Category: Media

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Wanted: Your infosec war stories, anonymity preserved

Information security has an image problem, I reckon. No-one apart from the infosec geeks themselves know what’s really involved in hacking or fighting hackers. So the public thinks it’s all like the bullshit in movies.

Like Hugh Jackman creating a virus in Swordfish, pictured.

Does anyone remember the episode of Spooks where the office lights went out when the hacker breached the firewall?

Let’s fix that.

Let’s hear more about the real war stories. OK, everything has always gotta be so goddam SEKRIT! No-one wants to admit to an embarrassing problem. But I reckon we can tell some of these stories while leaving out the identifying details.

We don’t need to reveal which bank nearly had its data centre pwned by a 14-year-old Ukrainian, nor which vendor’s product provided the bloody great hole he came through. But we can certainly talk about the processes, the time pressures and the paranoia.

This week I’ve started writing for a certain as-yet-undisclosed masthead. I reckon we could do regular stories from the front line of cybersecurity. I’ve been told to go for it. And I reckon it’d be fun to write in a stronger narrative style for a change.

If you are, or know of, someone that I should meet for a few drinks in a quiet place while I take notes, please contact me.

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Talking Google vs Facebook on ABC Gold Coast

I continue to be fascinated by what I get asked to talk about on the radio. Today it was news about Google, with an amused emphasis on the product names.

The station was ABC Gold Coast, the presenter was Bernadette Young, and producer Nicole Gundi had chosen two specific stories. The Australian’s coverage of the launch of Google+, the competitor to Facebook, and the Herald Sun’s story on the smartphone operating system wars.

Speaking live from the pub at fairly short notice, I managed to wrap a few facts and opinions into the 10-minute interview. And here’s a recording.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 10:10 — 4.5MB)

This material is ©2011 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, presented here as always because the ABC doesn’t post it and it’s a decent plug for them.

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Busy week, much media, and some changes

What a week! I’ve written five articles. Another two are due for Monday. I’ve done my usual Patch Monday podcast. I’ve done five radio appearances on five different topics. I’ve been interviewed for Phil Dobbie’s BTalk podcast, and that’ll appear next week.

I’ve even been interviewed by an anthropologist for his PhD project. I’m talking to a new editor about more writing. And even — this is weird — to a television production company about a TV project.

That all comes after a month or, really, six weeks or more of travel, intense work, intense and deeply personal events and the tightly-tangled ball of stress, depression and anxiety that can trigger. Which it did.

I’m knackered.

And there’s still plenty of work to do and decisions to make over the next couple of weeks.

I mention all this for a variety of reasons…

  • While I do have Weekly Wrap posts, I’ll also do individual posts linking to things like major articles and radio spots. This should make it easier for people to find things they’re interested in, and quite frankly it’s better Google juice. It also gives me more of an opportunity to reflect on each item — like adding a quick personal view to supplement a story that was a straight-news piece.
  • There’s about to be a flurry of small posts as I process the week’s radio spots. Consider that a warning.
  • I wanted to post at least part of the background before more reflective posts started appearing. I haven’t written much from a deeply personal perspective lately — certainly not like the essays that I was doing a couple years back. This is part of the head-clearing process before I return to that.

I write in so many places these days — ZDNet Australia, Crikey, Technology Spectator, ABC’s The Drum, even occasionally at places like CRN Australia. And, as I mentioned, there’s probably more to come. That’s all writing for other people.

This here is my place, and it’ll be about writing for me.

No, I’m not sure what form that’ll take.

I’m not sure what it even means.

Do those bullet points flow from the intro? No, not really. But that’s where my head is this morning. I’m sure things will become clearer as the day unfolds.

[Photo: That’s me (embiggen) photographed with my webcam just now at Rosella Cottage, the somewhat bigger house that’s the “family home” of the owners of Bunjaree Cottages. It isn’t normally rented out to punters. I’ve been here at the cottages alone for a week, and I haven’t bothered shaving. I’m staring to look like I did before ’Pong and I shot that short film The Shave back in 2008. It’s not a good look.]

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Weekly Wrap 53

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. We’re late this week, posted on Monday rather than Sunday, because I forgot. That and, well, it’s a holiday anyway so the new week doesn’t start until Tuesday.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 91, “Tackling cybersecurity: it’s a start”, being a continuation of my thoughts emerging from National Cyber Security Awareness Week last week.

Articles

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

  • On Tuesday I attended the Mumbrella360 conference on media and marketing, which involved the usual level of food and drink for such things — first at the Hilton Hotel and then at the Arthouse Hotel.
  • On Thursday I went to the welcome reception for X|Media|Lab’s current Sydney event, which again involved food and drink, this time at Customs House. I didn’t actually go to the conference itself, for various reasons.
  • On Monday and Thursday I was taken to lunch by two different people who are interested in having me work on forthcoming projects. I can’t talk about either of them yet — they may not even happen — but this was really just the usual introductions over lunch thing.

Elsewhere

Most of my day-to-day observations are on my high-volume Twitter stream, and random photos and other observations turn up on my Posterous stream. The photos also appear on Flickr, where I eventually add geolocation data and tags.

[Photo: A random photograph of Broadway, Sydney, taken on Saturday.]

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Microsoft Politics & Technology Forum 2011 videos

I should have posted this a few days back, but the videos from the Microsoft Politics and Technology Forum 2011 in Canberra have been posted at GovTech, the Microsoft Australia Government Affairs Blog.

For some reason the audio quality on these recordings is rubbish. I’ll let you know if better versions are ever posted.

The keynote was given by leading UK political blogger Iain Dale. The other panellists were Senator Kate Lundy, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister; Joe Hockey MP, Shadow Treasurer; Dr Eric Clemons, Professor of Operations and Information Management at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania; Microsoft’s Gianpaolo Carraro; and yours truly. The moderator was Mark Pesce.

You can also listen to my interview with Iain Dale, should you be so inclined.

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