Securosis Blog

Incite 12/8/2010: the Nutcracker

Mike Rothman · December 8, 2010

When I see the term ‘nutcracker’, I figure folks are talking about their significant others. There are times when the Boss takes on the role of my nutcracker, but usually I deserve it. At least that’s my story today because I’d rather not sleep in the doghouse for the rest of the year. But that’s not what I want to talk about. Let’s discuss the holiday show (and now movie) of the same name.

Ah yes, it’s that time of year. Time for predictions and pontification and soothsaying and all sorts of other year-end comedy. As I told the crowd at SecTOR, basically everyone is making sh*t up. Sure, some have somewhat educated opinions, but at the end of the day nobody knows what will kill us in 2011. Except for the certainty that it will be something. We just don’t know what that something will be.

My 2011 Security Predictions

Rich · December 8, 2010

  1. Someone will predict a big cyberattack someplace that may or may not happen.
  2. Someone will predict a big SCADA attack/failure someplace that probably won’t happen, but I suppose it’s still possible.
  3. Someone will predict that Apple will do something big that enterprises won’t adopt, but then they will.
  4. Someone will predict some tech will die, which is usually when a lot of people will buy it.
  5. Most people will renew every security product currently in their environment no matter how well they…

Speaking at NRF in January

Adrian Lane · December 8, 2010

I am presenting at the National Retail Federation’s 100th annual convention in January 2011. I’ll be talking about the past, present, and future of data security, and how new threats and technologies affect payment card security. I am co-presenting with Peter Engert, who is in charge of payment card acceptance at Rooms To Go furniture, and Robert McMillon of RSA. Robert works with RSA’s tokenization product and manages the First Data/RSA partnership. We’ll each give a small slide presentation on…

React Faster and Better: Introduction

Mike Rothman · December 7, 2010

One of the cool things about Securosis is its transparency. We develop all our research positions in the open through our blog, and that means at times we’re wrong. Wrong is such a harsh word, and one you won’t hear most analysts say. Of course, we aren’t like most analysts, and sometimes we need to recalibrate on a research project and recast the effort. Near the end of our Incident Response Fundamentals series, we realized we weren’t tracking with our project goals, so we split that off and…

RIP Marty Martian

Mike Rothman · December 7, 2010

OK, before you start leaving flowers and wreaths at Looney Toons HQ, our favorite animated Martian is not dead. But the product formerly known as Cisco MARS is. The end of life announcement hit last week, so after June of 2011 you won’t be able to buy MARS and support will ebb away over the next 3 years. Of course, this merely formalize what we’ve all known for a long time. The carcass is mostly decomposed by the time you get the death notice.

This morning Amazon announced that Amazon Web Services achieved PCI-DSS 2.0 Validated Service Provider compliance. This is both a very big deal, and no big deal at all. Here’s why:

Incident Response Fundamentals: Index of Posts

Mike Rothman · December 6, 2010

As we mentioned a few weeks ago, we are in the process of splitting out the heavy duty research we do for our blog series from the security industry tips and tactics. Here is a little explanation of why:

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.

Friday Summary: December 3, 2010

Rich · December 2, 2010

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.