A Bloke in a Pub

Tag: Business

  • Tales From the Front Line

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    Peter Fagan
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    Mortality and all that… It was my birthday recently – a major one! Thank you. That’s kind. Being a dutiful Dad, as my tachograph creeps inexorably towards the ‘mandatory end of journey’ marker, I’ve been spending a lot of time and pulling out a few more grey hairs, trying to make sure that my children…

  • Shared Values

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    Peter Fagan
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    Basics First off, a couple of facts: Sixty percent (60%) of small businesses go bust within 6 months of having a breach. Er… false. The originator of this alleged statistic (the National Cyber Security Alliance) put out that claim as part of an infographic, about fifteen years ago, then took it down when they realised…

  • Costs and Benefits

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    Peter Fagan
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    Getting to Zero Every so often, I see a post asking “How can we make [ransomware] [phishing] [cybercrime generally] (delete as appropriate) a thing of the past?” I very much doubt that you can. There are at least two reasons: So, Point One: there will always be cybercrime. There, I said it. Management Before asking…

  • Change is Hard

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    Peter Fagan
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    There’s a strong argument that security comes about through negotiation, rather than calculation. If so, then it might be more productive to see the process of arriving at the state of security as a discussion between stakeholders. However, the current situation isn’t so much a negotiation. It’s more a lecture. Having a single very loud…

  • Tall Tales and Long Tails

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    Peter Fagan
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    Keeping the Business Fed Mark Neocleous, in his book “Critique of Security” (brilliant book, by the way), points out a couple of things relating directly to the business of cyber. Chief amongst them is the idea that once you’ve set up an industry to sell people the concept of security, the last thing you should…

  • Mind the Gap

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    Peter Fagan
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    Every industry has to do a bit of selling – to spin the product in an appealing way. But advertising is almost always subject to an enforceable code of practice, setting out how much creativity is too much. I wonder if there ought to be something similar applied to cyber, to close the gap between…

  • Security Theatre

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    Peter Fagan
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    Phase One It was Bruce Schneier (I think) who coined the phrase “security theatre”, to cover instances when people go through a meaningless routine to convince you there’s some security going on here, when in fact there isn’t. It’s a popular theme, and it’s grown into a concept that’s widely referred to as a bad…