August 26, 2008 - Volume 3, #72

Good Morning:
As cool as the Olympics were, I'm a bit perplexed by some of the TV and media coverage. We got all Phelps, all the time (and with good reason), we got lots of ladies gymnastics (for good reason too), some Kobe and LeBron and a good amount of Bolt. All of this makes sense. But we got very little decathlon. I notice these things because the 1976 decathlon (in Montreal) was the first time I really remember following the Olympics.

Of course, that was the year that Bruce Jenner won and became a national fascination. I guess every Olympics has their big stars and unfortunately the guy that won the decathlon, Bryan Clay [1], isn't on the list. That's right, did you even know an American is the "world's greatest athlete?" I didn't.

Did you know that Bryan Clay took silver in Athens four years ago? Yeah, me neither. What happened to the world-wide fascination we had with the decathlon? Remember Dan and Dave, that Reebok ad campaign before the 1992 games? Then Dan didn't make the Olympic team and Dave sucked wind in Barcelona. Yeah, Reebok took it in the shorts on that one. Then Dan came back four years later in the ATL and took gold. Guess that was the first redeem team. What's Dan O'Brien doing nowadays?

I don't know why this is annoying me. There are a lot of athletes that didn't get much air time, unless you count CNBC coverage at 3 in the morning coverage. But the decathlon is something else. Or at least it used to be. Bruce Jenner's nose job and face lift (how else could the guy still look 35?) gets more coverage than the Olympic gold medalist.

In fact, I couldn't even find a picture of Bryan Clay with his gold medal. Not that I could use without paying a crap load to Getty Images. That's why I pulled this Bruce Jenner mural. It's all I could find that was sort of related to the decathlon. Bryan Clay needs to fire his marketing reps. He may make it onto a Wheaties box because every decathlete seems to do that, but no one will know who he is. And that's a shame because he accomplished something spectacular in Beijing. 

Have a great day. 

Photo: "bruce jenner mural" originally uploaded by MacQ [2]

Technorati: Information Security [3], CSO [4], Security Mike [5], Internet Security [6]

[7] The Pragmatic CSO: Available Now! Read the Intro and Get "5 Tips to be a Better CSO" www.pragmaticcso.com [8]

Get Your Special Report: 6 Easy Steps to Protect Your Identity and get access to Security Mike's Portal today www.securitymike.com [9] [10]

Top Security News

US justice system can't seem to figure out what to do with cyber-crime [11]. Thus, it will take some time to figure out how to properly gather evidence and prosecute these folks, and I'm sure many will walk on technicalities and win their trials because the prosecutors are still trying to figure out how to use email. So that means online criminals have a bit of runway before there is an occupational hazard of getting thrown in the slammer. What does that mean to you and your family? You can't count on the "system" to make things right, so you have to protect the people you care about yourself. Train them on how to detect fraud. Configure their machines securely. Monitor your credit cards and banking accounts frequently for signs of something funky. At some point, they'll figure out how to bring these folks to justice, but it will take a while.
Link to this [12]

new company called uTest that has built a community of sub-contractors to help customers test their applications [13]. It's a cool idea, especially the community aspect of it. Kind of like Elance (which I use to find designers), but applied to the application testing markets. These contractors beat on your application from all parts of the world. So you can get a real feel for how the user experience works in both Topeka and Timbuktu. You are also much more likely to find platform/browser specific issues via this method because you can assume the testers all use different technology platforms. It's not clear what kind of security testing they'd do, but that would be an interesting place to specialize and be able to charge significant premiums. But this seems to be a model with long term legs and why wouldn't it? Finding people is very hard, managing them is even harder. If these types of organizations have cracked the code on that, there is a lot of value there.
Link to this [14]

VeriSign is getting into the web SSO business with their Personal Identity Portal [15], which is described here by TechCrunch. They've got a long list of sites they already integrate with and that will grow over time. You are trusting VeriSign with your credential, but they are in the security business, no? Personally, I like to have control over my data - that's why I steer people towards either 1Password for Mac users or KeePass for Windows (I use both). But that's just me. If the alternative is to use your dog's name or your alma mater as your password for everything, then let VeriSign pimp out your passwords. More security is better than less security, even if it's not perfect.
Link to this [16]


The Laundry List

Top Blog Postings

http://andyitguy.blogspot.com/2008/08/im-not-expert-in-all-things-security.html [23]
Link to this [24]

http://securosis.com/2008/08/18/dont-sell-compliance-if-it-isnt-a-checkbox/ [25]
Link to this [26]

http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/004651.html [27]
Link to this [28]