The Ashimmy Blog

Envelope please, and the winners are . . .

OK for the first time in public, here are the finalists for the 2010 Social Security Blogger Awards! The finalists were chosen by our blue ribbon panel of judges (Mike Fratton, Bill Brenner, Kelly Jackson-Higgins and Larry Walsh). The members of the Security Bloggers Network will be recieving ballots shortly with the names of the finalists and they will cast the deciding votes for who this years lucky winners are. So without further delay, the finalists are:

 

Best Technical Security Blog

SANS Internet Storm Center

Evil Bytes by John Sawyer

Praetorian Prefect

Darknet.org

Frequency X ISS blog

Best Non-Technical Security Blog

Security Uncorked

Schneier on Security

Krebs on Security

ThreatPost

TaoSecurity

Best Security Podcast

PaulDotCom

SANS ISC Stormcast

An Information Security Place

CSO Security Insights

Security Catalyst

Best Corporate Security Blog

JEREMIAH GROSSMAN (White Hat Security)

SOPHOS GRAHAM CLULEY BLOG

MICROSOFT SECURITY RESPONSE CENTER

FORTIGUARD BLOG

CISCO SECURITY BLOG

Most Entertaining Security Blog

Rational Survivability by Chris Hoff

Security Incite by Mike Rothman

Uncommon Sense Security by Jack Daniel

SecBarbie by Erin Jacobs

Emergent Chaos by Adam Shostack and ensemble

What an all star list of finalists. Each and every blog and podcast on this list are deserving of winning. It is a testament to the quality and quantity of blogs that the security industry has spawned. Congratulations to each and every one of them. May the best blogs win!

I also want to point out some honorable mention blogs and podcasts that did not make the finalists because they were not eligible, though they were nominated:

Securosis Blog

Network Security Blog and Podcast

and my own Ashimmy, after all these years.

Of course the winners will be announced at the Security Bloggers Meet-up at RSA in just over a month! Good luck to the finalists and hope to see you at the meet up.

Yesterday was International Data Privacy Day, did you miss it?

I just found out that yesterday was International Data Privacy Day. Also the House of Representatives passed a bill declaring it National Data Privacy Day too. A bunch of states have done similarly. Great! Anything to raise public awareness around data privacy and security can’t hurt.

Now tell the truth, how many of you out there knew yesterday was the day? Come on let me see a show of hands. Just what I thought, not many of you. Don’t feel bad, either did I. That is the problem. Why didn’t we make this a bigger deal? Were we all in a dark cave and missed the memo?

If we are going to be serious about this the media can’t wait until the actual day of it to tell us about it. We need to do a better job of getting the word out! Maybe we can design a colored ribbon that we could put on blogs and stuff? If we as an industry don’t make something of it, don’t expect others to.

Big week ahead

For those who read my blog regularly, I have spoken about being very busy getting my next “big adventure” going. The last month and a half have been busy talking, planning and doing.  Finally this week we are going to take the wraps off of what I and my partners have been working on. 

We will probably make the opening announcement on Wednesday. On Friday I am speaking at the ISACA WOW! event here in South Florida. While my talk Friday is about Compliance for Compliance sake giving us a false sense of security, I will also be talking about the new company.

A life lesson I learned was that there is never a perfect time to have a kid. You can always point to something that is not optimum to having a child right now. Like having children, there is never a perfect time to launch a company. There is always more work to do before the launch. Can we do more planning? Can we make the website better? Do more research?

Eventually, like the commercial says, you “just do it”.  So ready or not we will do it this week.  Look for the announcement here on the blog and elsewhere. Also if you are in the South Florida area, come down to the WOW! event at the Four Seasons Hotel in Miami. It promises to be a great event.

PS – As I Tweeted over the weekend. If you are a security person in the Tampa area interested in a potential long term engagement please contact me!

