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The UNSECURITY Podcast – Episode 86 Show Notes – Women in Security Pt3

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Hoping everyone reading this is healthy and doing well. Losing focus on what matters is too easy in today’s craziness. Reach out to someone if you need a listen.

Women in Security Series

Well, we’re a couple weeks into the Women in Security Series, and so far the feedback has been great! Brad and I continue to learn great things from our guests. We’re not sure yet how long the series will go yet, but we have guests booked for the next six (6) shows (after this one). So, we DO know the Women in Security Series will go through (at least) episode 92 (August 10th). The guests we have lined up are incredible:

  • Today – Victoria Fogarty (see below)
  • Episode 87 – CEO of an information security-related non-profit
  • Episode 88 – A Senior, majoring in Cybersecurity Analytics and Operations at a leading university
  • Episode 89 – A CISO from a really cool large company
  • Episodes 90 through 92 – A CISO working in healthcare, a renowned educator, and a cool lady working in information security sales.

This journey is just getting started!

Women in Security Series – Part One

We kicked off the Women in Security series on June 15th, and we couldn’t have chosen a better first guest! Renay Rutter, FRSecure’s COO, got the series started with sharing her experience, wisdom, and insight she’s gained over her 30+ year IT career. Brad and I learned a ton!

If you missed this episode, you can catch up here; https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/unsecurity-episode-84-women-in-security-pt-1-renay-rutter/id1442520920?i=1000478037575

Thank you Renay!

Women in Security Series – Part Two

We kept things in the FRSecure family for week two, hosting Lori Blair. Lori is a treasure chest of information security knowledge and wisdom, beginning from when she started her information security career in 1985. Think about that for a second; 1985?! For the math folks in the house, that’s 35 years!

I have a TON of respect for Lori, and her opinions carry weight for me (and many others). It’s not just her experience that makes Lori amazing, she’s a wonderful, practical, and level-headed person who loves mentoring others. This is a can’t miss episode, go give a listen here; https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/unsecurity-episode-85-women-in-security-pt-2-lori-blair/id1442520920?i=1000479175255

Thank you Lori!

Women in Security Series – Part Three

Here we are, Part Three. In episode 86 (this one), we’ll introduce you to Victoria Fogarty. Victoria works at FRSecure and does some pretty cool things around here. You’ll get to meet her and hear her perspective on all sorts of things, including the information security industry (as a whole), her journey, what it’s like to do what she does, etc. Victoria is a pretty cool lady, and you’ll definitely enjoy her energy!

WELCOME VICTORIA!

Let’s get on with the show!

I’m (Evan) leading the show this week, and these are my notes…

SHOW NOTES – Episode 86

Date: Monday, June 29th, 2020

Episode 86 Topics

  • Opening
  • Introducing Our Special Guest: Victoria Fogarty
  • Catching Up (as per usual)
  • Women in Security
  • News
  • Wrapping Up – Shout outs
Opening

[Evan] Hey all! Welcome to this episode, number 86, of the UNSECURITY Podcast! For those of you who are new to the show, I’m your host, Evan Francen, and the date is June 29th, 2020. We’re a good 100(ish) days into the COVID pandemic here in the States, so it’s easy to lose track of the date. At least for me it is! Joining me this morning is my good friend and colleague, Mr. Brad Nigh. Morning Brad!

[Brad] <<<INSERT BRAD’S GREETING HERE>>>

[Evan] We’re on our 3rd week of the Women in Security series, and I’m super excited to welcome our guest, Victoria Fogarty! Victoria works here at FRSecure and is an all-around awesome person! Join me in welcoming Victoria. Welcome Victoria!

[Victoria] Every time I’ve talked with Victoria, she’s always got energy and a GREAT attitude. Let’s see if this is true at 7am on Monday morning (when we record the UNSECURITY Podcast)

[Evan] You all know what we do first before jumping into business, we check in quick. What’s up guys? How you doing, and how was your weekend?

Catching Up

Quick discussion about last week, the weekend, or whatever else comes to mind.

[Brad] Guessing he got outside, did some family stuff, did some yard/garden work, made some sweet BBQ, and other cool things.

[Evan] Victoria, how about you?

[Victoria] Looking forward to this. I don’t really know what Victoria does for fun, hobbies, etc. Opportunity to learn.

[Evan] Ugh. Interesting weekend (aren’t they all?) here…

Alright, now on to our series topic.

