Incite 2/12/2014: Kindling
Sitting at my feet is the brand spanking new Kindle I ordered for XX1. It arrived before the snow and ice storm hits the ATL, so we got pretty lucky. She’s a voracious reader and it has become inefficient (and an ecological crime) to continue buying her paper books. She has probably read the Harry Potter series 5 or 6 times, and is constantly giving me new lists of books to buy. She has books everywhere. She reads on the bus. She gets in trouble because sometimes she reads in class. It’s pretty entertaining that the Boss and I need to try to discipline her, when her biggest transgression is reading in class. I kind of want to tell the teacher that if they didn’t suck at keeping the kid’s attention, it wouldn’t be a problem. But I don’t. I have used the Kindle app on my iOS devices for a couple years. I liked it but my older iPads are kind of heavy, so it wasn’t a very comfortable experience to prop on my chest and read. I also had an issue checking email and the Tweeter late at night. So I bought a Kindle to just read. And I do. Since I got it my reading has increased significantly. Which I think is a good thing. So I figured it was time to get XX1 a Kindle too. The Boss was a bit resistant, mostly because she likes the tactile feeling of reading a book and figured XX1 should too. Once we got past that resistance, I loaded up the first Divergent book onto my Kindle and let her take it for a test drive. I showed her two features, first the ability to select a word and see it in the dictionary. That’s pretty awesome – how many kids do you know who take the time to write down words they don’t know and look them up later? I also showed her how to highlight a passage. She was sold. A day and half later, she was ready for book 2 in the Divergent series. Suffice it to say, I loaded up book 3 as well, preemptively. Of all the vices my kids have, reading is probably okay. Before I go to bed tonight I will set up her new device and load up a bunch of books I have which I think she’ll like. We will be snowed in for at least a day, so they will give her something to do. The over/under in Vegas is that she reads two books over the next couple days. I’m taking the over. What’s really cool is that in a few years, she will hardly remember carrying a book around. That will seem so 2005. Just like it seems like a lifetime ago that I loaded up 40-45 CDs to go on a road trip in college (or cases of cassette tapes when I was in high school). Now I carry enough music on my phone to drive for about 3 weeks, and never hear the same song twice. It’s the future, and it’s pretty cool. –Mike Photo credit: “Stack of Books” originally uploaded by Indi Samarajiva Firestarter Have you checked out our new video podcast? Rich, Adrian, and Mike get into a Google Hangout and, well, hang out. We talk a bit about security as well. We try to keep these less than 15 minutes, and usually fail. Feb 10 – Mass Media Abuse Feb 03 – Inevitable Doom Jan 27 – Government Influence Jan 20 – Target and Antivirus Jan 13 – Crisis Communications 2014 RSA Conference Guide We’re at it again. For the fifth year wea re putting together a comprehensive guide to what you need to know if you will be in San Francisco for the RSA Conference at the end of February. We will also be recording a special Firestarter video next week, because you obviously cannot get enough of our mugs. Key Themes Key Theme: Retailer Breaches Key Theme: Big Data Security Key Theme: APT0 And don’t forget to register for the Disaster Recovery Breakfast Thursday, 8-11 at Jillian’s. 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, where you can get all our content in its unabridged glory. And you can get all our research papers too. The Future of Information Security Implications for Cloud Providers Implications for Security Vendors What it means Six Trends Changing the Face of Security A Disruptive Collision Introduction Leveraging Threat Intelligence in Security Monitoring Quick Wins with TISM The Threat Intelligence + Security Monitoring Process Revisiting Security Monitoring Benefiting from the Misfortune of Others Advanced Endpoint and Server Protection Assessment Introduction Newly Published Papers Defending Data on iOS 7 Eliminating Surprises with Security Assurance and Testing What CISOs Need to Know about Cloud Computing Defending Against Application Denial of Service Security Awareness Training Evolution Firewall Management Essentials Continuous Security Monitoring Incite 4 U Hot or Not: We spend a ton of time working with security startups (and lately cloud startups looking for security help). So we will be the first to admit we don’t know all of them, and it can sometimes be hard to evaluate broad market perception – our instincts and research are good but we don’t do quantitative market surveys. Justin Somaini just published his personal survey results on security startups and issues and it’s pretty interesting. (Full disclosure: Justin is Chief Trust Officer at Box, who is licensing a paper of ours). Justin got 500 responses from people rating the perceived value of every security startup he could find, and also teased out a bit on perceived top security issues. I’m sure there is survey bias, but if you want a sense of which startups have the best recognition this is a great start, and Justin published all the results in the open, just the way we like it. (Note to Mike: I call dibs on the new prospect list.). – RM Attacks are