New School of Information Security Book Reading at Ada’s

Last Sunday, I did a book reading at Ada’s Technical Books. As I say in the video, I was excited because while I’ve talked about the New School, and I’ve given talks about the New School, I hadn’t done a book reading, in part because of the nature of the book, and my personal comfort [...]

Self Promotion: A Little Interview about Alex @ RSA

Self Promotion time, sorry for the spam, but I think the stuff I’ll be participating in at RSA is pretty NewSchool.  Here’s an interview that talks about both of the things I’ll be doing and you can see if they’ll be interesting: http://itacidentityblog.com/rsa-podcast-alex-hutton-principal-in-research-and-risk-intelligence-verizon-business

What They Know (From the WSJ)

Interesting interactive data app from the Wall Street Journal about your privacy online and what various websites track/know about you. http://blogs.wsj.com/wtk/ Full disclosure, our site uses Mint for traffic analytics.

Pie charts are not always wrong

In a comment, Wade says “I’ll be the contrarian here and take the position that using pie charts is not always bad.” And he’s right. Pie charts are not always bad. There are times when they’re ok. As Wade says “If you have 3-4 datapoints, a pie can effectively convey what one is intending to [...]

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information

In Verizon’s post, “A Comparison of [Verizon's] DBIR with UK breach report,” we see: Quick: which is larger, the grey slice on top, or the grey slice on the bottom? And ought grey be used for “sophisticated” or “moderate”? I’m confident that both organizations are focused on accurate reporting. I am optimistic that this small [...]

Miscommunicating risks to teenagers

A lesson in miscommunication of risk from “abstinence only” sex education aimed at teenagers. The educators emphasize the failure rate of condoms, but never mention the failure rate of abstinence-only policies when implemented by teenagers.

Ooops! and Ooops again!

Those of you who’ve heard me speak about the New School with slides have probably heard me refer to this as an astrolabe: Brett Miller just emailed me and asked (as part of a very nice email) “isn’t that an orrery, not an astrolabe?” It appears that I’m going to have to update my commentary. [...]

Speaking in Michigan on Tuesday

Andrew Stewart and I will be speaking at the University of Michigan SUMIT_09 on Tuesday. We’re on 10:30-11:25. If you’re in the area, please come by.

Visualization Friday – Beautiful, Functional, and Effective

We can all learn from this great role model, aimed at personal nutrition awareness and education: Nutritiondata.com. If only security awareness web sites were this good.

Making Sense of the SANS “Top Cyber Security Risks” Report

The SANS Top Cyber Security Risks report has received a lot of positive publicity. I applaud the effort and goals of the study and it may have some useful conclusions. We should have more of this. Unfortunately, the report has some major problems. The main conclusions may be valid but the supporting analysis is either confusing or weak. It would also be good if this study could be extended by adding data from other vendors and service providers.