Security Pie

The wine industry (as we are told) is in crisis. At a recent conference (Vino2010 in New York) a group of panelists discussed the future of luxury wine (see the excellent read at http://www.vinography.com/archives/2010/02/the_future_of_luxury_wine.html). I, for one, am happy. Prices are falling. Not neccessarily for the uber wines, but very decidedly for anything else. I can walk into wine shops and pick up decent wines that in 2006 were asking for very unreasonable prices.

It is a buyers market, and picking the wrong wine is no longer a very costly mistake. It literally take me back to the 90’s, right before (and perhaps as) the asian and US markets conspired to jack up the prices of wines. Now that both the Asians and Americans lost their funding sources, they stopped paying exorbitantly for wine.

This is so good. The bubble has funded extensive knowhow in wines. How to extract as blockbuster a wine as possible from newly planted berries: and make a killing in the process. So there are many great wines out there. And they have no buyers, so some great ones sell for 30c on the dollar. Their future prospect is questionable: They may fold, they may redo their business model, who knows. But for now, run out and get them!

Now I do have to watch the calories, though…

A friend forward me the following article from the Consumerist with links to Zynga’s CEO Mark Pincus Youtube movie. So here’s what he said on the video (I guess that he did not know that someone is recording):

I knew that i wanted to control my destiny, so I knew I needed revenues, right, fucking, now. Like I needed revenues now. So I funded the company myself but I did every horrible thing in the book to, just to get revenues right away. I mean we gave our users poker chips if they downloaded this zwinky toolbar which was like, I dont know, I downloaded it once and couldn’t get rid of it. *laughs* We did anything possible just to just get revenues so that we could grow and be a real business…So control your destiny. So that was a big lesson, controlling your business. So by the time we raised money we were profitable.

Personally, I do not see ANY problem with that. In fact, despite the somehow graphic langue and maybe some over bragging, I think that Mark Pincus was/ is doing the right thing. All we have to do is wait and see how it goes…

How it works?

Every few days I am sorting through Securitypie’s spam queue. Our anti-spam engine detects most of the spam messages but there are few that it asks one of the administrators to approve. Most of those messages are targeting a single post. Assaf’s self confession “Why I miss the Soviet Union is like a spam magnet.

Why? What is so unique about those 875 words that make it different? Could it be that the desire to see “a visionary CTO with a set of brass balls. Not a Cisco kowtowing CIO” makes the difference?
It would be interesting to see how the spammers threat this post. If you have a clue, send us a comment.

So I like it when I can take the learnings of one field and apply it to another. When we started PortAuthority, it was clear to me that data security was important. I came from the defense industry which (for the most part) values data security more than it does systems – and for good reason: if enemies get access to confidential data, it is a very short while to losing military superiority.

However, I was disappointed and somewhat frustrated to learn that at the time (2000-2003) little thought was given by corporations to data security. Words to that effect were used, but the majority of security was dedicated to the A(vailability) in CIA and some were dedicated to the I(ntegrity). Very little (with a few exceptions) were dedicated to the C(onfidentlity).

As it turns out, what was missing was knowhow. This knowhow which is rampant across DOD corridors, was virtually non-existant in the corporate world. And the few that did understand the concepts were ex-defense employees.

So the knowhow for data security is now being built, and ever more security folk get up in the morning and say “how do I help enhance our competitive standing in the industry” vs. “how do I ensure I don’t get to clean up all the machines over the weekend”.

So – what is in this knowhow? Well, to me it appears that the knowhow consists of knowledge (theories), experience (past experiences, witnessing others, reading case studies), and language (how do I communicate to all parties involved in the activities). Or – as I will explain later – the common memories in the field (similar to the so called “muscle memory” in the organization).

Well here’s to the topic at hand: food, ”foodies” and what makes a great dish “great”.

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We have people with keen enough an eye and an ear to detect these pigeons. Trained as they are, they sit in pairs in the highest tower of your castle, ever watching for pigeons. Not all pigeons, your majesty, only what we call “egress” pigeons, who fly in a direction clearly meant to depart your kingdom. Targeting only “egress” pigeons is easier because it saves on the drugged arrows they use to fell them.

Then once a pigeon is felled, the trained hounds are released. These specially trained hounds find the pigeon and bring it back into your castle unharmed and intact. Then, the pigeon is take to a special room where it is left to recover the effect of the drug. If the message carries the royal seal, which only your majesty wears, then it is reattached to the pigeon and sent – while a cryptologist reads the rest of the messages and deliver it to your majesty after it has been duly decoded.

After you get to trust our cryptologists, you may order them to perform an action on your behest your majesty, for example, to burn the message so it never reaches its destination, or to send it unharmed, based on its content. Some messages may not be of interest to your majesty, and may be taken to one of your trusted viziers for consultation to await their decision, so your majesty may be free to rule the kingdom. Others may be delivered to your majesty directly, while others may just be copied verbatim and saved for later reference.

Our friends down under at the University of Melbourne completed a study showing that surfing the net at work for pleasure actually increases the employee concentration levels and helps make a more productive workforce. 

