StillSecure's Strata Guard IDS/IPS uses a Snort based engine. One of the questions we get asked is how do we keep the signature database up to date.  Do we just use the Sourcefire VRT rule set?  Truth be told we have not used the VRT rule set in years and years. Our own Security Alert Team (SAT) is responsible for making sure all StillSecure products are up to date and offer our customers protection up the second.

This is mostly an anonymous type of job.  So many of our SAT members toil away writing signatures, tests and scans that get added to our products every hour of the day. Our customers have come to take for granted the protection our products and SAT team afford.  But every once in a while they got some mention of thanks for the great job they do.  Yesterday was one of those days.  Matt Jonkman who runs the Emerging Threats community released 30 new signatures written by our SAT.  In doing so Matt took the time to call out their contribution and how important it is to the community.

Great job SAT, keep up the good work!

FAB as in Federal Advisory Board.  I believe in the military they call it "the brass". In any event, StillSecure announced yesterday that we have formed a Federal Advisory Board to better help us design products and work with the Federal Government.  Over the past few years the federal sector has become an increasingly important part of our business (in these tough economic times that is not such a bad thing). As such working with distinguished retired members of the armed forces will help us better understand the needs of the government market.

Our past experience as already resulted in our NAC solution being very different than our competition.  Where most of our NAC competitors have developed a product born and raised in the .edu market, our NAC solution was forged by the needs and demands of our US Armed Forces customers.

Having met the members of our FAB, I can say I was awed and developed a deep respect for those folks who have dedicated their lives to leading our armed forces. There are several admirals and generals on the board.  Speaking to these folks you realize what it takes to have the "right stuff" like these folks do.

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And in the streets: the children screamed,
The lovers cried, and the poets dreamed.
But not a word was spoken;
The church bells all were broken.
And the three men I admire most:
The father, son, and the holy ghost,
They caught the last train for the coast
The day the music died.

And they were singing,
"bye-bye, miss american pie."
Drove my chevy to the levee,
But the levee was dry.
And them good old boys were drinkin' whiskey and rye
Singin', "this'll be the day that I die.
"this'll be the day that I die."

They were singing,
"bye-bye, miss american pie."
Drove my chevy to the levee,
But the levee was dry.
Them good old boys were drinkin' whiskey and rye
Singin', "this'll be the day that I die.";
"this'll be the day that I die."

            - Bye, Bye Miss American Pie, Don McLean

One of my favorite songs as a kid, it is what I was reminded of reading Stuart Cohen's special report in Business Week, Open Source: The Model is Broken. I think Stuart has laid out for everyone to see, that after all of the money poured into open source business models over the last few years, the fact is that just thinking that adding support and services to open source software is a good business is in fact a flawed model and increasingly difficult for a company to be successful with.  You need to add some other value beyond servicing the open source software to make it.

This is a huge turn around from the conventional wisdom of years past.  Too many people looked at Red Hat and pointed to their support for Linux as the reason for their success.  But as Stuart points out, Red Hats success is in providing software that works on top of the stable Linux kernel.  If Red Hat had to subsist on just supporting Linux, it would be no where near the company it is today.  Of course Red Hat is just one example.  There are many, many other companies that embraced the software is free, sell them support model and it remains to be seen if they will fail or succeed.

Even the normally viewed as a success MySQL is not a lock to return the billion dollars that Sun invested in it.  Software, whether it be open or closed source, according to Stuart is a commodity.  What a company does on top of this is where it gets interesting Cohen says. Collaboration is the real key for Cohen. He says that aspect of open source development is what is really valuable.

I agree with Stuart. I think SaaS is the new open source. I also think that eventually we will see the same thing with SaaS.  Just hosting the software for the customer is not going to be enough. You have to add value over and above that as well.

These tough economic times are going to be brutal on marginal business models.  Nice to have is not going to cut it. If you can't show why what your company has is a must have and they must have it from you, you are going to have trouble surviving. In the meantime, the good old boys were drinking whiskey and rye, singin' ....

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So we all join the take your pick social network (myspace, facebook, linked in). We network up with people we know or meet.  Sometimes we even hook up with people we haven't seen in a while.  Then we start trying to figure out what else we can do on these networks.  What apps are available to get more value. But we sometimes forget that the real value in social networks is in the people.  You don't need the calendar app. You don't need the snowball and have a drink stuff.  It is really about getting together with people.

