ERM, GRC – Page 27 – Maverisk / Étoiles du Nord

Contra Bruce, for once

For once, Bruce is not at the right end. Maybe not opposite of it, but.
As per this here blog post of his — a repeat of one of his, and others’, thread.

The argument: We make things, like, security, too difficult for users and hence (?) we shouldn’t try to change them into secure behaviour.
The contra: ‘Guns kill people’, or was it that the men (mostly) firing guns, kill people? And the many toddlers shooting their next of kin since, being at the approximate maturity of the Original gun pwner, they have no clue.

The Contra, too, and much more to the point when it comes to ‘information’ ‘security’: We should make cars run at maximum 5Mph … Since ‘users’ are waaaay too stupid to drive carefully.
Just don’t mention that ‘security’ is a quality not an absolute pass-or-fail thing, and that ‘information’ could not be more vague. [Except ‘cyber’, that’s so vacated of any meaning that it’s a black hole.] And don’t mentoin we still seem to let cars be used by any other moron that once, possibly literally decades ago before ‘chips’ were invented, passed some formal test — the American idea of the test coming very, dangerously, close to … was (sic) it the Belgian? system where one could pick up one’s driver’s license at the post office. Able, allowed, to buy cars that drive not just 5 but 250Mph, on busy roads, without protection against using socmed mid-traffic… One thing could be to introduce Finnish-style booking for unsafe behaviour (if caught, not when as per next paragraph [think that through…]), and/or huge fines for the producers of bad equipment (hw/sw) comparable to fines on car makers, or outright laws to build airbags in, etc.

And then, if we’d design ‘secure’ systems, e.g., the Apple way, we’d end up with even worse Shallows sheeple that have so much less clue than before… And all in the hands of … even in ultra-liberal countries one would suggest either Big Corp, or Big Gov’t, both options being Big Brother literally in such an atrocious Dystopia of humanity.

So, you want safe systems? You get the loss of humanity before actual safety.

[Yes I get the Humans Are The Cause Of Much Infosec Failure thing (including Human Flexibility Can (still!) Solve More Than Machines Can, Against System (!) Malfunction), but also I am completely in favour of both the Humans Must Through Tech Be Completely Shielded From Being Able To Do Anything Wrong and Humans Should Retain All Freedom To Act Responsibly solutions.]

Pick your stand. And:

[Use G Translate if you have to, from Dutch. Typifying the driver, probably, if only for picking the brand/car…; London]

You sporting against all

When sports are considered to be character-forming for later (mostly assumed to be business-)life, either by having been trained to be competitive or have learned (really?) to cooperate in teams (really?), let’s see which versions there are:

In which the You Against Natural science (No counter-actors other than nature, only personal performance counts, possibly measured against others but still, bad luck gets you), You Against One opponent (where one’s in a knock-out tournament or variant; running into the later champion in the first round doesn’t do much for your chances for second place), and Team Against Team (if you’re a champ in a bad team, fuggeddaboudit; the other way around too, like Leicester City…), are all too well known, with the ‘character formation’ mostly being: Either you win or are a loser, and Suck It Up The Other Guy(‘)s Much Better.

But in business … Be careful not to think that it’s a team-to-team competition. Yes, you may assemble, or join, a team, but you’re playing against … the Market. Not another team … Unless the very unusual situation of a duopoly, which should be breakable, legally.
Rather, you’re up against ‘everything out there’; can count only on one’s own errors, not count on the luck of anything out there working your way though they sometimes do. And the character building/application is … well, mostly about you not being Hercules.

Well, if you think you are the big Heracles himself, note that your Impostor Syndrome is no illusion. The Wonder CEO that thinks he’s in the bottom right corner, is deluded to not see that it’s not all the underlings (certainly the sycophants) in a Team against him (seldomly her), in an internal struggle much larger than any competitive fight out there. But that all those one’s up against, are the Team in the top left corner, though possibly having ousted him for displaying anti-team play morals…

Talking of big business: What sport would have massive teams of hundreds, thousands, hundred thousands of players on either side ..!? With all specialised in their own little square foot of the playing field ..? At best, one has such armies with the classical mercenaries — and even they were, are, organised much more effectively. The military discipline of the multinational überbureaucracies will fail in the murk out there, certainly when one’s not against one specific opponent, as above.
‘Normal’ teams in sports are, ballpark, smaller than 20 players, all maybe having designated tasks but always all (of the winning teams) have the flexibility to step out of their role and position, with team mates catching the blind spots. As if that ever happens in business-outside-the-startup-scene. The closest to actual normal business, would be athletics teams, all with their specialties, contributing to the total, the satisfaction of having succeeded as a team winning out over the satisfaction of personal performance over team gains.

So, what was that about through (‘high school’/university age) (team) sports, would one breed character for the real world ..? If one does sports, obviously it should‘nt be for that reason but for the joy of it. ‘Character building’ as an argument shows one has no clue.

Plusquote: Beaton

Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.

Thus wrote sir Cecil Beaton.

And right he was. And is, and will be, more than before. Since times are a’changing ever faster, too. Which means the risk, nay certain penalty of not venturing out into the future by one’s own action, increases by the day, as well. Live, or not — the characterisation of those of the ordinary is apt.

