May 217 minDefense in DepthDefense in depth is a well accepted security principle. Intuitively, it stipulates there should be multiple lines of controls so as to...
May 89 minRegulatory RelationshipsFor some reason there have been a few people already in or moving into highly regulated industries, like finance or healthcare, that have...
Apr 99 min10 Fundamental (but really hard) Security Metrics As an industry we have been trying to deal with the issue of security metrics for a long time. I’ve written about this here, and in the...
Mar 267 minResilience is about Capabilities not Plans - UpdatedOver the past 2 years, since I wrote the first version of this post, we’ve had a lot of opportunity to test our collective resilience....
Mar 129 minHuman ErrorHuman error is not an explanation, rather it is something to be explained. In analyzing and learning from incidents, not just security...
Feb 264 minControls - UpdatedI wrote the first version of this post nearly 3 years ago. It is interesting that since then much of it remains true. Oddly, it also...
Jan 17 minThe Obvious CISO : Don’t Overlook the SimpleThere is a great little book I read recently, “Obvious Adams - The Story of a Successful Businessman", it’s available on Amazon, but it’s...
Dec 18, 20213 minRisk Megatrends - UpdatedMegatrends are long-term, large-scale forces that shape the world around us. They are the driving forces that have tactical consequences...
Dec 4, 20218 minHow is the Security Profession Doing? I spoke on a CIISEC panel a few months ago about the state of the information security profession. This post is based on remarks I made...
Nov 20, 20214 minSecurity Program Tactics - UpdatedWhen starting or reinvigorating a security program, focus on a small number of meta-objectives that can have sustained outsize effects in...
Nov 6, 20216 minSlipstreaming : Business Tactics for Security & Control ImplementationOne of the most frequent cybersecurity binary thinking curses is that just because senior leadership in organizations won’t do every...
Oct 9, 20213 minThe Leading Indicators of a Great Info/Cybersecurity Program - UpdatedAs we see more incidents occurring, whether ransomware, data breaches or fraud, many thoughts turn to how to know whether those we do...
Sep 12, 20218 minIf Accounting were like CybersecurityIt has always struck me how well the field of finance and more specifically accounting has done to standardize on its terms. This...
Aug 27, 20213 minRisk Management is not only about Reducing Risk - UpdatedThis is an update from a post of a couple of years ago prompted by some recent observations from a few different organizations. It seems...
Aug 14, 20219 minRisk = Hazard + OutrageThere are four major insights that, above all others, have influenced my approach to security and risk management over the past decades....
Jul 30, 20217 minCISO: Archeologist, Historian or Explorer?We talk about attackers being the enemy. Sometimes we talk about insider threats. But one of our biggest enemies is pernicious...
Jul 16, 20218 minCybersecurity - The Board's PerspectiveHow Boards, especially public company Boards, oversee cybersecurity is a crucial but difficult topic. This previous post discussed how...
Jun 5, 20216 minRelationship Management for the InfoSec ProgramA key part of any security leader's role is relationship management. In my experience this is another one of those leadership skills that...
May 8, 20217 minIs Complexity the Enemy of Security?One of the many pieces of accepted wisdom in information/cybersecurity is that complexity is the enemy of security. But is it? You...
Apr 24, 20211 minLeadership, Business, Security and Risk Reading ListThis is my list of favorite books across the various professional disciplines I’m interested in. I have a set of favorite books that are...