This weekend we visited a friend of my wife Bonnie's from elementary school.  Bonnie went to school with this woman from kindergarten through 5th grade and had not really seen her since.  So here we were 30+ years later and Bonnie and this woman found each other on Facebook.  She lives in Connecticut , but her and her family have a second home in Ft Lauderdale.  They were down for the long holiday weekend.  Her husband and her have 3 kids around my kids age. 

Bonnie and her friend made plans for us to come over on Sunday.  Bonnie was very excited to see her friend, but didn't really know what to expect.  After threatening our kids with lifelong video game bans if they did not behave, we headed over. When Bonnie saw her friends they were both moved to tears.  After that, they picked up where they left off 30+ years ago.  Our kids had a great time playing Wii with their kids and they had football on the TV, so Bonnie's friends husband and I did the universal male thing, talk football.  We stayed for about 3 or 4 hours and a great time was had by all.

Heading home Bonnie was so happy that she saw her friend.  It was a very special day for her.  She got home and tried to figure out how to find other friends she had.  And that is the real power and attraction of social networks.

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We also discuss with Mike some of the latest news in security.  As always, Mitchell and I have a great time with Mike and the time goes by too quickly. I am sure you will enjoy what Mike has to say as well.

Mitchell and I had two shows taped, so rather than wait I released them both . We have another one ready to go in the next week or so as well, so stay tuned.

Thanks to Pod0matic for hosting our podcast. Tonight's music is the usual, To the Summit by Jon Schmidt. You can hear more from Jon at http://www.jonschmidt.com. Music transitions between segments are by our own Mitchell Ashley!

Enjoy the podcast!

The Spam problem won't go away until the money is let out of the balloon for the spammers.  When the rate of return for what it costs them to deliver this garbage is not enough to justify the cost, Spam will go away.  It really is an economic problem.  As long as some people are stupid enough to click on this crap and buy it, they will continue sending it.  Yes we can build better mouse traps, yes we can shut down hosts that host the spammers, yes we can try to block the botnets that are at work.  But all of that is reactive and perpetuates the status quo.  We need to educate people that to stop the spam, they need to stop clicking on it! That is something I see very little on.  Educating people that even if these deals seem too good to be true (they are), clicking on them hurts us all.  Stop spam by stop clicking on it. If you don't like all of this Viagra, credit repair, porn and the other sundry crap that clogs your mailbox, stop clicking on it.  Just say no to Spam.  Some sort of public awareness of what drives Spam would go a long way towards taking the money out of it for the spammers.  With no money the Spammers will shrivel up and die.

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Image by Joe Shlabotnik via Flickr

I was sickened today to hear and read about the story of a Wal-Mart worker who was trampled to death in a stampede at a Long Island Wal-Mart store at 5am on Friday. He was trying to open the doors for Black Friday shoppers and they bull rushed the door, knocking him over and trampling him to death. It is just beyond me how people could be such animals.  Listening to the witnesses on the scene who were shoppers themselves trying to blame the store for lack of crowd control was even more absurd.  Take responsibility for your actions!  You act like a mob and this is what happens with mobs.  Does the store have to hire people to remind you be act human? 

I am ashamed of my fellow humans reading this story.  To add salt to the wound for me, this took place at Green Acres Mall in Valley Stream, Long Island.  Valley Stream is right on the border of Queens, NYC and Nassau County, Long Island. It is also where I grew up.  I spent many a weekend hanging out at that mall.  I worked at Alexanders and then Korvettes at that mall when I was 16 to 18. I always thought the shoppers were animals, but never like this.Talk about the mean streets, but the mall?  Was the deal on the 19inch HD TV worth someone's life?  I hope the authorities send a message that this won't be tolerated.  Holiday spirit?  Is this what Christmas means to you?

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I was surprised this Thanksgiving when several people at the table when asked what they were thankful for mentioned Barak Obama. I have never seen that kind of adulation for a President.  Hey I voted for him too. But I am afraid there is more hype about how he is going to make everything all right than there was for NAC solving all of the problems of IT security.

I for one don't like cult of personalities.  I hope that he really can deliver the goods, but lets be realistic.

