As we mentioned when introducing this series on fact-based network security, we increasingly need to use data to determine our priorities. This enables us to focus on activities that will have the greatest business impact. But that begs the question: how you determine what’s important? The place to start is with your organization’s assets.
The Boss and I have been getting into Fallen Skies lately. Yeah, it’s another sci-fi show with aliens trying to take down the human race and loot our planet for our resources. They’d better hurry up, since there may not be much left when the real aliens show up, but that’s another story. In the last episode we saw, the main guy (Noah Wyle of ER) made the point that our kids are our future, and we need to keep them safe. That thought resonates with me, and thankfully I’m not dealing with aliens…
Every so often, the way security marketeers manipulate words to mislead customers makes me cringe. I’m not going into specifics because that isn’t the point. I just want to clear up some terminology that many security companies misuse, which really makes them look silly.
Hey everyone,
Just a quick announcement that we are holding another CCSK training class in a few weeks. This one is in the DC area (Falls Church) and includes the Basic, Plus, and Train the Trainer options.
It seems like BigData is all the rage. With things like NoSQL and Hadoop getting all the database wonks hot under the collar, smart forward-thinking folks like Amrit and Hoff increasingly point out the applicability of these techniques to security, and they’re right. I certainly agree that many of these new technologies will have a huge impact on our ability to figure out what’s happening in our environments. And not a moment too soon.
It’s that time of year again. It’s time for me and most of the Securosis crew to travel to cooler climes and enjoy the refreshing breeze of the Nevada desert. Well, it’s cooler than Phoenix, anyway. Yes, I am talking about going to the Black Hat and Def Con security conferences in Las Vegas this August 1-7th. Every year I see something amazing – from shipping iPhones loaded with malware to hack whatever passes by to wicked database attacks. Always educational and usually a bit of fun too. It is…
As you can tell from our activity on the blog, we’ve been in the (relatively) slower summer season. Well, that’s over. Today we start one blog series, and another is hot on its heels (probably starting within 2 weeks). With our research pipeline, I suspect all three of us will be pretty busy through the fall.
We’ve gone round and round on the challenges of doing security. As Shack says, your users just don’t give a f***. Actually you need to read Dave’s post. It lays out a lot of the issues we face every day. I’ll rephrase Dave’s point a little differently: apathy rules, and always will. Your employees are not paid to worry about security. They are paid to do their jobs, and more often than not security gets in the way of their actual responsibilities. Remember – the cold, hard truth is that security…
The NFL lockout is over. Hallelujah! I know nothing substantial was really lost, besides the Hall of Fame game, but the folly of billionaires bickering with millionaires annoyed pretty much everyone. I believe more folks were hanging on this negotiation than the crap going on in Washington over the debt ceiling. It seemed like a tug of war gone wild, with both sides digging in. Until they finally reached a critical point, when real money was at stake, and amazingly the deal got done. What’s…
I know we all have compliance fatigue. Some worse than others, but we all rue the day security became more about compliance and getting the rubber stamp than actually protecting something. The pragmatist in me continues to accept our lot in life and try to be somewhat optimistic about it. But at the end of the day, we (as an industry) pretty much suck at protecting things, and there are no real catalysts to change that.