Incite 4/15/2015: Boom
I’ve been on the road a bit lately, and noticed discussions keep working around to the general health of our industry. I’m not sure whether we’re good or just lucky, but we security folk find ourselves in the middle of a maelstrom of activity. And that will only accelerate over the next week, as many of us saddle up and head to San Francisco for the annual RSA Conference. We’ve been posting our RSA Conference Guide on the RSA Conference blog (are they nuts?) and tomorrow we’ll post our complete guide with all sorts of meme goodness. The theme of this year’s Disaster Recovery Breakfast is be careful what you wish for. For years we have wanted more internal visibility for security efforts. We wanted to engage with senior management about why security is important. We wanted to get more funding and resources to deal with security issues. But now it’s happening. CISO types are being called into audit committee meetings and to address the full board (relatively) frequently. Budget is being freed up, shaken loose by the incessant drone of the breach of the day. We wanted the spotlight and now we have it. Oh crap. And investors of all shapes and sizes want a piece of cybersecurity. We’ve been engaged in various due diligence efforts on behalf of investors looking at putting money to work in the sector. You see $100MM funding rounds for start-ups. WTF is that about? A friend told me his successful friends call him weekly asking to invest in security companies. It’s like when you get stock tips from a cabbie (or Uber driver), it’s probably time to sell. That’s what this feels like. But security will remain a high-profile issue. There will be more breaches. There will be additional innovative attacks, probably hitting the wires next week, when there is a lot of focus on security. Just like at Black Hat last year. Things are great, right? The security juggernaut has left the dock and it’s steaming full speed ahead. So why does it feel weird? You know, unreal? Part of it is the inevitable paranoia of doing security for a long time. When you are constantly trying to find the things that will kill you, it’s hard to step back and just appreciate good times. Another part is that I’ve lived through boom and bust cycles before. When you see low-revenue early-stage start-ups acquired in $200MM+ and $50MM+ funding rounds for, you can’t help but think we are close to the top of the boom. The place to go from there is down. Been there, done that. I’m still writing off my investment tax losses from the Internet bubble (today is Tax Day in the US). But you know what? What’s the use in worrying? I’m going to let it play out and do a distinctly atypical thing and actually enjoy the boom. I was too young and naive to realize how much fun the Internet boom was on the way up. I actually believed that was the new normal. Shame on me if I can’t enjoy it this time around. I’ll be in SF next week with a huge smile on my face. I will see a lot of friends at RSAC. Rich, Adrian, and I will offer a cloud security automation learning lab and JJ and I will run a peer-to-peer session on mindfulness. I’ll have great conversations with clients and I’m sure I’ll fill the pipeline for the next couple months with interesting projects to work on. I’ll also do some damage to my liver. Because that’s what I do. These halcyon days of security will end at some point. There is no beanstalk that grows to the sky. But I’m not going to worry about that now. I’ll ride through the bust, whenever it comes. We all will. Because we’re security people. We’ll be here when the carpetbaggers have moved on to the next hot sector promising untold riches and easy jobs. We’ll be here after the investors doing stupid deals wash out and wonder why they couldn’t make money on the 12th company entering the security analytics business. We’ll be here when the next compliance mandate comes and goes, just like every other mandate. We’ll be here because security isn’t just a job. It’s a calling. And those who have been called ride through the booms and the busts. Today is just another day of being attacked by folks who want to steal your stuff. –Mike Photo credit: “Explosion de ballon Polyptyque“_ originally uploaded by Mickael Have you registered for Disaster Recovery Breakfast VII yet? What are you waiting for. Check out the invite and then RSVP to rsvp (at) securosis.com, so we know how much food to get… 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 31 – Using RSA 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 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. Network-based Threat Detection Overcoming the Limits of Prevention Applied Threat Intelligence Building a TI Program Use Case #3, Preventative
