Good Morning:
When was the last time you used a pay phone? For me it was a LONG time ago. I'm not sure why I thought about that, but sometimes entire industries just go away and we hardly notice. Pay phones were a very big business for the phone companies many years ago. I remember having my trusty phone card always by my side and finding those germ-ridden phone boxes wherever I could to check in.

Yes, this was before cell phones became ubiquitous and Blackberry's made 24 hour connectivity not only possible, but connected. This is why I always tell everyone to question everything. I'm sure the phone executives didn't figure their cash cow pay phone business would just go away. Even early in the cell phone revolution. I still used my calling card in hotels because the cell phone was too expensive to use all the time. Now, not so much.

So what can kill your business? What will you do if your main cash cow just goes away? If you work for a big business, these questions may not be that relevant (since I doubt a company like GE is going away, even if a portion of their businesses), but if you work for a small business - it certainly is relevant. I see this every day. Companies that were great businesses are rendered obsolete. And the businesspeople either adapt or they die.

Darwin would be proud. He was right. Have a great day.

Incite #7: The SDLC is your friend

As innovation in web application scanners is crushed by consolidation and web application firewalls still can’t find its sea legs, security professionals finally get religion about building secure applications, largely to avoid the PCI stick in the eye and embracing the reality that applications remain the path of least resistance. A long, hard cultural struggle ensues between security and software development personnel, but by focusing on building the most critical applications securely, the tide turns regarding the secure systems development lifecycle (SDLC).

Read the original Days of Incite post on this topic.

6-month grade: C

I curse the PCI 6.6 clarification. Ugh. It was that one little clause of either WAF or code reviews/SDLC to be compliant with 6.6 that torpedoed this Incite. Fact is, I've written a lot about the fact that most organizations will opt for the path of least resistance, and that usually means a box - as opposed to a process change. And a WAF is a box, and an SDLC is a process change. Guess which one wins, when deemed reasonably equal in the eyes of the assessor?

Now has their been a lot of innovation in the WAF space? Not really. But who cares. It's the path of least resistance for many trying to outrun the specter of PCI - so it's not only have WAFs found their sea legs, but you are seeing integration with web app scanning and other parts of the eco-system. By the way, if being wrong about an Incite means things are moving forward - then I'm cool with it.

But what about secure development practices? What about SDLC and code reviews and the like? Yep, they are still important and I think that implementing these concepts now will pay dividends for years down the road. And I also know it's hard and that many dev teams will be resistant to changing the way they do things. All I can say is to keep fighting the good fight and focus. 

One approach is to build up a grass roots effort by focusing on those apps that directly handle critical data. You aren't going to totally and fundamentally change things overnight. Nor should you. Some apps don't need to be overhauled, since they are either not exposed or they don't handle sensitive data. But for those that do, keep banging away. Yes you get a headache, and probably a callas on your forehead. 

If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.

Photo credit: "Path of Least Resistance" by kisses are a better fate than wisdom