Incite 8/27/2014: It takes a village
The first couple weeks when the kids are back in school can be a little rough. We don’t have the routine down so there is some inevitable confusion and miscommunication. There are just so many details. Who is picking up which kid, from where? We drive that carpool which night? What is the address of the 3rd kid to grab for LAX practice? You know, that kind of thing. And that’s just the logistical stuff the Boss and I need to figure out. Complicating matters is the alternative schedules we have to maintain. One when I’m in town, and the other for when I’m on the road working with clients. Obviously things are a bit easier when I can lend a hand and grab this kid from there and/or take the other kid to the dance studio. We have found it really does take a village to raise kids nowadays. I remember when I was growing up and my Mom worked in a retail pharmacy. Some nights she would have the afternoon shift and then have to close the store. I was a latchkey kid, so once we were old enough to go home and fend for ourselves for a couple hours (probably late in elementary school for me) I would take my brother home and we’d play until Mom got home. Sometimes I’d go to a friend’s house and play a game of pick-up football. Another kid had an Intellivision so we went to his house a lot. I became pretty self-sufficient. My Mom would cook a bunch of meals over the weekend, and I’ll pull one out of the freezer and throw it (whatever it was) into a pan and boom! Dinner. If my clothes were dirty I put them in the wash. She would get home after a long day of work standing in the pharmacy and make sure we got our homework done, and we all had to lend a hand to get everything done. That’s just the way it was for us. Nowadays that wouldn’t work very well. Sure my kids can do laundry and probably even warm up their food (through the magic of the microwave!) But the kids can’t get themselves to dance practice 4 days a week. I guess the Boy could walk down to his tennis practices in the neighborhood, but he can’t walk the 10 miles to LAX practice Monday nights. Actually he could, but probably not in time for 6pm practice. So we work it out with the other parents. We drive some nights and pick up others. With 3 kids and overlapping activity schedules, there isn’t really any other way – especially given my travel schedule. Though we got a little smarter this year. I put the kid’s schedule in my phone, so I know which practices are what days and where. We discuss who is doing what at the beginning of the week, so I know where I’m expected to be, and I put it in my calendar. The goal is to minimize confusion and so far it’s working. And we took another step towards what emancipation looks like for 10-year-olds this year. We got them pre-paid cell phones, so when they are tooling around the neighborhood or at their various practices, and we make the inevitable mistakes, they can just call. It’s very helpful to just dial them up and figure out where they are. My Mom didn’t have that option – she sometimes had to drive around the neighborhood to figure out which back yard I was playing in. Yes, things are more complicated now, but we have much better tools to handle them. But the thing that hasn’t changed? The relationships you build with people who can lend a hand when you need one. And where you lend a hand when they need one. No magic device or web-based service can replace that. –Mike Photo credit: “The Village Store and Tea Shop” originally uploaded by Alison Christine The fine folks at the RSA Conference posted the talk Jennifer Minella and I did on mindfulness at the conference this year. You can check it out on YouTube. Take an hour and check it out. Your emails, alerts and Twitter timeline will be there when you get back. 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. August 18 – You Can’t Handle the Gartner July 22 – Hacker Summer Camp July 14 – China and Career Advancement June 30 – G Who Shall Not Be Named June 17 – Apple and Privacy May 19 – Wanted Posters and SleepyCon May 12 – Another 3 for 5: McAfee/OSVDB, XP Not Dead, CEO head rolling May 5 – There Is No SecDevOps April 28 – The Verizon DBIR April 14 – Three for Five 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. The Security Pro’s Guide to Cloud File Storage and Collaboration Additional Security Features Core Security Features Overview and Baseline Security Introduction Leveraging Threat Intelligence in Incident Response/Management Quick Wins The (New) Incident Response & Management Process Model Threat Intelligence + Data Collect = Responding Better Really Responding Faster Introduction Trends in Data Centric Security Deployment Models Tools Introduction Use Cases Understanding Role-based Access Control Advanced Concepts Introduction NoSQL Security 2.0 Understanding NoSQL Platforms Introduction Newly Published Papers The 2015 Endpoint and Mobile Security Buyer’s Guide Open Source Development and Application Security Analysis Advanced Endpoint and Server Protection Defending Against Network-based DDoS Attacks Reducing Attack Surface with Application Control Leveraging Threat Intelligence in Security Monitoring The Future of Security Security Management
