Thanks to some dude who looks like a James Bond villain and rents rack space in a nuclear bomb resistant underground cavern, combined with a foreign nation running the equivalent of a Hoover mated with a Xerox over the entire country, “data leaks” are back in the headlines.
What a week.
Last Monday and Tuesday I was out meeting with clients and prospects and was totally psyched at all the cool opportunities coming up. I was a bit ragged on Wednesday, but figured it was the lack of sleep.
We are a full disclosure shop here at Securosis. That means you get to see the good, the bad, and yes, the ugly too. We’ve been pretty up front about saying it was just a matter of time before our stuff got hacked. In fact, you can check out the last comment from this 2007 post, where Rich basically says so. Not that we are a high profile target or anything, but it happens to everyone at some point or another.
I got email from friends this week about a web site that creeped them out. It’s called Spokeo, and it provides a Google-like search on personal information. Rather than creeped out, I was fascinated. Not to look for other people, but to see what the search found for me. I hate mentioning it as I am not endorsing the web site or service, but I can’t help my fascination at seeing what personal data has been collected and aggregated on me. I actually have a larger Internet fingerprint than I…
I used to be a real TV head. Before the kids showed up, the Boss and I would spend a good deal of every Saturday watching the 5 or 10 shows we recorded on the VCR (old school, baby). Comedies, dramas, the whole ball of wax. Then priorities shifted and I had less and less time for TV. The Boss still watches a few shows, but I’m usually along for the ride, catching up on my reading while some drivel is on the boob tube (Praise iPad!).
One of the concepts I use in my Pragmatic CSO material is a Day in the Life of a CISO. There are lots of firefighting and other assorted activities. I usually get a big laugh when I get to the part about groveling to the CIO and CFO for budget. Yes, I call it like I see it. But after seeing a post on budgeting by Ed Moyle from before Thanksgiving, I think it’s time to dig a bit deeper.
This is usually the time of year I write a how-to article on safe seasonal shopping. And some of it is the usual generic advice – use a credit card, don’t click email links, use merchants you trust, etc. – but I like to include specific advice to deal with new seasonal threats. Wading into the deluge of threat warnings about Black Friday shopping schemes this year, I found mostly noise. There are plenty of real attacks consumers should be worried about, but many which aren’t worth the…
Information Security Magazine’s November issue is available. In it is an interesting rehash of the security monoculture debate between Bruce Schneier and Marcus Ranum some 8 years ago. Basically the hypothesis was that if all your software is provided by one vendor, a single security vulnerability means everyone is vulnerable. The result is a worldwide cascade of failures. The term “domino effect” was thrown around to describe what would happen.
You may have noticed we’ve renamed the React Faster and Better series to Incident Response Fundamentals. Securosis shows you how the security research sausage gets made, and sometimes it’s messy. We started RFAB with the idea that it would focus on advanced incident response tactics and the like. As we started writing, it was clear we first had to document the fundamentals. We tried to do both in the series, but it didn’t work out. So Rich and I re-calibrated and decided to break RFAB up into…
Though I have tailed off a bit from my ridiculous pace of two years ago, I still go see a lot of live music. Although many of these acts make a mint, it’s not an easy life. I can only imagine how difficult it is to be on the road for months at a time. It’s hard enough for me, and I’m only gone one or two nights at a time. Though it’s not like I’m staying at the Ritz every night (don’t tell Rich I’m staying at the Ritz, okay?).