 

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Social Security Blogger Awards 2010

Wow! Has it been a year already?  Last year I had this crazy idea to have a security bloggers award program added to our security bloggers meet up at RSA. Who knew the havoc it would cause? None of us had ever run an awards program before. We thought putting up a nice survey monkey sheet with the nominations, having a blue ribbon panel and getting some nice trophies was all there was to it. But politics, politics, politics. We had issues with nominated bloggers not wanting to be nominated. We had issues with one man, one vote. We didn’t think anyone would really care if they won or not. Boy were we wrong!  While at the end of the day I think the winners from last year were all very deserving. We also learned a lot of lessons. So this year we are going to do it a little differently.

First of all we have formed a separate committee to oversee the awards. It is headed up by myself. I am joined by Kevin Riggins, Joe Franscella and Benny Ketelslegers. What we have done is recruit another blue-ribbon, all star panel of security media to help us.  Kelly Jackson Higgins of Dark Reading, Mike Fratto of Network Computing, Bill Brenner of CSO Online and CSO Magazine and Dan Kaplan of SC Magazine. This panel is going to each nominate up to 5 blogs in each of the 5 categories for awards.

1. Best non-technical security blog
2. Best technical security blog
3. Best corporate security blog
4. Best security podcast
5. Most entertaining security blog

The committee will review the submitted nominations and based upon the nominations of the panel, come up with the list of finalists for each category. We will verify with each proposed finalist if they will accept nomination. There will be no recounts, other submissions or reconsiderations. No pregnant chads, Supreme Court appeals or anything else, even if I do live in Florida. It may not be perfect or the most democratic, but we are saying up front that this is the way it is. Also all members of the security bloggers meet up organizing committee, the awards committee and their immediate families are prohibited from being nominated.

Next we will take the list of finalists and deliver a ballot to each member of the Security Bloggers Network. Only registered members of the SBN are eligible to vote. Sort of like a Screen Actors Guild SAG award. Why? it makes it easier for one. Also we think security bloggers are probably reading other security blogs as much as anyone else or more, so a well informed electorate. Finally this way, one blogger, one vote takes it out of the hands of any well intentioned ballot stuffing. Not to say that politic-ing won’t happen. Finalists can wine, dine and even try bribing members of the SBN to buy their vote, but I think the SBN members will be immune to that sort of stuff.  Anyway, the committee will then count the votes, validating that each vote did come from an SBN member.  We will of course announce the winners at the Bloggers Meet up at RSA. So if you want to vote, get a blog and join the SBN.

Finally, we are very lucky to have some great sponsors for this years bloggers meet up. As part of this we will have great trophies for the winners and maybe even something for all of the finalists. However, we need a new sponsor for winner’s prizes. If you or your company would like to sponsor the Social Security Blogger Awards winners prizes, please contact me at ashimmy@ashimmy.com.

We think it is going to be a great meet up and a great bloggers award show this year.  May the best blogs win!

RB @McKeay Start planning early for a good party! << Be there!

RB is my own twitter-esque  slang for ReBlog. Ok I was trying to be cool. But forget it, sometimes the harder you try the more un-cool you are. Anyway the point is, as Martin’s post announces, let the good times roll! The Security Bloggers Meet up @ RSA 2010 is officially on.  The first rounds of invites have been sent out and many have already RSVP’ed. If you are a member of the Security Bloggers Network, you are entitled to an invite. If you did not get one you can write me at ashimmy(@)ashimmy dot com which I will forward to Jennifer Leggio or you can email Jennifer directly.

As Martin details with sometimes fuzzy memory the annual Security Bloggers bash has certainly grown over the years.  It is no small task putting on this event anymore. The credit has to go to the organizing committee. Jennifer, Martin, RIch Mogull, Jeanne Friedman, Sonya Caprio and myself start working on the next years event literally before the present one is over.  But it is worth it. Each year the meet up is bigger, better and more fun.  We have learned a lesson from past years events though.  This year we are limiting the guest count to 150 people. This way the venue (and keep it secret) is not too overcrowded and our sponsors only put up a small kings ransom.  So if you have an invite better RSVP soon. If you deserve an invite and want one, reach out to us right away. We anticipate that we will fill up quickly.

