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Incite 5/16/2012: Moving up Day

Mike Rothman May 16, 2012 No Comments

Wasn’t it just yesterday that we put XX1 on the bus for her first day of kindergarten? I guess if yesterday was August of 2006, that would be correct. Man, six years have gone by fast! On Friday she moves up to Middle School. As we watched the annual Field Day festivities with all the kids dressed up in their countries’ garb yesterday, the kindergartners seemed so small. And they are. Six years doesn’t seem so long, but against the growth of such a child it’s a lifetime. I have to say I’m proud of my oldest girl. She did very well in elementary school, and is ready to tackle 7 different teachers and a full boat of advanced classes next year. Of course there will be stumbles and challenges and other learning experiences. As my army buddies say, “she has an opportunity to excel.” Despite our desire to make time slow down, it’s not going to happen. She’s ready for the next set of experiences and to continue on her path. Whether we like it or not. Whether we are ready or not. We have heard story after story about how difficult middle school is, especially for girls. Between raging hormones, mean girls, and a much heavier course load, it requires a lot of adjustment. For all of us. It seems XX1 will have to learn organizational skills and focus a lot earlier than I had to. I kind of coasted until I got to college, and then took a direct shot upside the head from the clue bat, when I learned what it took to thrive in a much more competitive environment. She needs to learn that achievement is directly correlated to work and decide how hard she wants to work. She will have to learn to deal with difficult people as well. Too bad it’s not only in middle school that she’ll come across idiots. We all have to learn these lessons at some point. But that’s tomorrow’s problem. I don’t want to think about that stuff right now. Of course life marches on. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. As she goes through the ceremony on Friday I will be one proud father. I hope she’s as proud of herself as we are of her. I will celebrate the passing of one milestone without thinking about the next. I appreciate the person she has become, with a healthy respect for where we’ve been. From first holding her right after her birth, to putting her on that kindergarten bus, to packing her off for sleepaway camp, to now watching her leave elementary school, and everything in between. Steve Miller was right, Time keeps on slippin’ into the future… Every single day. –Mike Photo credits: “Me on graduation day” originally uploaded by judyboo Heavy Research We’re back at work on a variety of blog series, so here is a list of the research currently underway. Remember you can get our Heavy Feed via RSS, where you can get all our content in its unabridged glory. And you can get all our research papers too. Understanding and Selecting Data Masking Introduction Vulnerability Management Evolution Enterprise Features and Integration Evolution or Revolution? Understanding and Selecting DSP Use Cases Incite 4 U Don’t fear the Boobs: About 15+ years ago I was working as a paramedic in New Jersey and volunteered with the local fire department. This was a temporary sojourn back east because I was making $6.25 an hour as a paramedic in Colorado, but could pull down $16 an hour in Jersey. Something about “hazard pay”. Anyway, this particular department had a culture that was both racist and sexist. They refused to authorize ‘females’ to full firefighter status due to concerns that a 120-pound women who ran marathons couldn’t haul their 300-pound asses out of a fire. (I figured it wouldn’t be a problem after enough of the fat melted off.) I won’t lie – I have engaged in locker room talk on more than one occasion, and I recognize that men and women really are different, but I simply don’t understand sexism in the workplace. Jack Daniels wrote a great rant (as usual) on the recent reemergence of sexism and its expression at conferences. There’s no place for this in IT, certainly no place for it in security, and I think it’s largely a lot of dudes with very little self-confidence who are afraid of women. Get over it, lose the ‘bro’ culture, and dump the booth babes. All it reflects is weakness. – RM Firewall dead? Meh. Every couple months somebody proclaims some established control dead. This week’s transgressor is Roger Grimes, who tells us why you don’t need a firewall. Come on, man! Evidently the only attack firewalls can block is buffer overflows, so they are destined for the trash bin. Give me a break. And most traffic comes through port 80 or 443 – but evidently this NGFW thing, with its application awareness, is news to Roger. He points out that firewalls are hard to manage, which is true. And that developers and other folks always push to open up this port or that, basically obviating the security model. That’s not wrong either. But we have been through this before. As Corman says, we never retire controls. Nor should we, as Wendy points out rather effectively. Jody Brazil of Firemon piles on with more reasons it’s a bad idea to kill your firewall. I suspect Grimes gets paid per page view, so maybe he’ll be able to buy a few extra beers this week. But that doesn’t make him right. – MR Tokens <> Tokenization: MasterCard announced their PayPass Wallet Services for mobile devices, an “App designed to complete with PayPal and Google” wallets, or at least that is how the press is describing it. I think this is a pure marketing move to make sure app developers don’t forget MasterCard has a horse in this race. Technically, MasterCard is not offering a wallet

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