[Since today’s the day for romantic movies, herewith a plot for one.]
Yeah, I know I know, the above ‘program’ leads to all sorts of continuity / compile errors…
Author: Maverisk
Going somewhere but where?
Which beats going nowhere. Like, where’s the hardware industry going?
If this is where it’s going, brace yourself, four seasons in one day’s coming.
On the serious side, where’s the hardware industry going? Are we through with yet other categories, from desktop to laptop to iPhony to iPad to notebook to notepad to bent screen mega-TVs to tilt-screen Chromebooks to slightly-larger-but-hardly-so-what’s-the-point-anyway phone screens …? Why can’t I still not assemble (sic) my equipment the way I want it?
And, I forgot Cloud in there, and Raspberry, and mainframe (heh, that one’s just for the joke), and …
Is there such a thing as a framework for discussing how this all fits together? A set of classifiers so one could draw up a matrix of options/feaures ..?
Plus:
[Well that’s still fresh, but a one-off; Sculpture garden, DC]
Automobiles, (trains,) Planes
What a disaster it would be if all those (self-driving, or augmented-driving as they are today already) cars could be taken over by some madman or unrelatedly hacker … One could remotely steer a car off the road! One could remotely steer a whole bunch of cars within some area / country (?) off the road in a broadcast … With pre-emptively having disabled manual override, of course. [Though, noted before, the ability to do so would on the human side deteriorate very quickly as it wouldn’t be needed to be seriously trained/experienced (anymore).]
Yes, that’s bad. How is this same idea, but applied to current-day planes ..? Where about-all is automated, and users get more and more access hence control (think that one through; qua nothing’s 100% secure) to still but what do you know limited zone(s) of plane networks, e.g., re on-board wifi. The known-to-be-stellar-secure wifi.
Of course, this would be suicide — or airport-proximity (from just outside the fence) runway-DoS …; but not all seem to care about the sacrifice… on the contrary. And don’t come with the argument of having to know systems to break in / run amok. Some had gone through the effort of going through a pilot’s training, right? And here, one can be a passenger and do recce from business class, and/or deliver and C&C from there.
I love my old-style car / driving … and:
[Warped, but quite safe from hacking… Somewhere upstate WI]
They're Security Scrum!
Yet another trend: The recoil of Agile practices since uncontrollable isn’t what you’d want from your IS infrastructure..?
Where the scrum and other development methods using emblematic sprints by that very idea have to lose all the ballast …
But would you run a marathon-length Chinese Whispers game (Telephone if you’re from the US, inable to go with the rest) …? Because that’s what you get, quality-wise, if you deploy sprinters for the whole 42k195m — no use for miles either — and (wide-sense) security’s one major part of it.
Again, a baby with the bath water thing, here. Moreover, since even with large Waterfall development — which should’ve been V-shaped for the right half of it ..! — security (wide-sens, incl. proper-usability, documentation for maintainability et al.) was too much of an afterthought. When taken seriously, by the way, proven to be much less of a nuisance either during the project or or during implementation/roll-out or during the production phases, than it was taken for.
So, the question is not how fast ‘we’ can dump Security when adopting something agile, nor ow to ‘ split up’ the CISO’s thinking and acting and standards over App Devt and DevOps, but how to get suitable Sec into DevOps-or-whatever. The only road that’s not a dead end, sounds like “Sorry Dave, I can’t let you do that” [I know]. A sort of thick-concrete sandbox — creating tons of overhead in sprints, and when later exposed in the Real World of production. Retrogade.
Your start-up hacktons just don’t cut it in the big boy business..? Better ideas?
Plus:
[Where all you wanted was one big coat hanger… Beurs van Berlage]
Four Cyber
Where a Big 4 consultancy (or rather, a hang-on-by-the-teeth-fourth intensive-people(?)-farming accountancy-wannabe-advisory) now has a (unit) label “Cyber”. Where #ditchcyber (here) hardly helps… ‘Cyber’ is like being a lady; when you say it of yourself, you aren’t. This qualifier as head of a Linked List — you didn’t need the link to get the wink or did you? — a very long list it is. How desperate can one be to maintain extortionist fee levels and labour practices, to have to label yourself so empty-barreled ..?
