StillSecure, After All These Years

SBN members are attending SC World Congress as press

This post is for my fellow bloggers in the Security Bloggers Network.  If you are planning on attending or would like to attend the SC Magazine World Congress this December at the Javits Center in NYC, you are eligible for a press pass.  The pass allows you to attend sessions and the exhibits for free, as well as more perks.

If you would like to apply for your press credentials please contact me at podcast@stillsecure.com by Monday. Please include your SBN member blog URL to verify your membership. I am submitting the final list to the SC Mag folks Monday evening.

Also, for the analyst and mainstream media community we will be having a StillSecure cocktail hour.  If you would like an invite please contact me at podcast@stillsecure.com as well.

It should be a great show and I hope to see many SBN members at there.

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• How about a discount for the SC World Congress?

How about a discount for the SC World Congress?

So courtesy of the folks at SC Magazine and the Security Bloggers Network here is a great offer to attend a great security conference.  This offer is for the inaugural SC World Congress this December 9-10, at the Javits Center in NYC. The show has a great schedule and an "A" list of speakers lined up.  Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you feel about it) no vendors will be speaking, only "real experts", so you won't hear from the likes of me or other vendor pukes.

With the economy the way it is, I know many of you are probably finding it difficult to get buget to pay to attend conferences, not to mention budget for travel and expenses. With so many folks in the metro NYC area, SC World Congress is a great chance to get some top notch sessions in. So here is a way to make it a bit more affordable.  If you would like to attend the SC World Congress, here is a quick 35% off!  Just use Blog1(for a one day pass) or Blog2 (for a two day pass) in the special offers section when you register for the show.

There you go, what a deal!  I will be at the show as will StillSecure. If you are attending, come by and say hello!  Hope to see you there.

And the winner is . . .

No, not Barak Obama.  I am talking about the winner of a free three pass to the CSI show in a few weeks in DC.  Thanks to Robert Richardson and the folks at CSI, I was able to award a this free conference pass to Jeff Evenson for his comment on why going to shows like CSI is helpful for him.

Congratulations to Jeff and enjoy the show!

Win a free full conference pass to CSI

I wrote about it yesterday but not sure I made it clear enough. I am going to award a full conference pass to the CSI show Nov 15-21 at the Gaylord National.  All you have to do is leave a comment with your email address about how going to educational conferences like CSI have helped you in your career.  I will pick the best one next week.  A full conference pass is more than 2,000 dollars, so it is a great chance.  BTW, I am not talking about just an exhibit pass, but a full conference pass to all of the sessions too.

So leave your comment and may be the best person win!

The Security Bloggers Network and CSI conference

Image via Wikipedia

The Security Bloggers Network (SBN) is pleased to announce that the Computer Security Institute (CSI) and the SBN will be promoting and participating in this years annual CSI conference, Nov 15-21 at the Gaylord National in the Washington, DC area. The CSI show is always one of the biggest security events of the year with a full program of sessions and large exhibit.

The SBN with over 185 member blogs, is the largest aggregated feed of security blogs in the world.  The folks at CSI recognizing the power and influence of blogs in the media have asked us to help promote the event and invited SBN members to attend as press. Additionally the good folks of CSI have allowed us to make available some benefits to our readers as well:

1. If you would like to attend the conference you can receive a 25% discount by using our special code: BLOG25

2. I have one full boat conference pass.  That is right for the entire conference including sessions! This is over a 2,000 dollar value.  I will be awarding it to the person who comments on this post with the best and most interesting story on how attending security conferences such as CSI have helped you in your security related job.  Just leave a comment with your award, but be sure to leave an email for me to contact you. I will pick one person by next Wed..  Good luck!

It is good to see the SBN getting this kind of coverage. I am looking forward to attending CSI this year and hope to see you there!

 

Terrorist Twits?

Image via CrunchBase

Read an interesting article in Yahoo tech today about a US Army report on the potential use of Twitter by terrorists and other subversive groups. After initially rolling my eyes about the government going a little to far, I began to see who Twitter could be used by terrorists and the like.  Twitters ability to provide "live" coverage of an event is something that some of us in the security industry have used at infosec shows.  The example cited by the article about activists at the Republican National Convention using twitter to report on police movements and positions is compelling. You can see how twitter could be used for that type of thing.

But than I think the report goes to far:

"Twitter has also become a social activism tool for socialists, human rights groups, communists, vegetarians, anarchists, religious communities, atheists, political enthusiasts, hacktivists and others to communicate with each other and to send messages to broader audiences," the report said.