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OK, let me get sentimental here a bit about tomorrow's Thanksgiving holiday here in the US.  Sitting here at my laptop typing a blog post while I listen to "Pocketful of Sunshine" by Natasha Beddingfield, thinking about going to a party tonight, football game tomorrow morning and up to my family for a big holiday dinner tomorrow, we take for granted our lives.  In fact more than take for granted, we actually complain and wonder why we don't have it better.  Even in these tough economic times, for the most part we are spared the real disruptions and tough times that many in this world confront every day and that our grandparents faced in years gone by.

I was reminded of this last night while watching my sons baseball team practice.  I was talking to a mom of another boy on the team.  Having seen this family throughout the baseball season a couple of times a week, I never noticed or thought anything of them other than they were nice people and their son has a great compact swing when hitting.   I mentioned to the Mom that we had gone away this past weekend across the state to Naples and had a great time.  She told me that they have not had any vacation for 2 years.  Her husband lost his job 2 years ago and has not been able to find another one.  She is a licensed nurse and works 50+ hours a week and makes 50k a year.  She supports herself, the two boys and her husband on this.  They are 5 months behind on their mortgage and she is at her wits end. 

Now of course you can say why can't the husband find a job.  I don't know, but that isn't the point.  Think about the pressure her and this family live with everyday and what it must feel like hearing about others going to Disney or other places on vacation here in Florida. Thinking about trying to buy healthy foods that cost more money.  About getting the kids extra help so they do better in school.  For me it made me realize that my problems can be very small indeed compared to others, even right in your community.

So be thankful for what you have. For sure there are others who look at what you have and would be grateful for it.  Look no further than what you have in front of you and realize that no matter what, it could be a lot worse.

Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

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SSAATY #61 has Mitchell and I joined by Steve Goodbarn, CEO of Secure64, developers of a DNSSec solution. Mitchell and I get a well grounded technical background on DNSSec and what Steve is trying to do.

We so inspired Steve that he started his how blog shortly thereafter. His blog is at http://www.stevegoodbarn.com.

Thanks to Pod0matic for hosting our podcast. Tonight's music is the usual, To the Summit by Jon Schmidt. You can hear more from Jon at http://www.jonschmidt.com. Music transitions between segments are by our own Mitchell Ashley!

Enjoy the podcast!

BTW, in case you are wondering the * is for the number 61. I just can't write 61 with out an * next to it,  here is to Roger Maris and the Babe.

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Was happy to see this article in the NY Times Technology section today about HP ProCurve shedding its redheaded stepchild status, at least internally in HP. ProCurve for a long time was one of the best kept secrets in technology.  Operating as a company within a company at HP they very quietly went about their business of building the second leading switch business in the market. Now they are finally getting their due, being acknowledged as the second most profitable division in HP and getting some very high visibility within HP's executive team.

Believe it or not, before Mark Hurd took over, HP's service and sales team was comp'ed to sell Cisco products but not ProCurve!  According to the Times article this may have been due to the fact that Carly Fiorina was on Cisco's board at the same time she was CEO of HP.  In any event ProCurve had to make their own way in the world and may very well be stronger for it.

All of that has apparently been placed in the rear view mirror now.  HP's sales force is being compensated to sell ProCurve.  Hurd and legendary EVP Ann Livermore (in charge of the division ProCurve is now part of within HP) are very much involved and interested in seeing ProCurve grow.  They have thrown down the gauntlet, letting Cisco know that they want a bigger piece of the 20 billion dollar network gear market.

ProCurve has some great products, great warranty and great service.  They also have a good strategy around security in the network.  My friend Mauricio Sanchez drives a lot of the vision around security. I just hope that my friends at ProCurve don't find that having the spotlight turned on them somehow messes with their momentum and way of doing things. Otherwise they may just wish that they were that redheaded kid still.

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Dialogue from Casablanca:

Rick: How can you close me up? On what grounds?
Captain Renault: I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!
[a croupier hands Renault a pile of money]
Croupier: Your winnings, sir.
Captain Renault: [sotto voce] Oh, thank you very much.
[aloud]
Captain Renault: Everybody out at once!

Pretty much sums what I was reminded of when reading about Symantec's "revelation" that the market for stolen data was in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Did Big Yellow think people were just doing this for kicks and giggles?

