We read it everywhere: “compliance is not enough”. “Security must be more than compliance.” Granted. When the phrase “checking the box” only means working from a compliance checklist and never looking at how your servers are configured, you are vulnerable. When security professionals point this out, they are responding to the well intentioned attitude of … Continue reading
Category Archives: Cybersecurity
How to lie with risk analyses
How to lie with statistics was written by Yale Professor Darrel Huff in 1954. Now, 60 years later, many things he described as misuse of statistics are common place. He considered it ridiculous, for example, to take the combined years of work experience of the people at a company and add them together and say that the … Continue reading
A new role in data privacy: the searcher
The EU’s efforts to define a right to be forgotten and the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision about how privacy is protected on cell phones go hand in hand. They remind us that the medium is still the message and that there is a new role in discussing data access and control. Why connect these … Continue reading
Best…Practices…Ever
Just like common sense isn’t always common, best practices aren’t always. The best. This matters when describing security controls. And since it seems to be a professional trade secret, I want to come clean about it. There are at least three qualitative ways to describe a security control: How much it complies with something How … Continue reading
One thought on the phrase “critical infrastructure”
Almost all infrastructure is critical to somebody. Just saying. Continue reading
The other shoe drops: NIST issues version 1.0 of the Framework for Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity
It’s ironic that the new publication from NIST does not have an 800 series numeric designation. Not that it needs to, but here we all are using those numbers as shorthand (e.g., “I took an 800-30 July 2002 approach because revision 1 from 2012 just seemed too complex for the environment”, “We are looking to … Continue reading
That’s what I’m talking about
There it was in the Times this morning. A piece by Professor Peter Ludlow of Northwestern University. Dr. Ludlow is right there doing just what this blog tries to do. The professor is far more articulate than I of course. But he’s read Schneier and Hobbes (and no doubt many others) and sees how they … Continue reading
Dedoméno
Socrates happens on his old friend, Dedoméno. He makes a new friend and has a conversation. DEDOMÉNO: Socrates, it is a pleasure to see you on line SOCRATES: Dedoméno, it is a surprise to see you. I thought you were away. DEDOMÉNO: Just so, Socrates. But I am visiting my friend Clapper. SOCRATES: Clapper? The famous … Continue reading
Adequately, revisited
(re: what a “senior-level defense official” said about Mr. Snowden) Those who speak for large entities, governments, corporations, etc., even when they speak anonymously, tend to make some assumptions that most of us cannot make. The first is that they can state the obvious as if it is a tremendous revelation because denying the obvious … Continue reading
Let’s stop measuring risk
Ok, I don’t quite mean that. What I mean is let’s stop using residual risk as the final product of the risk measurement calculation. Let’s consider a more pragmatic formula. This is going to seem sacrilegious to NIST and the VERIS guys will probably just think I am being quaint, but I am serious. I … Continue reading
{Cyber Security} 