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The Daily Incite - 11/12/08 - Reality Check
November 12, 2008 - Volume 3, #88
Good Morning:
It's time for a reality check. The US (and seems like much of the
global economy) is clearly in a recession and perhaps even worse. That
means companies are going to be streamlining their functions, wringing
costs out, and realigning how they do things. Smart companies invest in
taking market share during downturns, but they also make sure that
existing operations are running optimally. On the other hand, not so
smart companies just cut (seemingly) indiscriminately. 
So what does that have to do with you? Basically you are at
risk. That's right, we all are. In this kind of environment, you CANNOT
make assumptions about whether your organization shares your opinion
about your value. So it's time to revisit how you quantify your value
to the organization and what kind of accomplishments you've achieved
this past year.
It's almost salary review and bonus time (if you work on a calendar
year), so it's not a bad time to go through the process now anyway.
Basically, this is Career Management 101. If you expect your boss (or
bosses boss) to be watching your back, you may be sorely disappointed.
You see, most people spend most of their time watching their own back.
It's just human nature.
Which brings up the complexity of actually showing value in a security
role. It's really hard to quantify and most of the senior team doesn't
care. Until an incident happens and then they care a lot. That's why I
am always harping on a strong security program. With success criteria,
milestones, and the requisite relationship building at the senior
level. If you are invisible, you just become a name in a spreadsheet
with a lot of names that are shown the door. If you are part
of the team, it's not as easy to make that call.
So be a little proactive this week and start the process of tooting
your own horn, working your contacts, and making sure the senior folks
feel the love. Better that than trying to find another gig.
Have a great day.
Photo: "Reality Check" originally uploaded by aldrea
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Mike, Internet
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Incite 4U
Wow, a lot of stuff piles up when you don't hit your reader
for 4-5 days. After wading through a pile of crap, I've got a lot to
talk about. It'll take me a few Incites to get through everything.
- Yes, it can happen to you. Looks like neither the Obama or
McCain campaigns were reacting faster, since the FBI had to tell them they'd been owned by
some foreign government (allegedly, of course). But it
highlights the fact that if someone wants to get into your stuff, they
are going to. Period. So you need to be able to detect funky activity
(like important policy documents been moved to outside services) and
investigate quickly. I can tell you that it's unlikely the FBI will
proactively alert you, like they did the campaigns.
- Looks like a new new thing is strong authentication for
SaaS offerings. I've seen a few start-ups targeting that space
(TriCipher and Symplified), but the big dogs are coming home. VASCO announces an initiative to extend
their authentication infrastructure to the cloud. It seems
more like fluff and strategic intent, but it's clear none of these
folks that make a lot of money milking tokens are going to give up
their cash cow easily.
- I'm with Imperva's Sharon on his point that you
should test your applications after every change. Besides the
fact that the PCI powers believe it's the right thing to do, it
actually is. Software is pretty complicated and changing it usually
results in a bunch of regression problems that can create
vulnerabilities. Actually, you don't have to test after you make an
application change. You can wait for the bad guys to let you know
you've made a mistake. And they will.
- Regardless of what Stiennon thinks, "consolidation"
continues unabated in the security space. Now it's Marshal and 8e6 joining together as a
"merger of equals." Equals of what is the question, but
strategically it does make sense since email and web filtering are
coming together as this "content" security layer leveraging common
service such as reputation.
- Hopefully you all have added the eIQviews
blog feed to your reader, so you can get more Rothman all the
time. Our compliance evangelist, John Linkous, is doing a series on
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) over the past week and
will finish that up with two more posts. The first two (Part 1 and Part 2) deal with defining SIEM
and pinpointing some of the issues. That miraculously enough eIQ
solves. :-) How bout that marketing puke!
- Is SRP good enough? eWeek takes a look at Microsoft's Software
Restriction Policies, which is simplistic white listing. I've
been pretty vocal as to the importance of white listing moving forward
and it's good to see Microsoft pushing forward on this. As a feature,
of course, which means the independent vendors doing this need to
continue pushing on additional value, and then hope that Big AV
realizes they need this to get a deal done.
- Is a content pirate getting you down? I tend to just
disregard when some unscrupulous folks syndicate my feed and sell
advertising around it. But if you are a bit more vindictive than I
(though I have my moments), you can take an approach like Ian Lurie,
who maps out a path (which anyone can do) to make it pretty unsavory
for someone to steal your stuff.
- The more things change... Secure Computing recently did their Q3 threats report and as much as many voted for change - it's still more of the same. Though political attacks predominated, we still have to pay attention to email security. Or run the risk of repeating history.
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