Incite 3/18/2015: Pause
It’s been over a month since I wrote an Incite. It’ is the longest period of downtime since I joined Securosis. I could talk about my workload, which is bonkers right now. But over the years I’ve written the Incite regardless of workload. I could talk about excessive travel, but I haven’t been traveling nearly as much as last year. I could come up with lots of excuses, but as I tell my kids all the time, “I’m not in the excuses business.” Here’s the reality: I needed a break. I have plenty to write about, but I found reasons not to write. There is a ton of stuff going on in security, so there were many interesting snippets I let fly right on by. But I didn’t write it, and I didn’t really question it. What I needed was what my Tao teacher calls a pause. You could need a pause for lots of reasons. Sometimes you have been running too hard for too long. Sometimes you need to change things up a bit because the status quo makes you unhappy. Sometimes you need some space to recalibrate and figure out what you want to do and where you want to go. Of course, this could be for very little things, like writing the Incite every week. Or very big things. But without taking a pause, you don’t have the space to make objective decisions. You are reading this, so obviously I am writing the Incite. So during my pause, it became clear that the Incite is an important part of what I do. But it’s bigger than that. It’s an important part of who I am. I have shared the good and the not so good through the years. I have met people who tell me they have experienced what I write about, and it’s helpful for them to commiserate – even if it’s virtual. Some tell me they learn through my Incites, and there is nothing more flattering. But it’s not why I write the Incite. I write the Incite for me. I always have. It’s a journal of sorts representing my life, my views, and my situation at any given time. Every so often I go back a couple years and read my old stuff. It reminds me of what things were like back then. It’s useful because I don’t spend much time looking backwards. It’s interesting to see how different I am now. Some people journal in private. I do that too. But I have found my public journal is important to me. The pause is over. I’m pushing Play. In the coming months there will be really cool stuff to share and some stuff that will be hard to communicate. But that’s life. You take the good and the bad without judgement. You move forward. At least I do. So stay tuned. The next few months are going to be very interesting, for so many reasons. –Mike Photo credit: “Pause? 272/265” originally uploaded by Dennis Skley 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. March 16 – Cyber Cash Cow March 2 – Cyber vs. Terror (yeah, we went there) February 16 – Cyber!!! February 9 – It’s Not My Fault! 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 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. Cracking the Confusion Encryption Decision Tree Top Encryption Use Cases Additional Platform Features and Options Key Management Encryption Layers Building an Encryption Layer Encryption and Tokenization for Data Centers, Servers, and Applications Applied Threat Intelligence Building a TI Program Use Case #3, Preventative Controls Use Case #2, Incident Response/Management Use Case #1, Security Monitoring Defining TI Network Security Gateway Evolution Introduction Newly Published Papers Security and Privacy on the Encrypted Network 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 Advanced Endpoint and Server Protection The Future of Security Incite 4 U (Note: Don’t blame Rich or Adrian for the older Incite… They got me stuff on time – it just took me a month to post it. You know, that pause I talked about above.) There are no perfect candidates… There is no such thing as perfect security, so why would there be perfect security candidates? Our friend Andy Ellis, CISO of Akamai, offers a refreshing perspective on recruiting security professionals. Andy focuses on passion over immediate competence. If a person loves what they do they can learn the rest. I think that’s great, especially given the competition for those with the right certifications and keywords on their CVs. Andy also chooses to pay staffers fairly instead of pushing them to find other jobs as their skills increase. Again, very smart given the competition for security staff. The #1 issue we hear from CISO types, over and over, is the lack of staff / recruiting challenge. So you need to find folks in places others aren’t looking, and invest in them – knowing a few will leave for greener pastures at some point.
