August 20, 2007 - Volume 2, #122
Good Morning:
Gluttony. That's definitely my favorite of the seven deadly sins [1]. Though Sloth is
up there, but my kids have a different idea most days that make
being a sloth pretty hard. I kind of dig greed at times as well, but
I'm working on that. But back to gluttony because I just got back from
a boy's weekend in NYC and it was definitely gluttonous.
Though not as gluttonous as we expected, due to an unexpected curve
ball
thrown by Mother Nature that beaned the air traffic control system
right in the head. We suffered from Luger Interupptus
on Friday night because we couldn't get to the city for our 8:45 pm
reservation at Peter Luger's [2]. To provide some
context, our flight was scheduled for 1:45 PM. After two boardings and
unboardings, a trip to the tarmac (to wait for almost 90 minutes) and
then a line of about 30 planes backed up heading to the northeast - we
finally got to NYC at 10:15 PM. Only 6 hours late. Big bummer. I guess
we'll hit Luger's next time and make the reservations for
Saturday night.
We didn't let that get us down, although we could have. Thankfully my
ATL posse (and the assorted family and friends we had meet us at our
varied events) is pretty even keeled, so we kind of dealt with it. The
rest of the weekend was great. As you tend to do in NYC, you eat too
much, drink too much, and stay out too late. 36 hours of gluttony.
That's what boy's weekends are for, no?
On Saturday the weather was glorious. Mid-70's, sunny and just awesome.
We started at Carnegie Deli [3] for a late AM
breakfast. Of course there are less "touristy" delis, but one of the
group hasn't really toured NY, so we wanted to show him the sites. Then
we headed up to the Upper East side for some cocktails on our way to
the Yankees-Tigers game. One of my boyz is a huge Detroit fan and
another a big Yankee fan. The Detroit fan was a bit sad after the game,
but it was nothing that 20 beers didn't solve. We then grabbed some
pizza (yes, the pizza everywhere else just sucks) and then partied in
the Village until... well I'm not sure when we got back. Yep, it was
that kind of night.
Then a NYC bagel on Sunday AM and back to the airport to resume real
life. NY and I have a love-hate relationship. I hate the lifestyle, but
love the food, culture and activity. So it's a great place to visit,
but I can't imagine living there again. There are people that can't
imagine not living in NYC, but I'm not one of them. I'll just visit a
few times a year and enjoy the balmy (I mean hot as balls) weather and
more laid back lifestyle in
the South - thank you very much.
It'll be a full week of activity as I finish up my summer project. Busy
busy. Have a
great day.
Technorati: Information
Security [4], CSO [5]
 [6] |
The
Pragmatic CSO: Available Now! Read the Intro and Get "5 Tips to be a Better CSO" www.pragmaticcso.com [7] |
Top Security News
Sourcefire has caught a case of clams with
their ClamAV purchase [8] taking out the open source AV project.
Of course the open source yenta [9] has a lot to say
on the deal, and he's largely right. Sourcefire knows how to monetize
open source and they are going to do that with ClamAV. Does this get
them into the UTM space as many are speculating? No. If they were to
buy the IPTables project and OpenVPN, then perhaps then. But having
an AV engine run on an IPS box is not UTM. The good news is that
Sourcefire is doing something. The bad news is that this deal isn't
going to move the needle on making them a long term power in the
network security space. Good try, but no cigar.
Link to this [9]
As this SearchSecurity post indicates, there
are some real customer drivers behind securing the database. [10]
It's not the first thing a customer should do, but as they look to lock
down for PCI and the like, it's definitely something to consider.
Likewise DLP is over-hyped, but also solves a problem. That market is a
bit further off from where I'm sitting and competition is increasing. Chris Harrington rants a bit about the space
on his blog [11]. Of course there is NAC, but I don't tell my
friends to enter that space now. Too much hype, too much competition.
Those markets are about as fun as a root canal, although I do know some
folks that dig gut-wrenching pain.
Link to this [11]
this interview of a Cisco wireless exec
talks about the stuff they've built in for security [12]. Now I'm
not saying that Cisco is the end all be all and everyone else should
just give up. Folks like Aruba have built good companies filling in the
gaps. But they are a broader wireless infrastructure player, not a
security specialist and they are doing acquisitions to bolster their
internal security prowess. The big objection I hear from wireless
security players is focus.
"Big companies like Cisco aren't focused on wireless security and our
stuff is more secure and better" is a pretty common refrain. Then I go
into my "good enough" spiel and remind these folks that the big guys
will be good enough for the vast majority of the market. So if you are
on the end-user side, find a solution that meets your needs. There is
no award for getting the "most" secure stuff, if your requirements are
more modest.
Link to this [12]
The Laundry List
- Skype still down, Patch Tuesday the cause? Who knows, who cares? It just underscores the need for Plan B for everything. You never know when your communications will be impacted and you need to be ready. - The Register coverage [13]
- A secure VoIP network? This Enterasys bundle seems more like bandwagon-jumping, but it indicates the kind of solution packaging you'll see a lot more of in the coming year as big companies with lots of products try to figure out more efficient paths to market. - NetworkWorld coverage [14]
- It's SMART not to take down your critical networks by scanning. Cisco releases a passive mapping tool via Open Source. Maybe IOS will be the next thing open sourced. HA! - LiquidMatrix blog [15]
- Academia support groups start your engines. Vista will be appearing on a campus network near you, and it'll break things. Probably lots of things. - SearchSecurity coverage [16]
Top Blog Postings
http://layer8.itsecuritygeek.com/index/layer8/introducing-the-bsofh/#When:14:23:00Z [17]
Link
to this [17]
announcing their acquisition of Determina [18].
Doing a kind of Google-like, we'll buy something and build it in, the
plan
evidently is to use Determina's memory IPS capability to further
protect the hypervisor from security attacks. Will it work? Who knows?
But the fact that VMWare is even doing this deal indicates that they
understand that their business is all about trust. Do you trust that
they hypervisor is secure? Do you trust that it's not compromised, thus
pwning my infrastructure at the bare metal layer? If a big time
security issue was found in the hypervisor, there would be a run on the
bank and the market cap losses would be measured in 10 figures. Maybe
11 figures. So spending a little to try to get out ahead of the curve
is a good idea. But as Hoff discusses in a broader post about
virtualization security, it's not clear what scraps will be left on the
table for anyone else.
http://rationalsecurity.typepad.com/blog/2007/08/oh-snap-vmware-.html [19]
Link
to this [19]
http://webworkerdaily.com/2007/08/15/keeping-your-public-wi-fi-sessions-secure/ [20]
Link
to this [20]