Incite 5/6/2015: Just Be
I’m spent after the RSAC. By Friday I have been on for close to a week. It’s nonstop, from the break of dawn until the wee hours of the morning. But don’t feel too bad – it’s one of my favorite weeks of the year. I get to see my friends. I do a bunch of business. And I get a feel for how close our research is to reflecting the larger trends in the industry. But it’s exhausting. When the kids were smaller I would fly back early Friday morning and jump back into the fray of the Daddy thing. I had very little downtime and virtually no opportunity to recover. Shockingly enough, I got sick or cranky or both. So this year I decided to do it differently. I stayed in SF through the weekend to unplug a bit. I made no plans. I was just going to flow. There was a little bit of structure. Maybe I would meet up with a friend and get out of town to see some trees (yes, Muir Woods was on the agenda). I wanted to catch up with a college buddy who isn’t in the security business, at some point. Beyond that, I’d do what I felt like doing, when I felt like doing it. I wasn’t going to work (much) and I wasn’t going to talk to people. I was just going to be. Turns out my friend wasn’t feeling great, so I was solo on Friday after the closing keynote. I jumped in a Zipcar and drove down to Pacifica. Muir Woods would take too long to reach, and I wanted to be by the water. Twenty minutes later I was sitting by the ocean. Listening to the waves. The water calms me and I needed that. Then I headed back to the city and saw an awesome comedian was playing at the Punchline. Yup, that’s what I did. He was funny as hell, and I sat in the back with my beer and laughed. I needed that too. Then on Saturday I did a long run on the Embarcadero. Turns out a cool farmer’s market is there Saturdays. So I got some fruit to recover from the run, went back to the hotel to clean up, and then headed back to the market. I sat in a cafe and watched people. I read a bit. I wrote some poetry. I did a ZenTangle. I didn’t speak to anyone (besides a quick check-in with the family) for 36 hours after RSA ended. It was glorious. Not that I don’t like connecting with folks. But I needed a break. Then I had an awesome dinner with my buddy and his wife, and flew back home the next day in good spirits, ready to jump back in. I’m always running from place to place. Always with another meeting to get to, another thing to write, or another call to make. I rarely just leave myself empty space with no plans to fill it. It was awesome. It was liberating. And I need to do it more often. This is one of the poems I wrote, watching people rushing around the city. Rush You feel them before you see They have somewhere to be It’s very important Going around you as quickly as they can. They are going places. Then another And another And another Constantly rushing But never catching up. They are going places. Until they see that right here is the only place they need to be. – MSR, 2015 –Mike Photo credit: “65/365: be. [explored]“_ originally uploaded by It’s Holly 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 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 Looking for Indicators Overcoming the Limits of Prevention 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 Recently Published Papers Endpoint Defense: Essential Practices Cracking the Confusion: Encryption & Tokenization for Data Centers, Servers & Applications 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 Future of Security Incite 4 U Threat intel still smells like poop? I like colorful analogies. I’m sad that my RSAC schedule doesn’t allow me to see some of the more interesting sessions by my smart friends. But this blow-by-blow of Rick Holland’s Threat Intelligence is Like Three-Day Potty Training makes me feel like I was there. I like the maturity model, and know many large organization invest a boatload of cash in threat intel, and as long as they take a process-centric view (as Rick advises) they can get great value from that investment. But I’m fixated on the not Fortune 500. You know, organizations with a couple folks on the security team
