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Incite 1/14/2015: Facing the Fear

Mike Rothman January 14, 2015 2 Comments

Some folks just naturally push outside their comfort zones as a matter of course. I am one of them. Others only do things that are comfortable, which is fine if it works for them. I believe that while you are basically born with a certain risk tolerance, you can be taught to get comfortable with pushing past your comfort zone. For example, kids who are generally shy will remain more comfortable holding up the wall at a social event, but can learn to approach people and get into the mix. It’s tough at first but you figure it out. There is always resistance the first few times you push a child beyond what they are comfortable with, and force them to try something they don’t think they can do. But I believe it needs to happen. It comes back to my general philosophy that limitations exist only in our minds, and you can move past those limitations once you learn to face your fear. The twins’ elementary school does a drama production every year. XX1 was involved when she was that age, and XX2 was one of the featured performers last year. We knew that she’d be right there auditioning for the big role, and she’d likely get one of them (as she did). But with the Boy we weren’t sure. He did the hip hop performance class at camp so he’ll perform, but that’s a bit different than standing up and performing in front of your friends and classmates. Though last year he did comment on how many of his friends were in the show, and he liked that. We were pleased when he said he wanted to try out. The Boss helped him put together both a monologue and a song to sing for the audition. He knew all the words, but when it came time to practice he froze up. He didn’t want to do it. He wanted to quit. That was no bueno in my book. He needed to try. If he didn’t get a part, so be it. But he wasn’t going to back out because he was scared. He needed to push through that fear. It’s okay to not get the outcome you hope for, but not to quit. So we pushed him. There were lots of tears. And we pushed some more. A bit of feet stomping at that point. So we pushed again. He finally agreed to practice for us and then to audition after we wore him out. Sure, that was a little heavy-handed, but I’m okay with it because we decided he needed to at least try. The end result? Yes, he got a part. I’m not sure how much he likes the process of getting ready for the show. We’ll see once he gets up on stage and performs for everyone whether it’s something he will want to do again. But whether he does it again doesn’t matter. He can always say he tried, even when he didn’t want to. That he didn’t let fear stop him from doing something. And that’s the most important lesson of all. –Mike Photo credit: “Faces of fear!” originally uploaded by John Seb Barber The fine folks at the RSA Conference posted the talk Jennifer Minella and I did on mindfulness at the 2014 conference. 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. December 18 – Predicting the Past November 25 – Numbness October 27 – It’s All in the Cloud October 6 – Hulk Bash September 16 – Apple Pay 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 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. Security Best Practices for Amazon Web Services Third Party Tools Built-in Features Introduction Network Security Gateway Evolution Introduction Monitoring the Hybrid Cloud: Evolving to the CloudSOC Migration Planning Technical Considerations Solution Architectures Emerging SOC Use Cases Introduction Security and Privacy on the Encrypted Network Selection Criteria and Deployment Use Cases The Future is Encrypted Newly Published Papers Securing Enterprise Applications Secure Agile Development Trends in Data Centric Security Leveraging Threat Intelligence in Incident Response/Management The Security Pro’s Guide to Cloud File Storage and Collaboration The 2015 Endpoint and Mobile Security Buyer’s Guide Open Source Development and Application Security Analysis Advanced Endpoint and Server Protection The Future of Security Incite 4 U Full discraposure: Google discovers a bug in a Microsoft product. Google has a strict 90-day policy to disclose, no matter what. Microsoft says, “Hey, we have a fix ready to go on Patch Tuesday, can we get a few extra days?” but Google releases anyway. I’m sorry, but who does that help? Space Rogue summed it up best; he has a long history in the disclosure debate. In his words, “The entire process has gotten out of hand. The number one goal here should be getting stuff fixed because getting stuff fixed helps protect the user, it helps defeat the bad guys and it helps make the world a better place.” Another great quote is: “And so the disclosure debate continues unabated for over a hundred years. With two of the giants in our industry acting like spoiled children we as security professionals must take the reigns

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