Part one in a three-part series about the information security industry money grab. Introduction NOTE: I covered some of these issues in my book; Unsecurity: Information Security Is Failing. Breaches Are Epidemic. How Can We Fix This Broken Industry? In this series, I’ll focus on three types of money grabbers: Those who will do anything and everything for your money, Those who sell snake oil, and…
Your cell phone buzzes, you look down and see “No Caller ID”, “Unknown” or maybe a weird number you don’t recognize. Do you answer, or do you just let the call go to voicemail? Some people, myself included, will let these calls go to voicemail. It’s not a bad idea to ignore calls from numbers you don’t recognize. Some people answer, they listen, and they…
A friend of mine brought something to my attention this week. He said he heard there’s a guy out there claiming there are unhackable companies. Me: Unhackable? Friend: Yep, unhackable. Me: What?! No way man. This can’t be true. Friend: Oh yeah, it’s true. Want me to send you a link? Me: Absolutely. I’ve got to see this. He sent me a link to a…
Does the all caps “CALL TO ACTION UPDATE” get your attention? It’s supposed to. The facts: The call to action still stands. Our municipalities are still under siege. The ransomware threat has far from abated. Too many communities are under-prepared. You aren’t powerless. You have options. You can sit there and do nothing, playing the victim. You can point fingers and complain, playing the critic….
Another city ransomware attack, another payment to the attackers. Another win for the bad guys, and another loss for the rest of us. The question is, are you going to do anything about it? This time the news comes from Lake City, Florida. The 12,000+ citizens of the small(ish) northern Florida town will foot the 42 bitcoin (~$500,000) bill for the city’s poor preparation. Actually,…
So, in case you haven’t heard, we have this problem. Yeah, there’s this thing called ransomware, and it’s sort of all over the news. The city of Baltimore is being held hostage by ransomware – The good: the city decided not to pay the 13 bitcoin (~$100,000 at the time) ransom. The bad: the city is still reeling, with the attack expected to cost more than…
Finally. I’m finally getting around to posting about this event. The fine folks of the Denver ISSA chapter invited me to speak at their chapter event on May 23rd. The event was a three-hour incident management workshop (titled Incident Management – Panic or Plan). ‘Wait! What?! Three hours?! Yes. These poor folks endured three hours of my preaching. Read on… About Denver ISSA The Denver…
I’m writing this article for two reasons. To give props to our community and to summarize the quality responses that I got to a recent tweet. Props First off, I’d like to give HUGE props to our information security community. Last week I posted the following on Twitter. I use Twitter like many people do, I’ll respond to interesting topics and post thoughts about things….