Patching

I like this quote:

“You can’t patch people. They want to be helpful. So train them.” @swordshieldsec #knoxcybersummit
— Clarisntwrks (@ClarisNtwrks) February 5, 2015

Online Job Application Systems

Whoever designs these new online job application systems should have to complete the process 100 times before they subject others to it.

I find them incredibly annoying. One size does not fit all. You would not ask the same interviews questions of a CEO and a clerk, yet doing so in a web form is okay. And things like giving you a small text box (about 100 characters) to "Describe your duties" seems dumb to me. Twitter gives you more characters! And don't get me started about duplicating the information in a resume in these same web forms.

Dead Man's Switch

Schneier points out that is works both ways for Snowden:

"I'm not sure he's thought this through, though. I would be more worried that someone would kill me in order to get the documents released than I would be that someone would kill me to prevent the documents from being released. Any real-world situation involves multiple adversaries, and it's important to keep all of them in mind when designing a security system."

Poor Man's System Status

Some companies have a fancy dashboard where you can view the status of a particular system. For companies that don't, I find that a quick visit to their Facebook page can often give you the same information. Not because the company has posted an update, but rather by looking for complaints of other users. This morning I could not make a mobile deposit to my bank. Turns out I wasn't the only one.

IT Generalists

Scaling lessons from Google’s CIO — Cloud Computing News:

"In the question and answer period that followed, Fried elaborated on these concepts, telling someone that IT generalists are probably born, not made. He said at Google, the company looks for folks that want to keep improving their skills, and even has a program to help give those people the tools to be better engineers when they find those traits in employees. He said the Google culture is one where the general engineers who understand the system have a lot of input and power, which is a cultural shift that organizations that want to build at scale should try to implement."

We are all becoming generalists at our company. When there are so few of us, you have to learn a little bit of everything.