As I mentioned, I’m running a half marathon for Team in Training to defeat blood cancers. I’ve raised a bunch of money and still appreciate any donations you can make. I’m very grateful to have made it through my training in one piece (mostly), and ready to go. The race is this coming Saturday and the final two weeks of training are referred to as the taper, when you recover from months of training and get ready to race.
Putting all your eggs in one basket is always a little disconcerting. Anyone who works with risk is always wary of reducing options. So I am never surprised when clients ask about alternative cloud providers and try to design cloud-agnostic applications.
I wrote an article over at TidBITS today on the news that Zerodium paid $1M for an iOS exploit.
There are a few dynamics working in favor of us normal iOS users. While those that purchase the bug will have incentives to use it before Apple patches it, the odds are they will still restrict themselves to higher-value targets. The more something like this is used, the greater the chance of discovery. That also means there are reasonable odds that Apple can get their hands on the exploit, possibly…
Last week we learned that not only did Symantec mess up managing their root SSL certificates, but they also botched their audit so bad Google may remove them from Chrome and other products. This is just one example in a long history of security companies failing to practice what they preach. From poor code development practices to weak internal controls, the only new thing in this instance is the combination of getting caught, potential consequences, and a lack of wiggle room.
For those who skip the intro, the biggest security news this week was the passage of CISA, Oracle’s… interesting.. security claims, more discussion on encryption weirdness from the NSA, and security research getting a DMCA exemption. All these stories are linked down below.
I have talked a lot about this, but I don’t think I’ve ever posted it here on the blog.
I am consistently amused by people who fear moving to the cloud (and by people who take random potshots at the cloud) because they are worried about a lack of security.
In my recent paper on cloud network security I came down pretty hard on hybrid networks. I have been saying similar things in many presentations, including my most recent RSA session. Enough that I got a request for clarification. Here is some additional detail I will add to the paper; feedback or criticism is appreciated.
About two years ago I was up in Toronto having dinner with James Arlen and Dave Lewis (@myrcurial and @gattaca). Since Dave was serving on the (ISC)2 Board of Directors, and James and I were not CISSPs, the conversation inevitably landed on our feelings as to the relative value of the organization and the certifications.
Every week, we here at Securosis like to highlight the security industry’s most important news in our Friday Summary. Those events that not only made the press, but are likely to significantly impact your professional lives and, potentially, the well-being of the organization you work for.
It has been a while since I’ve mentioned my gang of kids. XX1, XX2 and the Boy are alive and well, despite the best efforts of their Dad. All of them started new schools this year, with XX1 starting high school (holy crap!) and the twins starting middle school. So there has been a lot of adjustment. They are growing up and it’s great to see. It’s also fun because I can start to pollute them with the stuff that I find entertaining.