Incite 1/28/2015: Shedding Your Skin
You are constantly changing. We all are. You live, you learn, you adapt, you change. It seems that if you pay attention, every 7-9 years or so you realize you hardly recognize the person looking back at you from the mirror. Sometimes the changes are very positive. Other times a cycle is not as favorable. That’s part of the experience. Yet many people don’t think anything changes. They expect the same person year after year. I am a case in point. I have owned my anger issues from growing up and my early adulthood. They resulted in a number of failed jobs and relationships. It wasn’t until I had to face the reality that my kids would grow up in fear of me that I decided to change. It wasn’t easy, but I have been working at it diligently for the past 8 years, and at this point I really don’t get angry very often. But lots of folks still see my grumpy persona, even though I’m not grumpy. For example I was briefing a new company a few weeks ago. We went through their pitch, and I provided some feedback. Some of it was hard for them to hear because their story needed a lot of work. At some point during the discussion, the CEO said, “You’re not so mean.” Uh, what? It turns out the PR handlers had prepared them for some kind of troll under the bridge waiting to chew their heads off. At one point I probably was that troll. I would say inflammatory things and be disagreeable because I didn’t understand my own anger. Belittling others made me feel better. I was not about helping the other person, I was about my own issues. I convinced myself that being a douche was a better way to get my message across. That approach was definitely more memorable, but not in a positive way. So as I changed my approach to business changed as well. Most folks appreciate the kinder Incite I provide. Others miss crankypants, but that’s probably because they are pretty cranky themselves and they wanted someone to commiserate over their miserable existence. What’s funny is that when I meet new people, they have no idea about my old curmudgeon persona. So they are very surprised when someone tells a story about me being a prick back in the day. That kind of story is inconsistent with what they see. Some folks would get offended by hearing those stories, but I like them. It just underscores how years of work have yielded results. Some folks have a hard time letting go of who they thought you were, even as you change. You shed your skin and took a different shape, but all they can see is the old persona. But when you don’t want to wear that persona anymore, those folks tend to move out of your life. They need to go because don’t support your growth. They hold on to the old. But don’t fret. New people come in. Ones who aren’t bound by who you used to be – who can appreciate who you are now. And those are the kinds of folks you should be spending time with. –Mike Photo credit: “Snake Skin” originally uploaded by James Lee 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. January 26 – 2015 Trends January 15 – Toddler 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 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. Applied Threat Intelligence Use Case 2: Incident Response/Management Use Case 1: Security Monitoring Defining TI Network Security Gateway Evolution Introduction Security and Privacy on the Encrypted Network Selection Criteria and Deployment Use Cases The Future is Encrypted Newly Published Papers Monitoring the Hybrid Cloud Best Practices for AWS Security 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 Advanced Endpoint and Server Protection The Future of Security Incite 4 U Click. Click. Boom! I did an interview last week where I said the greatest security risk of the Internet of Things is letting it distract you from all of the other more immediate security risks you face. But the only reason that is even remotely accurate is because I don’t include industrial control systems, multifunction printers, or other more traditional ‘things’ in the IoT. But if you do count everything connected to the Internet, some real problems pop up. Take the fuel gauge vulnerability just released by H D Moore/Rapid 7. Scan the Internet, find hundreds of vulnerable gas stations, all of which could cause real-world kinetic-style problems. The answer always comes back to security basics: know the risk, compartmentalize, update devices, etc. Some manufacturers are responsible, others not so much, and as a security pro it is worth factoring this reality into your risk profile. You know, like, “lightbulb risk:
