Incite 1/8/2014: ReNew Year
Since I’m on the East Coast of the US, when the ball drops in Times Square that’s it. The old year is done. The new year begins. With some of Dublin’s finest coursing through my veins, I get a little nostalgic. I don’t think about years in terms of “good” or “bad” anymore – instead I realize that 2013 is now merely a memory that will inevitably fade away. The new year brings a time of renewal. A time to thoughtfully consider the possibilities of the coming 12 months because 2014 is a blank slate. Not exactly blank because my responsibilities didn’t disappear as the ball descended – nor have yours. But we have the power to make 2014 whatever we want. That’s exciting to me. I don’t fear change, I embrace change. Which is a good thing because change always comes every year without fail. You grow. You evolve. You change. I can’t wait to try new stuff. As Rich said in Thank You, we will do new things in 2014. Some of the will work, and some won’t. I don’t have the foggiest idea which will fall into each category. Uncertainty makes some folks uncomfortable. Not me. The idea of a certain future is not interesting at all. That would mean not getting an unexpected call to work on something that could be very very cool. But I also might not get any calls at all. You just don’t know. And that’s what makes it exciting. I can’t wait to learn new things. About technology,because security continues to evolve quickly, which means that if you sit still you are actually falling behind. I am also learning a lot about myself, which is kind of strange for a guy in his mid-40s, but it’s true. In researching the Neuro-Hacking talk I’m doing with JJ at RSA, I am adding to my current practices to improve as a person. Like everyone else, I find that being reminded of my ideals helps keep them at the forefront of my mind. So over the holiday, I treated myself to a few Hugh McLeod prints to hang in my office. The first is called Abundance and the quote on the picture is: “Abundance begins with gratitude.” It’s true. I need to remain thankful for what I have. That appreciation and a dedication to helping others will keep me on a path to achieve bigger things. The other is One Day is Dead, which is a reminder to make the most of every day and focus on living right now. This has been a frequently theme in my writing lately and will remain. I write the weekly Incite for me as much as for anyone else. It is a public journal of my thoughts and ideas each week. I also spent some time looking back through some of the archives, and it’s fascinating to see how I have changed over the past few years. But not half as fascinating as imagining how much I’ll change over the next few. So I jump into 2014 with both feet. Happy ReNew Year. –Mike Photo credit: “Renewing shoe” originally uploaded by Adam Fagen 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. Security Management 2.5: You Buy a New SIEM Yet? Evaluating the Incumbent Revisiting Requirements Platform Evolution Changing Needs Introduction Advanced Endpoint and Server Protection Introduction What CISOs Need to Know about Cloud Computing Adapting Security for Cloud Computing How the Cloud is Different for Security Introduction Newly Published Papers Defending Against Application Denial of Service Security Awareness Training Evolution Firewall Management Essentials Continuous Security Monitoring API Gateways Threat Intelligence for Ecosystem Risk Management Dealing with Database Denial of Service Identity and Access Management for Cloud Services The 2014 Endpoint Security Buyer’s Guide The CISO’s Guide to Advanced Attackers Incite 4 U FireEye’s Incident Response Play: Of course the one day I decide to take vacation over the holidays, the FireEye folks buy Mandiant for a cool billion-ish. Lots of folks have weighed in on the deal already so I won’t repeat their analysis. Clearly FireEye realizes they need to become more than just a malware detection box/service, because only a broad network security platform player could provide the revenue to support their current valuation. Obviously this won’t be their last deal. Were there other things they could have bought for less money that would have fit better? Probably. But Mandiant brings a ton of expertise and a security brand juggernaut to FireEye. Was it worth $1 BILLION? That depends on whether you think FireEye was worth $5 billion before the deal, because the price was mostly in FireEye stock, which is, uh, generously valued. The question is whether forensics (both services and products) has become a sustainable mega-growth segment of security. That will depend on whether the technology becomes simple enough for companies without a dedicated forensics staff to use. It ain’t there yet. – MR Me Too: It’s Tuesday as I write this, right after Mike harassed me to get my Incites in. I open up Pocket to check out what stories I have collected over the past couple weeks. Number four on my list is a post by Luke Chadwick on how his Amazon Web Services account was hacked when he accidentally left his Access Keys in some code he published online. That seems strangely familiar. It seems bad guys are indeed scraping online code repositories to find cloud service keys and then use them for mining Litecoins. It also seems even security-aware developers and analysts like myself, despite our best efforts, can mess up and accidentally make life easy for attackers. I encapsulated my lessons in my post, but the thing I learned all of two minutes ago is