Round up the usual suspects.

With company viability a legitimate concern in the current market (whether you are talking about GM, Citibank or StillSecure), having this capital available is a strong signal of sustainability.  The fact that a bank and one not in line for a bailout, was bullish enough on our business to make this investment is a powerful vote of confidence in our company. Also  it is a testament to all of the hard work that all of the employees of StillSecure have expended to make our success a reality.

Adam Dodge writing on the Security Catalyst blog (another great SBN member site) writes about how data breaches have a substantial impact on companies losing customers. Adam points out that nothing will make a company take security more seriously than hits to the bottom line.  Adam cites two recent studies to prove how data breaches make customers lose faith in the breached companies and how a substantial amount (30% or more) terminate their relationship. 

I don't buy this for a second.  In fact I think for many kinds of breaches, it doesn't effect bottom line or customer loyalty at all. DSW Shoes,TJX, Best Buy - none of these retailers had any lingering effect to the bottom line or their stock prices as a result of data breaches. Adam's evidence from two studies are both sponsored by companies that make their living in id management and identity protection.  These are hardly neutral parties.

I can understand if the data breach was your banking institution, but when it comes to retail at least, I don't think people stop shopping there.  That is not to say that they don't get upset and on a short term basis bitch and moan about it.  But long term the next time DSW has shoes on sale or Best Buy is running a great deal on HD TV, consumers will be lining up to buy.  Also the fact that stock prices are not effected is not lost on executive management of these companies.

The fact is until there are real hits to the bottom line from these high profile breaches, as a business plan it may be cheaper to absorb the cost of a breach than to try to lock it down and prevent them.

* The two studies Adam mentions are here:

http://www.debix.com/docs/Javelin_Research_Consumer_Survey_Data_Breach_Notification_2008.06.pdf

http://www.idexpertscorp.com/breach/ponemon-study/

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Fan boys be damned, Apple sucks!  I have written before about my frustrations with their closed-box, big brother knows best way of doing business. No thank you I don't think Steve Jobs and company have my best interests at heart. As a matter of fact I don't think they give a damn about me. Cute cuddly commercials or not, they don't do right.  Their quirky, who gives a crap attitude may be OK for a company that has a sliver of a share of the market and mostly the edu crowd at that.  Or if the most mission critical piece of hardware they make is a music player, but when you are doing phones and email devices this type of shoddy quality doesn't fly.  Upgrading your iPhone is like playing Russian Roulette.  This is unacceptable from a company that wants to be my smart phone company going forward.

The latest Apple fiasco comes around the upgrade to 2.2 software. I was away this weekend with Bonnie and the kids.  Last night when I plugged in the phone to sync and charge it told me that there was new software available and to click to upload.  What possessed me to do so is beyond me.  But when I woke up this morning the phone was dead and blank! When you turned it on it was like the first time you activated the phone, totally blank.

When I plugged it into the computer it said it had to be restored.  So I plugged it in and tried to restore about 6 or 12 times and each time it hung.  I finally called ATT, who of course told me that it was an Apple phone and I had to call them.  I called Apple and of course the call volume was very heavy (that is what happens when you don't QA your releases I guess). I held 10 or 20 minutes for an Apple tech to tell me before I got 6 words out that she knew the problem, everyone was having it. WTF?  I could go to another computer (wait let me check under the desk in the hotel room, there must be another computer here somewhere) or she could make me an appointment at the nearest Apple store.  Are you kidding me?  Are you fu*%&% kidding me? I am going to ruin my weekend vacation hanging around the Apple store for some arrogant little twerp to unbrick my phone? 

So I came home and used my desktop as a second computer and had to do a vanilla install on the phone.  This worked, but of course wiped out everything I had built up including pictures (that were not synced because I had the nerve to get a new computer after I bought my iPhone) for over 8 months.  To add salt in the wounds, when I sync to my laptop now I can no longer get all my contacts to import.  The phone must be looking in the wrong folder, but of course the black fruit company won't let you change that.

Yes Apple stick with music players and letting elementary kids play computer games.  But stay the heck out of the enterprise until you get your act together and build a company for grown ups!

