Nearly everyone in the United States (and probably elsewhere) is infected with the Epstein-Barr virus at some point in their life. Most people will never develop symptoms, although a few end up with mono. Even without symptoms you carry this invasive genetic material for life. There’s no cure, and EBV causes some people to develop cancers and possibly Multiple Sclerosis, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and other problems. Those later diseases are likely caused by some other precipitating even…
“All cloud security failures are IAM failures, and all IAM failures are governance failures." — me on Twitter (too many years ago to find)
Over 15 years ago (pre-Blip) I wanted to do something fun and casual for friends and Securosis readers at the annual RSA Conference… that I, as a budding entrepreneur, could actually afford. I started calling around and found a little place called Jillian’s right near the conference willing to open up early and serve breakfast for a reasonable rate. We ended up with around 50 people dropping in and out over those few hours, just mostly sitting around a table talking about whatever.…
As any long-time readers know, I constantly abuse my past experiences and hobbies to try and make my current work sound WAY more interesting than it probably is. Or maybe it’s just an ego thing, I don’t want to think too hard about it. But, on occasion, lessons from my parallel lives actually inspire some original work. As a paramedic and a pilot I have had to memorize many dozens of mnemonics, and I’ve forgotten many more. Mnemonics are proven to be highly effective memory…
I’m pretty excited about this one. We are finally releasing version 2.0 of the Cloud Security Maturity Model. This is the culmination of nearly 9 months of research and analysis, a massive update from the original released in 2020. The tl;dr is that this version is not only updated to reflect current cloud security practices, but it includes around 100 cloud security control objectives to use as Key Performance Indicators — each matched 1:1 (where possible) with a technical control you…
This post isn’t about some fancy new research. Consider it a friendly nudge to floss. I’m pretty Type A about backing up and have data going back 20+ years at this point. I’m especially particular about my family photos. Until yesterday (this is called foreshadowing) my strategy was:
After 25 years in technology, mostly in security, I recently realized I’m regressing. No, not in terms of my mental acuity or health (although all of you would be better judges on my brain function), but more in terms of my career. And no, I don’t mean I’m going back to the Helpdesk… and according to my children and most of my family I never really left anyway. Not that I’m paid for it. Well, sometimes with some cookies. But never enough cookies. It’s just…
I started a blog in 2006. This blog, to be precise. I kinda just wanted a blog. Blogs were cool. Twitter wasn’t really a thing yet. YouTube was only like a year old. The iPhone was hiding in an engineering and design lab. I didn’t expect securosis.com to be around 18 years later. I certainly didn’t expect it would become my full time job for 15 of those years. I most definitely didn’t expect to take on partners, spin out a product startup, have kids, lose my hair,…
What a long, strange trip it’s been over the last 3 years. In fact, the last time I saw many of you was at the last Disaster Recovery Breakfast in 2020. Within two weeks of that event, the world shut down due to COVID. Well, a lot has changed since then. DisruptOps was acquired by Firemon in September 2021. In early 2022, Rich decided he wanted to see our cloud security vision through and dedicate his full-time efforts to the Cloud Defense product. In July of 2022, I decided to partner with…
The phone rang. On the other end, I heard a booming voice many of you are familiar with. “Hey Mikey! What’s shaking? What’s your plan now that Rich is with Firemon?” It was Alan Shimel, my good friend and head of Techstrong Group. It was maybe 10 minutes after Rich’s announcement had hit Twitter. I told Alan I would stay the course, but he had other ideas. “We should do something together. Think about it.” So I did. We had a call a few days later and started sketching out what it would look…