iFollow

E-newsletters I read...

Morning Cybersecurity
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/morning-cybersecurity

Codebook
https://www.axios.com/newsletters/axios-codebook

OUCH! Newsletter
https://www.sans.org/security-awareness-training/ouch-newsletter


A few of the Twitter-ers I follow...

Jennifer Chon - "Citizen Cohn" is obsessed with the security of US elections. But in a healthy way. Mostly.
https://twitter.com/jennycohn1

Boing Boing - "Boing Boing" is to news what HomeGoods is to... stuff. They include a surprising amount of infosec tidbits in their eclectic news mix.
https://twitter.com/BoingBoing

Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) - A division of the US Department of Homeland Security. I feel obligated to follow them even though they seem fairly useless. In terms of government cybersecurity, all the cool kids seem to be at NIST.
https://twitter.com/CISAgov

Alphabet Soup

Cybersecurity people talk in acronyms and it drives me nuts. Probably because

1) I'm new to the field and understanding cyber-speak is something that only comes gradually, like learning French... or catching the flu; also, 

2) I need to follow what's going on and folks talking in mystery code language makes that tricky.

After my first class in cybersecurity, I started compiling a list of acronyms and what they stood for. It's a work in progress, it's not exhaustive, it's probably got some typos, some duplicate entries... many caveats is what I'm saying... but if anyone else finds it as useful as I do, I'll consider putting it online my mitzvah for the day.

Download a PDF (66K) of the official 6syber InfoSec Acronym List.

We're All Connected, or...

"IT People Notice the Cwaziest Things"

Like, for example, the connection between the National Enquirer and Jeff Bezos-owned Amazon Web Services.

https://twitter.com/ryanhuber/status/1093665718464327680

Quis Custodiet?

Who in the United States government is directly responsible for cybersecurity? It’s easy to be cynical about such things, and hating the government is always in fashion, but taxpayers do pay these people, and knowing who’s supposed to be guarding the gates isn’t the worst idea.

Basically, if a Stuxnet-style computer worm takes down the power grid, this is the person you will want to yell at (since landline exchanges and cell phone towers will all be offline, it might be a bit of a challenge):

Already an update: No sooner do I post about the head of CISA than I see this on The Daily Beast:

Two teams of federal officials assembled to fight foreign election interference are being dramatically downsized, according to three current and former Department of Homeland Security officials. And now, those sources say they fear the department won’t prepare adequately for election threats in 2020. 

[...] 

The task forces, part of the Cyber Security and Infrastructure Agency (CISA), were assembled in response to Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. One focuses in part on securing election infrastructure and the other focuses on foreign influence efforts, including social media disinformation campaigns.
One of the task forces is now half the size it was a few months ago, according to two DHS officials familiar with the task forces, and there’s no indication that DHS senior political leadership will staff it up or sustain it. Instead, there are concerns it will completely wither away.

6syber Tweets: @6syber

Recruitment Code

Flickr.com knows that some people are curious enough about frontend/backend web stuff to look at their site's HTML. Apparently, that's the first qualification for getting a job with Flickr... as evidenced by the first thing a visitor sees when checking out their code...