Cyber Security
UK Spooks’ Recruiting Tactic: Very Low Pound to Genius Ratio
(This is a guest post by Adam Zabrocki, a consultant at Cigital.) The UK intelligence agency, GCHQ, (roughly analogous to the US’s NSA) posted an online challenge recently at http://canyoucrackit.co.uk/ (read more). Given essentially no information other than what are pretty obviously hex digits, candidates are invited to attempt to “crack” an opaque puzzle. It [...]
Cigital helps to create cyber security plans
(This is a guest post by Evgeny Lebanidze, a managing consultant at Cigital.) Cigital has been working one-on-one with Rural Electric Co-ops across the US to help them raise their cyber security bar, starting with the creation of their own custom cyber security plan. To facilitate this process, Cigital provided the Co-ops with several artifacts, [...]
Improving Smart Grid Cyber Security
(This is a guest post by Evgeny Lebanidze, a managing consultant at Cigital.) Over the last couple of years Cigital had become more involved helping companies in the Energy sector get security right. As our nation’s traditional electric grid is modernized and upgraded to the smart grid, the associated cyber security challenges continue to increase [...]
US Policy, Cyber Security and the Future of Cyberspace
Because Cigital’s corporate headquarters are near Washington, DC, you might think that we’re deeply involved with the federal government. Surprise! Though we do have a federal subsidiary called (creatively enough) Cigital Federal, a vast majority of our business is with the private sector. Whenever we get the opportunity to interact with the federal sector we [...]
Howard Schmidt Keeps his eye on the Ball
I was recently invited by our Corporate Counsel to attend a local Virginia networking event hosted by the Northern Virginia Technology Council. Howard Schmidt was the speaker. I’ve run into Howard a few more times than I expected to this year, and each time it is interesting to see what he has to say. Howard [...]
Cyber War and US Policy
I spent more time this year in Washington talking to policy makers than I have in past years. I’ve been to the White House, to the Pentagon, and to a think tank or two. One thing became clear, cyber security is a confusing field full of FUD and nonsense! Oh yeah, and the government is [...]
Cigital Participates in White House Discussion on the Progress of the President’s Cybersecurity Efforts
On Wednesday July 14, 2010, US Cyber Security Coordinator Howard Schmidt convened a hastily called meeting of around 100 public and private sector security experts at the White House to explain the progress he has made in the six months since he joined the administration. I was there. In an unexpected and exciting surprise, President [...]
Silver Bullet Turns 50
It’s hard to believe that the Silver Bullet Security Podcast has been running for 50 consecutive months! Silver Bullet has thousands of listeners, and it’s always fun to produce. Writing the script usually takes an hour or two, and requires some advance research from Brandi Ortega of IEEE S&P fame. Then we do recording (almost [...]
Is Cyber War Inevitable?
Turns out that Richard Clarke is a national security policy wonk. I guess that fact is not that surprising if you knew that Mr. Clarke was once an Assistant Secretary of State working on nuclear arms control issues during the Reagan years. The general public knows Dick best as a key figure in counter-terrorism who [...]