Yes RSA is early March this year. If you have not already made your plans, I suggest you get on the stick. When I finalized my hotel and air fare a few weeks back there were still some good deals.

Finally as Martin also posted on the RSA Conference site, we are doing something a little different with the Social Security Blogger Awards this year. I will be posting on the RSA Conference site with all of the details in the next day or two.  In the meantime we are looking for a new sponsor for the award winners. Last year I think we gave away USB hard drives. Any decent techie kind of gift would do.If you or your company are interested drop me a line or leave a comment.  More on the awards shortly.

Cloud computing officially enters pop culture

OK its official, Cloud Computing is just not cool anymore.  Nothing that goes too mainstream pop can be cool. Too commercial. Watching Monday Night Football tonight, I saw the IBM commercial for cloud computing.  Personally I think it is the kiss of death.

Does this signify critical mass or a fad that is on the way down? 

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StillSecure MSSP earns Best Buy and 5 out of 5 stars!

I am happy to be able to post today some news that I have known for about a week already.  SC Magazine recently conducted a group test of MSSPs. The bake off included all of the usual suspects and some you may not be as familiar with.  They did a pretty deep dive on the offering and besides giving us an overall 5 out of 5 stars awarded StillSecure the Best Buy award in the category!

This is especially sweet because it is the first time our ProtectPoint MSSP service has actually been reviewed and it copped top spot out of the gate.  I always tell people that we liked what we saw so much in the ProtectPoint service that we bought it - lock, stock and barrel. Now over the last few months we have expanded the service offering with more and deeper solutions, as well as added some StillSecure technology.  We think it is a great MSSP offering and I guess the SC Magazine staff did too.

Of course we are not done yet. Look for even more offerings and solutions in our MSSP group soon. In the meantime congratulations to Steve Harris and the whole team who are on the job 24x7x365 making StillSecure’s MSSP service the best it can be!

StillSecure comes to Facebook

Image via CrunchBase

So perhaps just a bit late to the party we have opened a StillSecure page on Facebook. Now as if I don’t have enough to do I have to try keep some good content up there.  Not 100% sure what kind of content to place there but am going to give it a try and see. I would be interested in what you think a company’s facebook page should have.  Leave a comment and let me know.  Also visit the page and become fan if you like. You can comment there as well.

The best ISSA chapter conference

  I have been so busy running around and trying to spend more time with the family that I have been negligent in talking about some of the things I have been doing.  A perfect example was last week.  Among other appearances, I was a featured speaker at the annual South Florida ISSA conference.  I have had the pleasure of appearing and attending many different ISSA chapter conferences, but I can say that my home chapter in South Florida, hands down puts on the best conference I have seen, year in and year out.  This years show was no different. From the opening CSI video spoof, to Stephen Northcut’s keynote, down to the last good bye, Jeff Dell, Tim Krabec and Pete Nicoletti, along with the rest of the team out did themselves!

The guys down here know me pretty well and read my blog I suppose. At the end of the day to thank me for speaking they presented me with a few bottles of wine with the labels as shown here.  They obviously had read my article about cloud aficionados. Anyway, if you get a chance, try to make next years show as I am sure the guys will outdo themselves yet again!

Social Security Blogger awards video

As I wrote about earlier this was the first year of the Social Security Blogger Awards. Rich Mogull did a great job lining up a blue-ribbon panel of judges and I think the winners of the awards were very deserving.  You can see the complete list of winners and the full video on the RSA conference blog here.  But here is just part 1 of the video with Rich, Martin and then me:

This first years awards were a learning experience in many ways. I hope that we can take the lessons learned and improve for next year!