Women in Security, Part Three

[Evan] This is the 3rd week in the Women in Security Series. It’s been a blast so far! Feedback keeps rolling in, and so do the guests. I’m excited to hear about Victoria’s perspectives because honestly, I don’t know many (if any) of them. This will be a great discussion!

So, Victoria, thanks again for joining us. Let’s start out with how you got started with information security.

Open Discussion (~30 minutes)

  • How you got into the industry?
  • Your journey in the industry.
  • Advice you have for someone starting out.
  • Do you think we need more women in our industry and why?
  • Opinions about the talent shortage in our industry.
  • What can we do better in recruiting more people, and specifically more women in our industry?
  • Whatever else we’d like to share.

[Evan] Thank you Victoria! Nice work! I’m sure our listeners learned some good things.

News

[Evan] Time for newsy things again. My God, there’s never a shortage of news, is there?! We could use an entire day and not cover it all. Our day jobs won’t allow us an entire day, so I’ll just take a few that caught my eye:

Wrapping Up – Shout outs

[Evan] There you have it. Episode 86 is almost in the books. Just wrapping up and shout outs before we go. Victoria, thank you for joining us. Also, thank you for sharing you story and your thoughts.

You’re going to enjoy next week’s guest too! We’re going outside FRSecure to get perspectives from women beyond these four walls. Going to be a great show!

Either of you have any shout outs this week?

[Brad and/or Victoria] We’ll see.

[Evan] Thank you listeners! You guys are pretty cool, I think. Send us your questions, feedback and suggestions by email at unsecurity@protonmail.com. We still need to talk about the whole Mandiant, Capital One, incident response, confidential legal report thing. Ugh! Maybe next week.

Online social people can follow us on Twitter. I’m @evanfrancen and Brad is @BradNigh. Victoria, you got somewhere you want people to follow/interact with you?

[Victoria] Maybe/maybe not.

The companies we work for are pretty social too. SecurityStudio’s Twitter is @studiosecurity and FRSecure’s Twiiter is @FRSecure.

That’s it! Talk to you all again next week!

The UNSECURITY Podcast – Episode 78 Show Notes – Working From Home

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Keeping the show notes short again this week. It was another crazy week at FRSecure and SecurityStudio. We make progress towards our mission each and every day, regardless of COVID-19. Our mission is to fix the broken information security industry, which can be summed up by this statement:

Information security isn’t about information or security as much as it is about people.

When we help people, we help our industry. After all, would anyone care about information security is nobody suffered when things go wrong?

We’ll keep on trucking! We’re grateful for the people who put their trust in us and our credibility.

Let’s just get to it, episode 78 show notes below…

SHOW NOTES – Episode 78

Date: Monday, May 1st, 2020

Episode 78 Topics

  • Opening
  • Catching Up (as per usual)
  • Working from home
  • S2Me/S2Team
  • Listener Mail
  • News
  • Wrapping Up – Shout outs
Opening

[Evan] Hey guys and gals. Welcome to the UNSECURITY Podcast. This is episode 78, the date is May 4th, 2020, and I’m Evan Francen. With me today is my co-host, Brad Nigh. Good morning Brad!

[Brad] It is a good morning and Brad’ll be in a good mood for sure. Let’s see how he responds.

[Evan] Another good show planned for today, but before we jump in, let’s catch up. It’s sort of our usual thing to do about this time.

Catching Up

Quick discussion about some of the cool things we’re doing.

[Evan] We’ve been talking a lot lately about working remote or working from home. This has been a hot topic for some time, but since the COVID-19 outbreak, this is one of the top trending topics in the information security world. Let’s discuss another take on this, more of a future looking strategic perspective.

Working from home

Discussion about:

  1. What work from home looked like before COVID-19.
  2. What happened because of COVID-19.
  3. What the future looks like after COVID-19.

There are plenty of news articles about these topics and there’s no shortage of “expert” advice. Here’s just a few:

