Incite 4/16/2014: Allergies
It was a crummy winter. Cold. Snowy. Whiplash temperature swings. Over the past few weeks, when ATL finally seemed to warm up for spring (and I was actually in town), I rejoiced. One of the advantages of living a bit south is the temperate weather from mid-February to late November. But there is a downside. The springtime blooming of the flowers and trees is beautiful, and brings the onslaught of pollen. For a couple weeks in the spring, everything is literally green. It makes no difference what color your car is – if it’s outside for a few minutes it’s green. Things you leave outside (like your deck furniture and grill), green. Toys and balls the kids forget to put back in the garage when they are done. Yup, those are green too. And not a nice green, but a fluorescent type green that reminds you breathing will be a challenge for a few weeks. Every so often we get some rain to wash the pollen away. And the streams and puddles run green. It’s pretty nasty. Thankfully I don’t have bad allergies, but for those few weeks even I get some sniffles and itchy eyes. But XX2 has allergies, bad. It’s hard for her to function during the pollen season. Her eyes are puffy (and last year swelled almost shut). She can’t really breathe. She’s hemorrhaging mucus; we can’t seem to send her to school with enough Sudafed, eye drops, and tissues to make it even barely comfortable. It’s brutal for her. But she’s a trooper. And for the most part she doesn’t play outside (no recess, phys ed, and limited sports activities) until the pollen is mostly gone. Unless she does. Last night, when we were celebrating Passover with a bunch of friends, we lost track of XX2. With 20+ kids at Seder that was easy enough to do. When it was time to leave we found her outside, and she had been playing for close to an hour. Yeah, it rained yesterday and gave her a temporary respite from the pollen. But that lulled her into a false sense of security. So when she started complaining about her eyes itching a bit and wanted some Benadryl to get to sleep, we didn’t want to hear about it. Yes, it’s hard seeing your child uncomfortable. It’s also brutal to have her wake you up in the middle of the night if she can’t breathe and can’t get back to sleep. But we make it clear to all the kids that they have the leeway to make choices for themselves. With that responsibility, they need to live with the consequences of their choices. Even when those consequences are difficult for all of us. But this will pass soon enough. The pollen will be gone and XX2 will be back outside playing every day. Which means she’ll need to learn the same lesson during next year’s pollen onslaught. Wash, rinse, repeat. It’s just another day in the parenting life. –Mike Photo credit: “I Heart Pollen!” originally uploaded by Brooke Novak See Mike Speak Mike will be moderating a webcast this coming Thursday at 2pm ET, discussing how to Combat the Next Generation of Advanced Malware with folks from Critical Assets and WatchGuard. Register here: http://secure.watchguard.com/how-to-survive-an-apt-attack-social.html Securosis Firestarter Have you checked out our new video podcast? Rich, Adrian, and Mike get into a Google Hangout and.. hang out. We talk a bit about security as well. We try to keep these to 15 minutes or less, and usually fail. April 14 – Three for Five March 24 – The End of Full Disclosure March 19 – An Irish Wake March 11 – RSA Postmortem Feb 21 – Happy Hour – RSA 2014 Feb 17 – Payment Madness Feb 10 – Mass Media Abuse Feb 03 – Inevitable Doom Jan 27 – Government Influence Jan 20 – Target and Antivirus Jan 13 – Crisis Communications 2014 RSA Conference Guide In case any of you missed it, we published our fifth RSA Conference Guide. Yes, we do mention the conference a bit, but it’s really our ideas about how security will shake out in 2014. You can get the full guide with all the memes you can eat. 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, with our content in all its unabridged glory. And you can get all our research papers too. Understanding Role-based Access Control Introduction NoSQL Security 2.0 Introduction Defending Against Network Distributed Denial of Service Attacks Mitigations Magnification The Attacks Introduction Advanced Endpoint and Server Protection Quick Wins Detection/Investigation Prevention Assessment Introduction Newly Published Papers Reducing Attack Surface with Application Control Leveraging Threat Intelligence in Security Monitoring The Future of Security Security Management 2.5: Replacing Your SIEM Yet? Defending Data on iOS 7 Eliminating Surprises with Security Assurance and Testing What CISOs Need to Know about Cloud Computing Incite 4 U Traitors are the new whistleblowers: A good thought-provoking post by Justine Aitel on how security needs to change and evolve, given some of the architectural and social disruptions impacting technology. She makes a bunch of points about how the cloud and the “compete now/share first/think later mentality, “ impacts risk. It comes back to some tried and true tactics folks have been talking about for years (yes, Pragmatic CSO reference). Things like communications and getting senior folks on board with the risks they are taking – and ignorance is no excuse. She also makes good points about new roles as these changes take root, and that’s where the traitors and whistleblowers in the title comes from. Overall her conclusion: “This game is no longer just for us nerds” rings true. But that’s not new. Security has been the purview of business folks for years. It’s just that now the stakes are higher. – MR A glimpse of DBSec’s future: From a database design perspective, the way Facebook is customizing databases to meet their performance needs is a fascinating look at what’s possible with modular, open source NoSQL platforms. Facebook’s goals are performance related,
