The Ashimmy Blog

Great Job For A PR Security Pro

Trainer Communications and Susan Thomas who is always there to help out with the Security Bloggers Network and Bloggers Meet up is looking for an Account Director for their security practice.

Here is the description from Trainer:

Does the concept of “Crazy Good Client Satisfaction” seem natural to you?  If so, we should talk! Ready to take a strong group of PR executives and accelerate its growth?  This may be the job for you!  Growing wicked fast, Trainer Communications, is a national award-winning high tech PR and marketing agency seeking a seeking a rock star Director of our Security Practice. The perfect person for this position knows the ins and outs of vulnerability management to zero-day threats and CAs to access management and malvertizing plus can manage up to five account teams: ensuring all metrics, deliverables and deadlines are met; and instinctively keeps pushing themselves to deliver the next greatest thing in PR and marketing.

The person we are looking for will have the chops to be considered a technology insider in the security market, can counsel clients “on the fly,” can speak to the big picture while minding the details, and be fanatical about client satisfaction.  This person enjoys building and managing a team, and can evaluate the many new client opportunities that come into Trainer on a monthly basis.  We won’t keep you chained to a desk; our directors forge new partnerships with marketing and international PR companies, attend training to facilitate career growth, and routinely share their knowledge with team members and support the agency in bringing on new clients.

Not satisfied with status quo? That’s great – we significantly invest in training and development to ensure our team continues to grow. In fact, 50 percent of our Trainer team has been promoted in the last 18 months!

All About You!

• Agency history of managing a group of at least four accounts at once with strong client satisfaction
• Can immediately get an audience with at least three prominent analysts or thought leaders
• Has a reputation for being easy to work with – and has built loyal teams that will verify how they enjoyed working with this leader
• Has committed to memory two or three personal facts about their top five “go-to” reporters and can score media results for clients very quickly
• Understands the process for creating websites, sales enablement collateral, and direct email campaigns
• Has current connections to deliver phenomenal lead gen results
• Understands lead gen options, and can guide "newbie" clients through the process
• Likes to compete and has a awards, trophies, and credentials to show for it
• Is equally effective sharing opinions in an email, one-on-one, or presenting to a group

Trainer Communications is located in the heart of Silicon Valley East (Pleasanton-based headquarters) conveniently located near BART.  Trainer offers a no-politics culture, competitive compensation and an excellent benefits package.

If this sounds like something that is perfect for you, contact Trainer

Trainer Communications
5000 Hopyard Road
Suite 125
Pleasanton, California 94588
925.271.8200

hr@trainercomm.com

Dave DeWalt and McAfee tell California to buzz off

Interesting article in Forbes today with Dave DeWalt, CEO of McAfee. DeWalt basically says that he has given up hiring people in California. It is too expensive to hire there he says and he is instead hiring in Texas, Oregon and Toronto.

While McAfee is headquartered in California, only about 14% of their employees are there.  Where are the most McAfee employees? India.  And DeWalt says he is going to keep hiring there.

Don’t think this is a recent move either. A few years back McAfee actually shifted 1,000 back office jobs out of California. So this is a trend that McAfee has been following for some time.

With the dire financial state that California is in, I am sure that is not welcome news in the Golden State and Silicon Valley in particular.

My question is what can California do here? Here is one suggestion. I would immediately make sure there was not a McAfee piece of software or appliance anywhere on any state controlled network or computer.  You would be seeing a lot of yellow over on the state systems.

Looking for incentives to keep jobs in a state or area? How about them buying your software or product as an incentive.  Maybe McAfee can sell a lot of their stuff over in India?

Reach for the stars, if you only make it to the planets you are still way up there.

I was reading a blog post from Don Dodge today that reminded me of something an assistant principal in Junior High School used to tell us when I was a kid.  She used to say “reach for the stars children, if you only make it to the planets, think of how far you have come”. I still remember her. Her name was Mrs. Smith. She was a very tall, African-American woman. Mrs. Smith was always well dressed, well spoken and always pushing us to reach higher than we thought possible.

Don’s article describes just this attitude that is a fundamental mindset at Google.  For those of you who may not know Don Doge, Don was one of the chief liaisons’ from Microsoft to the start up and VC community. Great guy, he was tireless in promoting Microsoft to a very highly skeptical community. Over the years, Don was a great friend to the start up scene. My friend Brad Feld introduced me to Don and I always enjoy reading his blog. A few months back, Don was laid off by Microsoft (a terrible move by Microsoft in my opinion). He was quickly picked up by Google with a similar mission.  Anyway, enough about Don, you can read his blog if you want to know more.

The idea at Google is to over achieve beyond anything you think possible. Set goals and objectives on a quarterly, not annual basis. Don’t worry about whether you actually achieved them. Don says it best, “Achieving 65% of the impossible is better than 100% of the ordinary“. That is the key to me. That kind of shoot for the stars attitude and working with brilliant people is what is driving Google’s rise to prominence.

Too many companies judge worth based upon completing 100% of goals. So the goals start to get set low to give a feeling of accomplishment and the illusion of progress. Then what happens is you wake up 2 years later and realize that though short term goals were met, they were lay ups. In the big picture, you did not move the ball where it has to go. A culture of mediocrity replaces the shooting for the stars attitude.