Hacktivists refers to politically motivated computer hackers.

"Twitter is already used by some members to post and/or support extremist ideologies and perspectives," the report said

If all they are doing is disseminating their ideas, I think it is protected under freedom of speech. It would be good to see a court hold that "tweeting your mind" is a protected form of communication and expression.

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Is it almost April already?

Hard to believe but we are already planning for the 3rd annual bloggers meet up at RSA Conference 2009.  The RSA Conference folks were nice enough to again give us our own blog to discuss the meet up. You can find it here. Its the usual suspects writing on the blog and planning the meet up.  If you don't want to be left out of what promises to be a great event, be sure to follow the instructions in the post on the blog.

Speaking of RSA and bloggers meet up, we also sent out an important email to the SBN members. Please respond as requested, time is running short. 

NAC day at Interop NY with Mike Fratto

Just wanted to make sure you were all aware of NAC day at Interop NY this year, which is Sept 16th (next Tuesday).  Joel Snyder usually runs Interop NAC events and does a great job. However it seems Joel had a scheduling conflict this year.  The show organizers went to the bullpen and have none other than Mike Fratto as master of ceremonies.  Mike I am sure will do a great job.  You can read more about  what Mike says about it here.

In addition to Mike you can hear from some NAC vendors, primarily Microsoft, Cisco and Juniper.  The reason being that they are the only ones to pony up the 30k or so it takes to get on the panel for NAC day.  Realize that though educational, the Interop folks charge vendors an arm and leg to educate you.  My only beef is that if Interop wanted to really educate you on NAC they would have NAC experts who did not "pay to play".  Shame on them for not making it clear that these companies have paid that kind of money to be called NAC experts!

Do Lawyers have the NAC?

Let me say up front that this is not some bad lawyer joke. Instead I wanted to talk about some observations I made while at the ILTA conference Tuesday. As I wrote the other day, I was on a panel about NAC.  There were about 75 or so people attending our track session. In asking some profiling questions of the people there, the audience was largely from larger law firms with 250 or more employees.  There were in fact a decent number of firms with greater than a 1000 people. 

There was good news and bad news around NAC adoption. The bad news was that there was only 1 firm that had NAC already up and running.  The good news is that every other person in the room was there because they were interested in NAC thinking about implementing some flavor of NAC over the next 24 months.  Now, 75 or so people was not a majority of the people at the ILTA conference, but I thought it was significant in showing that as a vertical, the legal field has not yet adopted NAC, but are clearly looking at it now.

What is driving this interest in NAC by the legal field?  I was surprised at the answers I got at the show.  Unlike the rest of the commercial sector, compliance is just not the driver here.  Most law firms are not public entities, don't really do a lot of credit card transactions and are not financial transactions. So things like GLBA, SOX and PCI are just not the same drivers we see elsewhere.  Now I happen to believe that large firms like those at the show do have clients that are in fact subject to these rules and regulations.  Therefore as their attorneys and keepers of confidential data, the law firms have a duty as well.  So if not compliance what is it?

Guest access and confidentiality of data is what is driving NAC adoption in the legal field.  Both of these are buzzword issues that get the partners at these firms to shave a bit off of the fat, recession proof profits that goes in their pockets and shell out a few bucks for NAC.  But until the check is in the bank, who knows for sure. I will be watching to see if this interest in NAC actually translates into new NAC customers.  Until then, we won't know for sure if Lawyers get the NAC.

Off to Black Hat

Let me run with the pack and put up my own "off to Black Hat" post.  I leave Tuesday actually and won't get there until Tuesday evening.  I will be on a red eye home Thursday night/Friday morning.  In this way I don't break my own three day rule on Vegas.  What is my three day rule?  Suffice to say that it prevents me from spiraling down into the bowels of degeneracy.

So what am I looking forward to at Black Hat?  The Dan K / DNS stuff should be fun.  I will be cheering on my boy Hoff and I always sit in on Jeremiah.  But lets face it, I am there for the party and catching up.  I am looking forward to throwing a few back with Rothman.  Seeing Martin, Mogul and the rest of the bunch.  There are always good parties of course and free drinks and food never hurts.

Of course I will also spend some time at the StillSecure booth shaking hands and kissing babies.  If you would like to say hello feel free to stop on by.

Also, a quick thanks to all of the members of the SBN for their support on our Black Hat affiliation.  The last few weeks have seen a bunch of blogs raising the buzz on the conference.

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