I’ll halt now, and:
[Or, like a dolphin not leggard]
White Mannism
The baby with the bath water.
Slate: “Glamour just published its first issue completely produced by women. It’s about time.” Meh. Check. Move on.
Some agency trying to find a diversity manager: Probably only non-white mentally and/or physically challenged LBGTQ ‘persons’ need apply ..?
Now the politics (mostly, of the PC kind; as completely isolated and locked up it was in its cultural-economic elite without real power) slowly finds that the Trumpists (or ~, fill in your European ‘OMG he (sic) doesn’t play by the over-ritualised pastel crayon coloured emptybabbletalk schemes’ overly-labeled-xenophobe polls-moonshooter) aren’t the Angry White Men that the (tell-tale) rushed qualification need (fear fo being found out not to have any insight, maybe?) had thought them to be,
it is time to also consider even more sobering. In the area of: No, I can’t help being a white man I’m just born that way. And raised, by the way, in an environment that worked towards imprinting penalty for that already. To think that I don’t know this, don’t notice, or unconsciously or consciously abuse the privilege because some have attached the idea that I have that to me, unwantingly, is a scam and demonstrates that those involved, in fact do NOT know me but it demonstrates as well their limited world view of trying to lock up all they meet (or not even) in extremely limited confines of classification. If that’s your need, you have other problems than your supposed underprivileged childhood so maybe use your lifetime trying to grow a pair (F/M)?
This translates into: If you care to hire such a diversity manager as mentioned above, you demonstrate to want a token woman. If you care that some women’s magazine (yeah, I do realise that, sigh.) is finally made by women only, you consider no man capable of understanding women ..? Are you helping by trying to avoid that? Did you check all suitable male candidates for their inability to deliver the quality you need? (My guess: at the printer’s, there’s quite a few men working there, by the way) Or do you care less for quality than for gender accidentally (!) fixed at birth or medical facility?
Again, being born white male, does that mean I’m less because I’m supposedly ‘privileged’ …? If the (medically) colourblind can’t tell red from green, are others privileged and discriminating (usually taken to mean the one and the other are inseparable somehow) and shouldn’t be allowed to ever use those colours?
(Apart from some, rare, groups seriously trying to undercut common superstitions; I like those — as far as they see the limits of their purpose and stretch)
Or do you want to change the world by practicing what you preach?
There’s anger for you. Anger for being told why one is supposedly stupid for reasons of not seeing and recognising one’s stupidity. There’s why the protests by voters (the ultimate source of power, it shows, and of authority in our world) are from all those not in command. Re-read Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man again; you’ll only have to add ‘self-righteous PC babbling airheads’ [disclaimer: I’m one, too] (in)to ‘government’ and you see where the current set of politicians went off the rails.
By the way, don’t be fooled by the tone of the above: I’m not even angry! Just sad and disappointed. And unhopeful about the future [ _ | for me ].
Now, there’s also the Age thing … like, this and you’re aiming for sheeple not experience…
Oh, plus:
[Classical burden; this, for Heroes — Arlington]
Switching to the Offence Defence wait what?
Lately, the Preventative Doesn’t Work Quick / Well Enough So All Heads Turn To Reactive Security has had its effect. But not the intended effect of doing both, just the latter it seems [yes, I know].
And, where the FLOT hadn’t been up to it before, often by lack of proper budget, the hardly sufficient funds have been shifted. Recipe for …
Indeed, the Reactive part had been neglected much too long, but a shift was not asked or, but a doubling of efforts on both sides (?). Hence, the now ‘new’ SIEM et al., may have had all the attention but that doesn’t mean success (yet!), objectively.
