February 11, 2008 - Volume 3, #13

Good Morning {!firstname}:
I need some help understanding the whole window treatment thing. I spent a good part of the weekend pulling down assorted window treatments and hanging new ones. What is it about curtains that make some people swoon? Personally, I just don't get it. But I was also the guy that used a Felix the Cat sheet hung with thumb tacks as a window shade until I was 25.

I think the root of this confusion is my hatred of clutter. I guess I'm becoming a minimalist in my advancing years. Going into someone's house and looking at all their do-dad's just makes me nuts. Give me 20 minutes and big Hefty bag and I'll take care of business. To each his/her own - I know, I get that - but it's still hard. So when I'm spending my leisure time putting up rods and hanging curtains - I'm just perplexed by the need of it all.

[1]Yet, I know I live with 4 other folks and they like assorted levels of clutter. The Boss tends to favor clean and contemporary decorating and she was very happy with the new window treatments. I don't think Felix the Cat would have gone over so well. There was a side benefit to my efforts over the weekend since I was able to make another deposit in the Jackass bank. That's an account that I can draw on when I'm a jackass and hopefully not end up sleeping in the guest room.

This kids vary widely. I'm surprised Leah can even get into her bed with the amount of crap (between dolls and little decorative pillows) she keeps there. I'm worried she'll end up in the guest room as well - ejected by her American Girl doll, who I suspect is planning a coup at this very moment.

Sam is in the middle, with a bunch of stuffed animals in his bed too. My personal favorite is his Mike Wazowski (from Monsters, Inc.) doll. Though I don't get how having that one eye glare during the night doesn't scare the crap out of him. And then there is Lindsay, who some days even forgets to bring one of her dolls into bed. It really is unbelievable to see how different the kids are. 

Enough about my window treatments at this point. Today the 2008 Incites hit the Street. Yes, my annual rite of predictions and trends. You know what that means, right? Tomorrow starts the Days of Incite. For the next two weeks, I'll be doing a detailed post each day decomposing each of the Incites and explaining how and why I think things are going to shake out in 2008.

I'm also making a new product announcement in the Pragmatic CSO family later today. I'll highlight that in tomorrow's TDI. Looks like it'll be a busy day, for a change.  I hope you enjoy yours.

 "Window Treatments" picture originally uploaded by ::Wendy:: [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

Tim Wilson does a good job of Tippett in 500 words [11] , but you should really consider the wisdom of his messages. Of course, a lot of folks that read TDI and a lot of the other bloggers I routinely point to already get this stuff. But Tippett was one of the first I know of to really hammer home these points. The problem is that it's a lot easier for customers to just buy a product and hope the problem goes away, rather than actually change the way they approach the problem. From a disclosure standpoint, I worked with Tippett at TruSecure and have been heavily influenced by his thinking and approach. It's funny that he still uses the same analogies that he was hammering back in 2003. But the messages still resonate - with me anyway.
Link to this [12]

now they have sliced the price of the old Postini services [13]. The basic anti-spam stuff is $3 per user PER YEAR. Add in virus detection and some simple outbound filtering and you are at $12 PER YEAR. Right, $1 smackerooni per month. That's maybe a third of what the other guys are getting for basic anti-spam. And it's not like there are significant switching costs. Just point your MX record at a different location. I suspect the mid-market is going to jump on this, if they can figure out that it exists. Maybe Google should run an AdSense program or something.
Link to this [14]

ALL Best-In-Class Companies Leverage Managed Security Services [15]..." Hmmm... What is a best in class company? And how do you define MSS? I know it's just a release and the vendor is trying to differentiate in a very crowded and confusing space. But still, I get pretty chapped when my research brethren go out there with positions than cannot possibly be defendable. I know much better than to use absolutes in any research. There are ALWAYS exceptions, therefore the statement "ALL" is wrong. Thankfully this got very little press coverage on Friday and I can only hope that the beat reporters decide to focus on something real, rather than this trumped up, totally unbelievable "research." I need to go take a shower. This is one of those cases where my profession is making me feel dirty.
Link to this [16]

The Laundry List

Top Blog Postings

http://jeremiahgrossman.blogspot.com/2008/01/technology-helps-but-people-matter-most.html [21]
Link to this [22]

http://www.computerweekly.com/blogs/stuart_king/2008/02/i-participated-in-an-interesti.html [23]
Link to this [24]

http://artofinfosec.com/45/google-trends-cissp-vs-cisa/ [25]
Link to this [26]

http://sm-blog.securitymike.com [27]

Check out the latest on the Security Incite blog
http://blog.securityincite.com/ [28]

Read the most recent Daily Incite
http://securityincite.com/security-incite-rants/daily-incite [29]