With thoughtful salutations, I thee present:

[One feels invited to have to wait here, only; Royal waiting room entrance, Amsterdam CS]

You're Exposed…

You haven’t studied this here overview hard enough. Because you’re not even on it so shows your lack of will to enormously improve the seriousness of your (clients’) information security which would get you onto the list, just. Your security being too much of a joke to even achieve this level of honest attempt at seriousness.

ig_nobel_stinker_serif_icon_400x400

Teh business, does it exist ..?

On purpose, teh. Plus a spoiler: No.

Though this is a tell-tale sign your infosec program, of whatever kind, will #fail, wholesale.
’cause If you can’t specify all stakeholders, at their various levels of detail required, beyond swiping them up under the ‘the business’ nomen, Then you might as well call it ‘teh’ business, as you are vague to the point of irrelevance, as you will be regarded by ‘the business’ and since that’s where 99.9% of your security sits (including budget holders…), fugeddabout effectiveness.
Endif. No Else.

So, stop using ‘the business’ as a stopgap designation for your lack of understanding of the infosec problems that you claimed you could tackle hence you demonstrate to know no thing about the swamp of root causes to the problems that you said to go solve.
You n00b.

Oh well…:

[Some specific business; Madrid]

Waves of cyberfud

Not just because #ditchcyber is real. But because only now, the first of the absolute leggards (i.e., gov’t officials) begin to make waves about access to private data, through apparent (sic) complete lack of understanding about the fundamentals of free society. The issue of blanket access to any communications, for whatever purpose, has been settled so shut up for eternity or however much longer it takes ‘you’ to get it or die — whichever comes first, my guess is the latter.

Politics being the only field of work where no education is required; all the cyber-blah being the second, then, apparently ..? And:

[He would have annihilated the little people that clamour for ‘backdoors’, etc., et al.; DC]

World Animal Day: a disruptive Whale

Because today is World Animal Day, let’s think of the Whale.

Because this is the kind of disruption your brain needs. Today, and any day.
Yes the clip is ‘Old’ — but still fresh; how’s that you Under-30-or-younger hunting faux headhunters that still, en masse (over 99,5% at least) hunt for dummies (car crashing kind) to fill dummy slots in Bureaucratia.

That’s all. And do check the vid at least until 2:42 Because Reasons.

Tugging on with Thoreau

It’s not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?

As a warning to the many that just continue to be ‘compliant’, letting their best, and next in line their mehhh, drain and be crowded out by meek submission. Which is what some Others live off, totally.

Hey, don’t just point out this all sounds rather negative: It’s Monday, right ..?
Switch to the Useful, creative, productive life! Yes, sirmadam, so can you! And you and you! And:

[If only life were always like this Valencia …]

Fraud no-angle

There was a lot of work done, mainly from faux legal/ethical corners, on the so-called ‘fraud triangle’. Without pointing only at previous dismissal, there are some fresh insights on why this’all is faux.

One is, as pointed, the presentation that considers the three corners of the triangle (pleonastically not tautologically) to be ‘present’ at one same time. In stead of seeing that there is a (very) definite order of the three. Once started, the march by moral capture / self-blackmail is one-way only. Whether triggered by willful act or casual impulse (i.e., Kahnemann’s System 2 or System 1 ..!); this is just a fact.
Two, the considerations on the triangle, and how to ‘prevent’ ‘it’, are theoretical only. Because they leave out human nature, where Systems 1 and 2 interplay. Where ‘protection’ against that, is not a theoretical exercise somehow (sic) translated into perfect control — as history learns, all totalitarian dehumanising organisations inevitably (sic) fail, and even trivial implementations will fail due to imperfect control everywhere, by definition through its selection by risk vs. budget balancing.

Yes the Faux triangle sometimes appears to be discussed only by those without due experience in practice. That know not of what ‘ethical’ means when it comes to leading and controlling people. That see only a tiny fraction of perverted Bad people (tellingly forgetting about the difference between Bad and Evil, Nietzschian style) that need to be stopped at all cost… Because Ordnung Muss Sein.

We all know how that worked.
Leaving you with:

[Please take a bath…; at Caldelas]

Another Thoreau, another on more-than-mere-process

I would not have every man nor every part of a man cultivated, any more than I would have every acre of earth cultivated: part will be tillage, but the greater part will be meadow and forest, not only serving an immediate use, but preparing a mould against a distant future, by the annual decay of the vegetation which it supports.

Which again, points at not every waking hour should be spent on work within the straight jacket of Process(es) and procedures, just clicking the only icons you have. But also having, taking, the time to let one’s mind wander, and do things differently, for the very purpose only of refreshment. Refreshment of the mind, for the purpose of that creating the mould, … on which future creativity is crucially, essentially dependant.

Without ‘idle’ land and time (spent on refreshment and enrichment, e.g., through reading serious (sic) i.e., only tangentially business-related (sic) books), your future will be a depleted land, a life spent being a wringed-out lemon for others’ profits.
With idleness, refreshment and joy (that essential true-life ingredient), you can be(come) all you want to be and live a full life.

‘Nuff said, plus:

[Even the ground enriches the eyes… Plus, straight lines at a slight angle are more interesting >:-] ; Ancy-le-Franc, Aube]