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Well there is not much sense keeping it a secret any longer, as others have already blogged on it. The Security Bloggers Network is going Lijit.  Working with the folks who bring you Lijit search widgets, the Security Bloggers Network has a new home.  You can find site at http://www.securitybloggers.net (thanks to Tyler Reguly of http://www.computerdefense.org) and at http://www.securitybloggersnetwork.com (this may still be resolving).  Either URL should work.  You can subscribe to the new feed here.

Right now the site is just the spliced feed of all of the 180+ blogs in the SBN. Very soon you will be able to use Lijit search technology to search across the entire network.  We have lots of other cool things planned for the new site as well.

If you are a blogger and you would like to join the premier security blog network in the world email us at info@securitybloggersnetwork.com.  If you are not using Lijit on your own blog or site right now, you should check it out and install right away.

Following up an article he wrote earlier about the pros and cons of the different types of NAC, Tim Greene's column this week talks about what he calls Hybrid NAC installs.  Tim is referring to organizations buying NAC for one reason or for one class of devices and users and than wanting to use it for another class.  Often times depending on what the second type of NAC testing is, they than have to buy a second NAC system.  I think this is incredibly silly.  I wrote as much about it last week.

I find a few things to comment on in this column.  First of all I think the situation Tim describes is most true when companies are "sold" a NAC system from their endpoint vendors.  The local Symantec or McAfee reseller tells them there is no need to buy a stand alone NAC system, because they can get NAC with the uber-suite they already own. The old adage of you get what you pay for applies.  They soon find out that the NAC they got bundled with suite is little more than a toy and doesn't give them what they need.  Now they have no choice but to buy another NAC system.  Or you could go put IPS boxes all over the place with the new McAfee NAC system.

More importantly perhaps is that most NAC solutions are really geared towards one kind of NAC deployment.  This leads to Hybrid NAC as Tim calls it or piecemeal NAC, which is what I have always called it.  If you are looking for a NAC system, it should be a complete NAC system that has a solution for wired or wireless devices, remote or local, managed or unmanaged, LAN or WAN, your NAC solution needs to cover the full spectrum.

By the way if you are looking for a system like that check out Safe Access.

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Grant Hartline, CTO over at Mirage has an article up on his blog called Pre-Admission NAC. In it Grant tries to give some advice about the "often controversial topic of pre-admission NAC policy".  Grant says that at a start and perhaps at an end too is you need to determine us vs them (managed versus unmanaged) and un-testable (IPphones, etc.).  Then Grant says you can set tests for on going risks and gives a few examples. 

Grant is right on if you are using the Mirage product which has at best limited pre-connect testing.  The real strength of the Mirage product (at least according to them), is in detecting malicious behavior after a device is on the network and ARP twiddling it (hey don't make fun, they have patented ARP twiddling raising it to a new level of I don't know what).  However, because Grant uses this particular hammer to solve this problem, everything to him looks like the same nail.  But if you had another tool that was capable of much more in the way of pre-connect testing, you might look at this problem very differently.

At StillSecure, our Safe Access NAC product can perform over 1800 tests in a matter of seconds as a device seeks to log on.  Because of this, the spectrum of "nails" we can check is greatly expanded. Therefore you are not limited by performance or time to settling for a minimal set of tests. 

Now whether you think there is value in having so many more potential tests available is up to you as the NAC administrator.  But like many things, getting the right result depends on using the right tools!

One of the things you always hear about lame duck US Presidents is they are always very concerned with their legacy.  How will history treat them.  Will Bill Clinton be best remembered for the economic prosperity we enjoyed under his administration or will it be about what he did with some White House intern?  In the case of George W Bush, did he keep America safe after the terror attacks of 9/11 or did he involve us in an unnecessary and costly war, ruin the economy, etc, etc.  I don't care what side of these you are on, the important thing is when a leader leaves, how he is remembered and what his legacy is critical.

Yesterday we heard about two high profile tech leaders leaving.  Over at Symantec, John Thompson will retire at the end of this fiscal year.  At Yahoo, Jerry Yang one of the co-founders at Yahoo stepped down.  How will history treat these two?  Is it fair?  I think probably not.

