation is huge. However, those who interpret tax legislation often do so in an opaque manner. And tax opinions issued by the Big 4 to clients many are sometimes of poor quality technically. In fact, they are sometimes plain wrong and are almost invariably couched in caveats and disclaimers. All that makes these opinions unfit from the client’s perspective who is trying to get an answer to a burning question.

METHODOLOGY

These views were compiled from 402 interviews of tax professionals in multinational companies across Europe. Survey participants were asked how attractive they believed their country’s tax regime was compared with other European states.

KPMG took the percentage of respondents who thought key aspects of their domestic systems were attractive and subtracted those who felt they were unattractive, to give a net attractiveness score for each country.

Worst is that the study tells us nothing about how many people refused to participate in the study, in some countries we heard less than 6 people were asked ….. and the instrument or questions used for the telephone survey were not published.

Hence, this seems to be another type of ranking from one of the Big 4 consulting firms that is of neither great quality, substance nor does it provide new insights.

MEDIA INCLUDING NZZ Did WHAT THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO NAMELY

In the case of the Neue Zuercher Zeitung or NZZ for short (Switzerland’s most prestigious daily), the KPMG press release made it pretty much verbatim into the editorial content of the Wirtschaft (p. 23 – 2007-12-21) section.

The result Table as provided by KPMG was copied without even questioning its content and validity of data used to arrive at these rankings.

Not something one would expect of a high quality newspaper.

CONCLUSION or CyTRAP Lab’s take

These days nearly every big service firm produces some kind of of study about some type of issue. The study is outsourced to one of the survey firms that takes a few of its research staff to man the phone lines ….. and interview some people out of their proprietary dataset listing firms or people that can be used (remember when you got called the last time to participate in yet another study?) …. and voila, the client can write up another ranking that tells us little if anything but receives much coverage in the media.

Information derived from such work does neither help management cope better with risks nor does it facilitate making sound decisions about where to locate a business, for instance.

Sad is that a high quality newspaper such as the Neue Zuercher Zeitung does not have staff that can see when they have a lemon in front of them…. namely a study that does not merit being written about. But today nobody seems to have time to check up on facts and when it comes from one of the Big4 firms, it gets printed…. brand is everything while quality means nothing…

Get the full story here:

KPMG press release about tax havens in Europe – including summary table AND NZZ article – NO there is no more to be read for journalists either – this is all the info that one can get from KPMG!

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BE PREPARED FOR 2008

CyTRAP Labs invites you to get info about zero-day exploits, tools, benchmarking and regulatory intell. BETTER, just become one of our readers by subscribing right now to one or more of our highly acclaimed services.

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Häagen Dazs or Magnum ice cream – methodology, artefacts and bias

Schokoladen Test – Methoden mit Fragezeichen – Kassensturz und Ktipp

3 ENISA – awareness raising study – better prevention thanks to data crunching

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QUESTIONS WE ASKED KPMG ABOUT THE STUDY – 2007-12-30 – NO ANSWERs SO FAR

1) you got 402 responses, what percentage does this represent of the people you asked to participate?

2) how did Lighthouse, the firm that conducted the study on KPMG’s behalf select the people that were interviewed by phone?

3) how was the ranking exactly calculated – statistical issues – since the number of respondents in some countries are way below 10 = reliability of results?

4) what is the logic behind the way you calculated the index?

5) did you control for any variables that might have influenced your responses?

6) were the questions of this survey translated into different languages or was it done in English only?

….. without answers the these questions it is impossible to decide if this survey was done well enough to draw some conclusions from its findings.

But it surely was a great publicity stunt and many newspapers and their editors fell for it.

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