According to the study of 300 workers, 70% of people who use the Internet at work engage in Workplace Internet Leisure Browsing (WILB). Among the most popular WILB activities are searching for information about products, reading online news sites. Playing online games was the fifth most popular, while watching YouTube movies was seventh.

In today’s world, I can’t understand how “searching for information about products” is considered not work related, unless of course the study talks about products that are not related to work. In this case, I would categorize this action as “surfing”. But then, the reports adds that “People who do surf the Internet for fun at work – within a reasonable limit of less than 20% of their total time in the office – are more productive by about 9% than those who don’t”.

To me, it makes a lot of sense. I’m more productive and have the time to “clean” my mind, not to mention the expsure to related technologies. 

Assaf might want to comment on the following statement: 

“Firms spend millions on software to block their employees from watching videos on YouTube, using social networking sites like Facebook or shopping online under the pretense that it costs millions in lost productivity, however that’s not always the case.”

JG Ballard likes to discuss the psychological effects of space travel on astronauts. It is one of those topics of inconvenience for NASA, whose spokespeople prefer to shrug at and move to the next question (perhaps about the budget, anyone?). For Ballard, the question stems from a science fiction curiosity. Could man ever do long distance space travel? or are we destined to send robots and machines to do the next step of space exploration. Ballard’s concerns stem from the apparent lack of consistancy in the astronaut’s lives. Most seem unable to move to the next stage (like new jobs), and some, like Armstrong, refrain from discussing what was perhaps man’s greatest achievement – the landing on the moon.

Having listened to an NPR special on PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) it got me thinking whether that is an angle of the astronaut’s predicament. I am talking about, specifically, the dichotomy between life in the fast lane (Iraq, Investment banking, prepping for space flight, quarter end, etc.) and life in docile Americana. Especially if you don’t live in one of the big cities.

My assumption is, that once a soldier returns or an astronaut lands, life becomes simple. You have done the deed and now it is time to rest. But if you are of astronaut calibre mentality, rest is the farthest thing from your personality. Hence you have conquered your dragon and really have nothing to look forward to. You were used to action and now life is missing rythm. And very few are like John Glen who was both an astronaut and moved to an equally hectic life in politics.

Now I have a feeling that it is the same with most of us who are addicted to our Iphones, emails and facebook updates. For us the constant shaking of the phone, the bling sounds of facebook and the chirp of inbound email becomes a part of our psyche. And when our internet dies – we get the onset of mild PTSD.

You may feel that hurtling down from the ski slopes and catching up on email on the gondola.I felt that during our spa day in Mongolia (during the other days we were bicycling all day and concentrated on that).

And I’ve devised a test for this: If both your oven (appliance important to life) and internet gateway break – who would you fix first?

/Cheers

So yesterday we went for dinner at The French Laundry, an upscale restaurant located in Yountville in Napa valley. It is widely considered to be one of the best restaurants in the world, and definitively the best in the bay area. It was an exquisite dinner, with great company, good wine*, and excellent food.

And the most interesting dish just happened to be on the Vegetable Tasting menu. Very interesting indeed.

Hmmm. Delectable meal. Hmmm.

 It was a dish labelled: Chickpea “Croquette” – Sweet Peppers, English Cucumbers, Sesame Seed Yogurt and Eggplant Confit. Now Larousse Gastronomique defines a croquette as a “small savoury or sweet preparation…… Croquettes are shaped into corks, sticks, balls or rechtangles. They are usually coated with breadcrumbs, plunged into very hot oil and fried until they are crisp and golden…”.

So why is a Chickpea “Croquette” interesting to a group of Israelis eating at the French Laundry?

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OK. So this blog is both not about security at all and all about security at the same time. That is like catching two stones with one bird.

My inbox today carried a fresh bit of news from CIO magazine. An opinion column by Eric Lundquist, labelled “We need a national CIO, not a CTO” stipulated that CIO are a better match for US national role than a CTO. To paraphrase Lundquist’s message, CIO’s are firmly planted in the business realities of the day, while CTO focus on technologies “looking for uses”. Reminds me of the old adage of “legs firmly planted” vs. “head in the clouds”.

I firmly disagree.

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Similar to my phone

Trying to looks trendier, I decided that it’s about time to upgrade my not-so-new Blackberry. I just need to get ‘em to stare at my device, I thought to myself. My standards are not too high. I don’t need a camera, movies, mp3, sliders, voices or anything like it. It just need to be cool, trendy, light and above all, attune to my email habits. The first device that I tested was the iPhone 3G. I asked the doctor to land me his phone and after installing active sync server and protecting it with the SE, I was ready to go.

The good things:

The device is sexy and cool. The UI is simple to use (I do not read manuals) and intuitive. The app store is amazing. I will not be the first nor the last person to say that Apple changed the world with this application. Two big thumbs up for the idea and execution. Web surfing is great: it works fine in multiple languages, handles dynamic content well. Attachment management works well as well.

But sadly I report that the iPhone is almost unusable when it comes to handling my emails. Here’s why:
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