Incite 11/28/2012: Meet the Masters
I am not a car guy. Nor do I need an ostentatious house with all sorts of fancy things in it. Give me a comfortable place to sleep, a big TV, and fast Internet and I’m pretty content. That said, I enjoy art. The Boss and I have collected a few pieces over the years, but that has slowed down as other expenses (like, uh, the kids) have ramped up. But if someone were to drop a bag of money in our laps, we would hit an art gallery first – not a Ferrari dealer. When we go on holiday, we like to see not only the sights, but also the art. So on our trip to Barcelona last spring, we hit the Dali, Miro, and Picasso museums. We even took a walking art tour of the city, which unfortunately kind of sucked. Not because the art sucked – the street sculptures and architecture of Barcelona are fantastic. The guide was unprepared, which was too bad. As budgets continue to get cut in the public school systems, art (and music) programs tend to be the first to go. Which is a shame – how else can our kids gain an appreciation for the arts and learn about the world’s rich cultural heritage? Thankfully they run a program at the twins’ elementary school called “Meet the Masters.” Every month a parent volunteer runs a session on one of the Masters and teaches the kids about the artist and their style of art, and runs an art project using the style of that master. I volunteer for the Boy’s class, after doing it for two years for XX1. Remember, I do a fair bit of public speaking. Whether it’s a crowd of 10 or 1,000, I am comfortable in front of a room talking security. But put me in front of a room of 9 year olds talking art history, and it’s a bit nerve wracking. I never wanted to be that Dad who embarrasses my kids, and see them cringe when I show up in the classroom. With their friends I crack jokes and act silly, but in the classroom I play it straight. And that’s hard. I can’t make double entendres, I have to speak in simple language (they are 9), and I can’t make fun of the kids if things go south. I can’t use my public speaking persona, so I need another way to get their attention and keep them entertained. So I break out some technical kung fu and impress the kids that way. Most of the classrooms have projectors now, so I present off my iPad. They think that’s cool. When it’s time to check out one of the paintings, I found this great Art Project site (sponsored by evil Google). It shows very high resolution pictures of the artwork online, and allows you to highlight the nuances of the piece and show off the artist’s talent. Last month we covered Vermeer’s The milkmaid. Check out that link. How could you not be impressed by the detail of that painting? Today I am doing a session on Braque. He was a cubist innovator and Picasso’s running buddy. So I will spend some time tonight checking out his work, getting my whiz-bang gizmos ready, and trying to avoid being too much of a tool in front of the Boy’s class tomorrow. If one or two of them gain a better appreciation for art, my time will be well spent. –Mike Photo credits: Dali Museum originally uploaded by Pedro Moura Pinheiro Heavy Research We are 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. Building an Early Warning System External Threat Feeds Internal Data Collection and Baselining Understanding and Selection an Enterprise Key Manager Technical Features, Part 2 Technical Features, Part 1 Introduction Newly Published Papers Defending Against Denial of Service Attacks Securing Big Data: Security Recommendations for Hadoop and NoSQL Environments Pragmatic WAF Management: Giving Web Apps a Fighting Chance Incite 4 U What’s a cheater to do? As Petraeus’ recent fall from grace of shows, it is very hard to hide stuff if people with access want to find it. That old public Gmail draft folder sharing tactic? Not so effective. Using public computers in a variety of locations? Not if you have any credit card charges in the same city. Text messages? Available under subpoena from mobile carriers. This underscores the fuzzy nature of e-discovery, modern-day investigation, and how to draw the boundaries around crime. There are no bright lines but lots of gray areas, and many more folks will fall before acceptable norms are established for how governments should balance privacy against fighting crime. I suppose folks could keep their equipment holstered, stop trying to cut corners, and basically do the right thing. Then there would be nothing to find, right? Yeah, but what fun is that? – MR The real state of ‘Cyberterror’ I asked Mike to put my two Incites back to back this week for reasons that will be pretty obvious. First up this week is a very well written article on ‘cyberterrorism’ by Peter Singer of the Brookings Institute. The most telling part of the piece is the opening statistics – 31,000 articles written on cyber terrorism, and 0 people injured or killed. Cyberterror is no more than a theory at this point. For years I have said it doesn’t exist because it doesn’t meet the FBI definition of terrorism (TL;DR version: loss of life or property to coerce a government or society in furtherance of a political or social agenda). Is it possible? Probably, but it sure isn’t easy. Methinks we are overly influenced by lone genius hackers in movies, marketing FUD, and political FUD used by particular agencies, governments,