And subjectively, maybe less — ’so what did you do with the money ..?’ — also caused by the shift-not-double of allocations (budget, in Count da Money, time and supremely capable staff).
Not so strange, when you go, at a strategic level, from one point (/) solution to another…
So, the way out ..?
This is 2017. Do it in the mix. As presented here and here. But certainly here.
I.e., find the balance and play chess at Grand Master level on all boards (including B~ see last Thursday’s post below). Starting at the front, your attack surface, by means of Activity-Based Access Control and Integrity of Systems. And all other stuff you did in the past but have to bring back up to snuff and clean out like Augeas’ stables (thinking of your ‘user administration’ here).
And then realise that all this is still asymmetrical to the hilt, so absolutely not enough. Do not throw away what you built over the last year / and a half but extend it… With smart fill into the matrix of this. Which should be much cheaper than (thinking, faintly trying) to tighten your FLOT shut; the thin red line that it is. And with this blended approach also much less hindering the Good ones.
[Oh, edited to add after schedule-time: this. For the balance… But will, I think per Feb 27, return with a high(er)-level view why ‘preventative’ and ‘in control’ are definitely two distinct things…]
Plus:
[No you st.p.d that’s a blue’ish-and-white’ish line of sorts; Noordwijk]
Golden Oldie Pic Of The Day
Ah, security rules — not for Us
When the Last Mile in infosec is convincing the Board to stick to ‘their’ own rules and not think themselves above it, how do we’d want to pull this off ..?
Where, so often, they complain that sticking to the rules is too complex or cumbersome for them — for no extra credit, reflect on their capacities to be in there position to Lead and Show — whilst forgetting their underlings have to deal with it anyway, possibly being more capable yes but not as claimed dealing with less sensitive information …
Where the reaction for themselves is they Have to carry on, counter to sane advice and rules, with unsafe behaviour often in particular when dealing with the most sensitive stuff; either not recognising that as such or hardball playing down the sensitivity and/or their attractiveness as targets — out of some form of cognitive dissonance and often contrary to their lightly-to-grossy inflated self-worth estimates respectively.
Where, also, we see con-zultands playing up their self-importance and -assigned capabilities, as per this. Recognisable, all too recognisable [been there, done that, didn’t even got the T-shirt; ed.].
And realising that this all, seems to work… reminds me of what Thomas Paine can still bring to bear on this, which is not good. Not at all. Though the advisortypes may co-opt and exploit the courtiers’ methods (hey, how hard have you studied these ..?) without being caught in the courtiers’ ‘regulatory capture’ error and maintain a bedrock of sanity until My Precious is had; is that the only viable road?
Or would you have something else? No, not plain forward address that is so sure to fail, to fall flat on your face before it’s out of the starting block; if you don’t see that, you may very well be too inexperienced to have a clue…
But seriously, folks, what have ..?
Oh, and:
[When the castle goes down, all go down but the upper class (sic) has (golden) parachutes so why would they care? Bouvigne Breda]
The ransom monster
Now that the ‘No way josé’ solutions against ransomware [regular back-ups, virtualisation of servers, and tight intrusion controls et al.] have become so widely known, and ransomware having evolved to be more of the APT kind (incubating for up to six months before striking — undoing your back-up strategy), a new look at the root cause of the harrassment:
Ransomware is a Monster. Being a thing that refuses to fit a single category for neat classification (sociology/science definition/term).
Which may seem odd, but consider:
- It (?) uses Confidentiality-sloppyness to enter;
- It undoes Integrity;
- Its payload aims at destruction of Availability, both in the Immediate and the Reasonably-timely kinds.
- [Bonus: It doesn’t care about (your) morality but strikes even (?) at hospitals et al.]
Capice? … Oh, you wanted a Solution, or a Morale. Maybe something with Blended Defense / Step Up Your Game or so. Well, be my guest …, and:
[The ultimate Up Yours [ , Planning Commission of Racine!], by of course the venerable Frank Lloyd Wright]
