I’ve never been a fan of checklists. Too often, checklists replace thinking and consideration. In the book, Andrew and I wrote: CardSystems had the required security certification, but its security was compromised, so where did things goo wrong? Frameworks such as PCI are built around checklists. Checklists compress complex issues into a list of simple [...]
In a widely discussed op-ed, Richard Clarke wrote: It’s not hard to imagine what happens when an American company pays for research and a Chinese firm gets the results free; it destroys our competitive edge. Shawn Henry, who retired last Friday as the executive assistant director of the F.B.I. (and its lead agent on cybercrime), [...]
Congratulations to Visa and Mastercard, the latest companies to not notify consumers in a prompt and clear manner, thus inspiring a shrug and a sigh from consumers. No, wait, there isn’t a clear statement, but there is rampant speculation and breathless commentary. It’s always nice to see clear reminders that the way to get people [...]
That’s the title of this TED Talk, “Doctors Make Mistakes. Can we talk about that?” When was the last time you heard somebody talk about failure after failure after failure? Oh yeah, you go to a cocktail party and you might hear about some other doctor, but you’re not going to hear somebody talking about [...]
Tripwire’s blog has “25 Infosec Gurus Admit to their Mistakes…and What They Learned from Them.” I’m glad to see attention paid to the simple reality that we all make mistakes. Extra points to Bill Brenner, Pete Lindstrom, Andrew Hay, Chris Wysopal, Rob Ton and Larry Ponemon for being willing to talk about mistakes that had [...]
Mr. Tripathi went to work assembling a crisis team of lawyers and customers and a chief security officer. They hired a private investigator to scour local pawnshops and Craigslist for the stolen laptop. The biggest headache, he says, was deciphering how much about the breach his nonprofit needed to disclose…Mr. Tripathi said he quickly discovered [...]
On their blog, Verisign made the following statement, which I’ll quote in full: As disclosed in an SEC filing in October 2011, parts of Verisign’s non-production corporate network were penetrated. After a thorough analysis of the attacks, Verisign stated in 2011, and reaffirms, that we do not believe that the operational integrity of the Domain [...]
Yesterday, DAn Kaminsky said “There should be a yearly award for Best Security Data, for the best collection and disbursement of hard data and cogent analysis in infosec.” I think it’s a fascinating idea, but think that a yearly award may be premature. However, what I think is sorta irrelevant, absent data. So I’m looking [...]
I wanted to share an article from the November issue of the Public Library of Science, both because it’s interesting reading and because of what it tells us about the state of security research. The paper is “Willingness to Share Research Data Is Related to the Strength of the Evidence and the Quality of Reporting [...]
On Saturday, I discussed how “I bolluxed our blog theme.” “More to the point, we here at the New School talk a good game about how we need to talk about problems, rather than cover them up. So here’s our money where our mouths are. I, Adam Shostack, screwed up the blog presentation by not [...]