Lets first examine Yang.  An icon of the Internet era, he gave life to one of the original Internet powerhouses. It seemed that Yahoo was going to be one of the four horsemen of the Internet going forward.  Starting with search, they moved well beyond mere search.  The company spawned countless dot com millionaires and made billionaires of Yang and his fellow co-founder.  If Yang would have stayed out of it when he first left Yahoo, his legacy would be secure as an Internet legend. But he came back to help Yahoo compete in the Web 2.0 Internet.  An Internet where Google is the undisputed king of search and Yahoo had to learn to monetize other areas of the business. But Yang I think is destined to be best remembered as the arrogant techie who refused to come under Microsoft's thumb and turned down a 10's of billions of dollars offer.  While he was offered 33 dollars a share, his stock today is under 11 dollars.  To add salt to the wound, after cozying up to arch enemy Google to thwart Microsoft, Google tossed him aside like yesterdays news.  I am afraid history will not look kindly on Yangs legacy. In fact the future of Yahoo itself is no longer StillSecure (hey I couldn't resist the plug).

Thompson on the other hand I think will be treated much more kindly by the historians.  John was not a founder at Symantec.  But ten years ago he took over a consumer computer security and utility company and turned it into one of the biggest software companies in the world.  Though there are many who point to a lack of innovation and execution, as well as integration at Symantec, the fact is that under John Thompson, Symantec is a giant.  They are big Yellow.  They have moved beyond security into storage and network management.  They have added to the consumer segment both enterprise and mid-market.  Symantec is in fact ubiquitous.  I think that is the legacy that John Thompson will be remembered for favorably by history.

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I was reading Steven J Vaughn-Nichols column the other day entitled, "Sun: Dead company walking". Vaughn-Nichols laments that Sun is probably doomed and too bad, just when it realized that it is truly an open source company and given the chance could be so successful, but it is probably too late. Of course realize that Vaughn-Nichols is an open source bigot who thinks open source is the answer to all things and that Microsoft is the anti-Christ incarnate. 

All of the doom and gloom surrounding the recent bad news at Sun got me to thinking. When I was early in my tech career a Sun server running the latest version of Solaris was the baddest game in town.  Yes, if you were doing media maybe a Silcon Graphics box was hotter but Sun owned the data center.  Utlra Sparc's were our web server of choice in those days. The web was owned by Sun gear. Even though LInux was there, it was not as secure, stable or as scalable as Solaris.  Sun seemed to have the world on a string and was even able to tweak Bill Gates nose.  So where did it go wrong? 

Some like Vaughn-Nichols will say Sun was too late in adopting open source like LInux and such. I say the opposite, I think Sun went wrong trying to be too much and too open to too many people. I think trying to make Solaris work on Intel as well as it did on Sun CPUs was a mistake.  I think making Linux work on SPARC as well as Solaris was a mistake.  Yes the platform was proprietary, but it rocked.  Rolls Royce engines don't run in Chevys and Ford parts don't fit onto a Bentley. 

When Sun tried to appeal to the every man, instead of being the Geeks hot rod, things started to unravel.  I think their business at the high end was a sustainable model.  No they were not going to over take Microsoft, but they would not be in the place they are today either.

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Richard Stiennon is up to his old tricks again.  The latest from the IDS is dead, then NAC is dead, yada, yada, yada is dead is this:  Twitter is dead.  First Richard wrote a few days ago about Twitter being doomed and now he is laying out the scenarios in this article.

Richard is if nothing else, consistent.  In the meantime if Twitter is as dead as IDS, all of their investors will be doing somersaults!  Funny thing is I notice Richard using Twitter quite a bit lately, as well as pimping for followers. Now of course Richard is also the person (or so he claims) that told McAfee who and what to acquire to make themselves who they are today as well.  In fact, Richard is I think the Al Gore of information security.  So what could be next, poor security leading to global warming?

Image via Wikipedia

In a case of all good dogs companies go to heaven, John Chambers says that Cisco is aiming even higher than the cloud.  It wants to be the "best company in the world, and the best company for the world". Chambers says the company can "help bring peace to the world".  With that kind of mission and aiming higher than the clouds, where else is there to go other than heaven.

Of course I am sure that John will be sure that Cisco does this without any selfish, profit-driven, carbon burning, monopolistic practices whatsoever.  Maybe what we need is everyone to pay a Cisco energy tax to help John and his band of merry men achieve their angelic goals.

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