  • Is Working From Home The Future Of Work? – https://www.forbes.com/sites/nextavenue/2020/04/10/is-working-from-home-the-future-of-work/#4260c2c846b1“An early-April 2020 MIT survey of 25,000 American workers found that 34% of those who’d been employed four weeks earlier said they’re currently working from home. Combined with the roughly 15% who said they’d been working from home pre-COVID-19, that means nearly half the U.S. workforce might now be remote workers.”
    • “The Brookings Institution’s Katherine Guyot and Isabel V. Sawhill just wrote their take on remote work and COVID-19, calling the pandemic “among other things, a massive experiment in telecommuting.”
    • ‘In a March survey of HR execs by the Gartner IT research firm, 76% said the top employee complaint during the pandemic has been “concerns from managers about the productivity or engagement of their teams when remote.”’
    • “In Buffer.com’s9 State of Remote Report, 19% of remote workers called loneliness their biggest struggle with working from home and 17% cited collaborating and/or communication.”
  • Some May Work From Home Permanently After COVID-19: Gartner – https://www.crn.com/news/running-your-business/some-may-work-from-home-permanently-after-covid-19-gartner“Gartner last week released results from a March 30 survey of 317 CFOs and business finance leaders that found 74 percent of those surveyed expect at least 5 percent of their workforce who previously worked in company offices will become permanent work-from-home employees after the pandemic ends.”
    • “According to Gartner, about 25 percent of those surveyed expect 10 percent of their employees will remain remote, 17 percent expect 20 percent will remain remote, 4 percent expect 50 percent will remain remote, and 2 percent expect over 50 percent of employees now working from home to permanently work from home after the pandemic subsides.”
  • Working from home has a troubled history. Coronavirus is exposing its flaws again – https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/12/working-from-home-history-coronavirus-uk-lockdown“According to the Office for National Statistics, only 5% of the UK labour force worked mainly from home in 2019, but well over a quarter had some experience of home-working.”
    • “With all but key workers confined to their homes, the virtual office is now the new norm – a development that could prove to have far-reaching consequences.”
  • As working from home becomes more widespread, many say they don’t want to go back – https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/24/as-working-from-home-becomes-more-widespread-many-say-they-dont-want-to-go-back.html“States of Play, a joint CNBC/Change Research survey of swing states, finds 42% of respondents nationwide saying they are working from home.”
    • “Once the economy reopens, 24% say they’d like to work either entirely or more from home compared to how they worked before, while 55% plan to head back to the office.”
    • “Some 60% report being either as productive or even more productive than they were working from the office.”

But what about information security?

There is no shortage of information security tips for people working from home. Just a small sampling:

A different approach – S2Me and S2Team

[Evan] In early 2019, SecurityStudio release its first version of S2Me. The S2Me was released (well ahead of COVID-19) to gauge people’s information security habits at home and S2Team was a way to share the results with an employer without violating privacy at home. Last week, SecurityStudio released version two of S2Me and I’d like to talk about all this.

  • What is S2Me?
  • What is S2Team?
  • How do S2Me and S2Team work together?
    • S2Me is a simple, personal information security risk analysis tool for use at home. S2Me helps people understand their risk related to security, privacy, and safety. Once these risks are understood, S2Me attempts to motivate people to build better information security habits at home.
    • S2Team is a collection of S2Me aggregated results to help organizations understand their employees information security habits. Organizations use S2Team to develop better, more personal information security training programs.
    • A couple of quotes from the “Introduction to S2Team and S2Me Topic Descriptions” draft document:
      • “The problem isn’t people. The problem is managing risk related to people.”
      • “People are creatures of habit. People will occasionally deviate from their habits, but habits are their default. Habits create peoples’ baseline and become nearly (or in some cases completely) involuntary.”
      • “People choose to form new habits because if they desire the positive outcome or because they fear a negative one.”
  • A quick peek into S2Me.
  • A quick peek into S2Team

[Evan] I think we’re on the right track, trying to help people build better information security habits at home where everyone ultimately benefits.

Listener Mail

[Evan] A loyal listener, one who got a shout out from me last week, Jason Dance, sent us this article that I thought was interesting and worthy of a brief discussion; It’s Not Just Zoom. Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and Webex Have Privacy Issues, Too. – https://www.consumerreports.org/video-conferencing-services/videoconferencing-privacy-issues-google-microsoft-webex/

Brief discussion

[Evan] Alright, now some newsy things quick.

News

[Evan] It’s easy to find interesting things to talk about in our industry! Here’s a few that caught my attention:

Wrapping Up – Shout outs

[Evan] Wow. Lots of things. Well, episode 78 is almost in the can. Brad, got a shout out or two?

[Brad] Maybe he does, maybe he doesn’t…

[Evan] Here’s mine…

[Evan] Seriously, a huge thank you to our listeners! We love your encouragement and we don’t take your advice lightly. You’re all great! Keep the questions and feedback coming. Send things to us by email at unsecurity@protonmail.com. If you’re the social type, socialize with us on Twitter, I’m @evanfrancen and Brad’s @BradNigh.

Have a great week!