Securosis Blog

Does Big Data Advance Security Analytics?

Adrian Lane · January 16, 2013

If you follow the security press, you know many predict that big data will transform information security. RSA recently released a security brief on security analytics with big data that mirrors the press. Depending on your perspective, security analytics with big data may be the concept that we’ll leverage big data clusters for actionable intel in coming years. Or if you talk to SIEM vendors who run on top of NoSQL repositories, the future has been here for 5 years. You may go with “none of…

Incite 1/16/2013: Emotional Whiplash

Mike Rothman · January 16, 2013

It started out great. Fantastic even. The Dome was fired up. The team started fast. Field goal. Forced punt. Matty Ice throws a pick. Then the Falcons force a fumble and get the ball back. Touchdown. Forced punt. Field goal. 13-0. Red zone stop on a huge 4th and 1. Touchdown on a bomb. Huge sack to end the half. The Falcons were up 20-0. This was it. The year they finally exorcise the playoff demons.

Beware of Self-Proclaimed Experts

Mike Rothman · January 15, 2013

“Experts” who tell you to do dumb things… are not experts

Dump anything you don’t use. Dump anything with a proven track record of failure which you don’t need (for example, if you don’t need Java, uninstall it). That’s the easy bit, the rest requires thought and effort. If you need Java for desktop apps, but don’t need Java in your browser – disable the browser plugins.

Time to Play Nice with SCADA Kids

Dave Lewis · January 15, 2013

From the BBC:

The US government has told thousands of companies to beef up protection of computers which oversee power plants and other utilities.

Bolting on Security—at Scale

Adrian Lane · January 14, 2013

GigaOm offers a fascinating glimpse into Netflix’s EC2 architecture: Netflix shows off how it does Hadoop in the cloud:

“Hadoop is more than a platform on which data scientists and business analysts can do their work. Aside from their 500-plus-nod[sic] cluster of Elastic MapReduce instances, there’s another equally sized cluster for extract-transform-load (ETL) workloads – essentially, taking data from other sources and making it easy to analyze within Hadoop. Netflix also deploys various…

Happy Out of Cycle IE Patch Monday

Mike Rothman · January 14, 2013

Microsoft to release emergency Internet Explorer patch on Monday

The vulnerability, which is present in IE 6, 7 and 8, is a memory corruption issue. It can be exploited by an attacker via a drive-by download, a term for loading a website with attack code that delivers malware to a victim’s computer if the person merely visits the website.

Help Me Pick My Next Paper Topic

Rich · January 14, 2013

Hey folks,

Just a quick note that I am trying to decide between a few different topics for my next paper. If you have a moment, I could use your opinion.

It’s a new year, so let’s get physical and personal. I wondered what people do about physical security specifically – how do you protect your laptop while on business travel? Hotels, airports, cars, etc. We have all seen that “road rules” can be pretty different, so what precautions do you take to ensure your laptop and devices return home safely?

Mobile Identity—WTF?

Adrian Lane · January 14, 2013

Identity management on mobile devices: How do we do it?

I have been taking a lot of calls on mobile identity issues and solutions over the last three months, and I am just as confused now as when I started looking into this subject. And I think the vendors I have spoken with are reaching, in their assessments of the right course of action and where the market is heading. If you want to implement identity on a mobile device, what do you do?

You Can’t Handle the Truth

Mike Rothman · January 11, 2013

The High Price of the Silence of Cyberwar:

In today’s debate about cyberwar, all information disclosed seems to come with an agenda. Everyone evaluating the information is forced to look not only at the information, but the motivation for revealing that information. Worse, they can question if the information not revealed is shaped differently from what is revealed. A defender who reveals information regularly and in accordance with a policy will gain credibility, and with it, the ability to…