Risk & Cybersecurity

10 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...

Resilience is about Capabilities not Plans - Updated

Over 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....

Human Error

Human error is not an explanation, rather it is something to be explained. In analyzing and learning from incidents, not just security...

Controls - Updated

I 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...

Organizational Politics

At every stage in your career and in every part of your role you are going to have to deal with organizational politics. By this, I don’t...

Secrets of Successful Security Programs - Part 2

As introduced in the last post, a successful security program is made up of two distinct elements: A series of episodic big bets that...

Secrets of Successful Security Programs - Part 1

A successful security program (although I imagine this advice could apply to any discipline) is made up of two distinct elements: A...

The Obvious CISO : Don’t Overlook the Simple

There is a great little book I read recently, “Obvious Adams - The Story of a Successful Businessman", it’s available on Amazon, but it’s...

Risk Megatrends - Updated

Megatrends are long-term, large-scale forces that shape the world around us. They are the driving forces that have tactical consequences...

How 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...

Security Program Tactics - Updated

When starting or reinvigorating a security program, focus on a small number of meta-objectives that can have sustained outsize effects in...

Slipstreaming : Business Tactics for Security & Control Implementation

One of the most frequent cybersecurity binary thinking curses is that just because senior leadership in organizations won’t do every...