One of the things I love about start ups is the drive, the passion to set high impossible goals. You may not achieve them, but if you stretch beyond what you think you could, you still have accomplished something to be proud of. Losing site of that objective can signal the beginning of the end for many start ups.

I guess after all these years, I still remember the lessons of Mrs. Smith. Maybe the Google guys had a Mrs, Smith too. Keep reaching for those stars!

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It's about the jobs stupid

One of my favorite authors, commentators and people is Thomas Friedman. I just think he is so dialed in to what is going on in the world. He not only points out what is wrong, which many of us can do, but he suggests ways to fix it. Why he is not in public office or part of the administration is beyond me.

Anyway he has a great Op-Ed piece up in the Times today.  He urges President Obama to learn the lessons of Massachusetts and correct the mistakes of the past year. Return to the working with the people, not Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. He urges a program to create real permanent jobs. He says we need to make this year the “year of innovatoin” and the year of “Start up America”. 

He says it better than I ever could, so just head over and read it. But I agree with him 100%!

I give you The CISO Group

Many of you have asked and I suppose just as many of you don’t really care. But ready or not, we are launching our new company today.  Take a deep breath, its a great day to launch. The name of the company is The CISO Group. I am one of 5 principals or managing partners in the company. We are starting off with a rather narrow focus, but like most I guess we have plans to expand in due time.

I will get into the who’s and why’s in a moment, but let me get this stuff out first. We have an excellent new blog/podcast we have started for the new company. It is called security.exe and the URL is http://www.securityexe.com. Here is the press release announcing The CISO Group.

My first post on security.exe is titled “Why the CISO Group”. I am going to paste it in here for you all to read. But before you do, I wanted to say thanks for all of the good wishes and support I have received from so many over the last few months. Making The CISO Group successful is going to take a lot of hard work on our part. But knowing that we have so many friends out there helps.  Thanks again!

Why The CISO Group?

A few people have asked me why I have decided to join with my fellow founding members bringing The CISO Group to market.  Excellent question. The economy is far from good right now, there are lots of security companies chasing limited dollars and the safe thing to do would be go look for a job and steady paycheck. But once an entrepreneur, always an entrepreneur. I have not taken a "job" in a very long time. For me work is about passion. If I can't be passionate about what I am doing, I can't be successful. Part of that passion is knowing that I am building something.  Other people build bridges and roads, I like to build companies.

Mitchell Ashley and I have spoke about doing another company ever since he left StillSecure 3 years or so ago. We work very well together and most of all we have fun together.  Working with Mitchell we usually have at least one good belly laugh a day.  Josh Karp is another fellow I have worked with and traveled around the country with. He is a great talent, but again most importantly someone that is fun to work with. Parker Yates is someone I worked with 10 years ago or more.  But Parker and I had such a good time, while being successful, that we always stayed in touch over the years.  Bobby Dominquez, my other fellow founding partner is actually someone who has been a customer of mine for years. I have known Bobby while he was CSO at several different companies.  Yes, he is a finalist for CSO of the year for two years running, but Bobby is someone I have fun working with.

The common theme here is that all of the folks at The CISO Group are people I enjoy working with. They are all incredibly talented in their own right as well.  We looked at the current state of the security market. Yes it is very competitive, but there are still lots of places that represent opportunity. We think our CISO on Demand is a great concept that has worked for the CIO and CFO role in the past and is high time it worked for the CSO role. In fact it is even better suited to the CISO role.  We also see a huge opportunity in the PCI market. There are lots of people in that field, but it is a big field that promises to grow bigger.

The bottom line is that I think this is a great time to start a new company. At this stage in my life I would trade the VC dollars and dreams of building the next big thing for a solid company, working with people I enjoy and respect and most of all having fun! If in doing so we can fill a need in the market, as we think we can, what more does one person need?  I am looking forward to making The CISO Group very successful and having fun working with my partners!

New advertiser on ashimmy.com

Hey readers, if you are reading this on the blog site itself and not the feed, have a look at the top of the page. You should see ads from a new advertiser that I am trying out. It is from talent seeker. They should be advertising tech industry jobs from Google, Dell and others.  I figured since it is not like I make a lot of money on the blog, at least I might actually help some folks find a job.

Anyway, check out the jobs and let me know if you think these are worthwhile.  Good Luck!

Big week ahead

For those who read my blog regularly, I have spoken about being very busy getting my next “big adventure” going. The last month and a half have been busy talking, planning and doing.  Finally this week we are going to take the wraps off of what I and my partners have been working on. 

We will probably make the opening announcement on Wednesday. On Friday I am speaking at the ISACA WOW! event here in South Florida. While my talk Friday is about Compliance for Compliance sake giving us a false sense of security, I will also be talking about the new company.

A life lesson I learned was that there is never a perfect time to have a kid. You can always point to something that is not optimum to having a child right now. Like having children, there is never a perfect time to launch a company. There is always more work to do before the launch. Can we do more planning? Can we make the website better? Do more research?

Eventually, like the commercial says, you “just do it”.  So ready or not we will do it this week.  Look for the announcement here on the blog and elsewhere. Also if you are in the South Florida area, come down to the WOW! event at the Four Seasons Hotel in Miami. It promises to be a great event.

PS – As I Tweeted over the weekend. If you are a security person in the Tampa area interested in a potential long term engagement please contact me!

 

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Even more on Vigilar and Intense School

So the comments, emails and other messages keep coming in on the Vigilar / Intense School drama.  It seems a whole bunch of people are caught in the crossfire here. I don’t know how I got myself into this, but this blog is becoming a big of a clearinghouse for information.

Anyway, I recommend those people interested to take the time and read the comments on all three of the prior Vigilar posts.  Also I wanted to pass along a comment that was emailed to me directly:

Alan, we are a competitor of Vigilar, and I have been trying to reach someone over there for a few days now about picking up some of the pieces left behind - as well as hiring some of their employees.

Jack Koziol
InfoSec Institute, Inc.
708-689-0131 x. 6000

I do not know Jack and am not familiar with the InfoSec Institute. But for those who were put out in this mess, perhaps there is a new job at the end of the rainbow here.

Feel free to reach out to Jack or post comments here. The comment system is threaded and you can subscribe to be updated on any further comments left.

Only in Boca

You know usually I am either on the road, in my office or have my head so buried in work stuff that I don’t really notice what goes on around me.  I have been like that just about my whole life.  But sometimes when I do stop to smell the coffee I am amazed at what I see.  Today was a perfect example. 

I decided to take most of the day off from working on my next great adventure (that is come together and I will announce something hopefully soon) to do stuff around the house. I had shut down our in ground sprinkler system a few months ago but there were some leaks and besides being incredibly wasteful, the water bill was costing me an arm and a leg. 

So I got out early this morning, turned on the different zones and tried to figure out what the problem was and to fix it. One hour later I had West Boca Irrigation at the house fixing the system.  I had gushers shooting out water everywhere and I could not for the life of me get new sprinkler heads in place. The sprinkler man would just stick his hand into the gurgling water and feel for the opening. He would know if the head needed a nipple or not and in about 30 seconds put a new head in. He did this about 5 or 6 times around the house, reprogrammed the sprinkler control and was in and out in about 20 minutes.  I don’t even know what that is going to cost, he said he will bill me.  That is nice of him, but I have a feeling it isn’t going to be cheap.

Next I decided now that the sprinklers were working, no reason for the grass to burn the way it has been. It needs fertilizer, as do the palms and the other plants around the house. Also down here you bathe everything in red mulch.  Need to mulch around the house and with fall moving to winter here, time for new flowers (yeah it doesn’t suck having flowers year round). 

I went to our local Home Depot and before I know it I had rented a flat bed truck and filled it up with 55 bags of red mulch, fertilizer for the lawn, plants, palms and citrus trees.  Drove the truck (that was fun) the 3 miles to my house. Unloaded everything and brought the truck back to Home Depot, got in my SUV and came home.

Now I got to work. First I spread the fertilizer over the lawn and all of the various plants, making sure to to the palms with palm stuff, citrus with citrus stuff, etc.   Then I took out my little shovel, dug some holes and planted the pretty flowers. I bought perennials because I am tired of planting every season.  Then I began emptying the 2 cubic feet bags of mulch.  Mind you this is all in 80 degree heat and humidity and it is like noon now. I had put down about a dozen bags when a man and his son in a landscaping truck stop by.  He saw me toiling away and asked if I needed his help.  For a mere 50 bucks and some bottled water, they put out the rest of the mulch for me.  Plus I had underestimated how much mulch I need by 1/2. He will be back Friday with 3 cubic yards of mulch for just a few hundred dollars more. I thanked him and went back in the house to get the hose to water the newly planted flowers.

Next the pool man came. He is a nice guy. He and his son come once a week and it takes them about 20 minutes to make sure the pool is clean and the Ph and all that stuff is good.  Today he had a third helper with him. Not sure why you need three guys to do the pool. 

Anyway, I was sitting there watching them do their pool thing, thinking about the landscaper and what a nice job he did, when I knew how hard it was. The cleaning lady was there earlier in the day for her once a week visit. Finally, the sprinkler guy who made short work of what I thought was going to be a major problem It amazes me. 

There is a whole sub-economy built around people servicing my house. My working helps all of those people live live their lives too. I better get back to it! 

To StillSecure – Goodbye and good luck

I have not blogged for a few weeks now. When last I left you all I was in NYC reminiscing about returning home to the city.  The following week I celebrated my birthday.  On reflection I realized that this was the beginning of the 9th year of my life that I had given to making StillSecure a success.  In this day in age, 8 or 9 years at the same job or company is almost unheard of. After much soul searching I came to the conclusion that for the next decade of my life it was time to do something different.  So after speaking with board members and Raj Bhargava, StillSecure CEO, I am leaving StillSecure effective today.

I have had the chance to meet lots of people, do lots of different things and really play a meaningful role in building this company. For that I am very grateful.  The experience, the friendships and the memories will last me a lifetime.  But all good things come to an end and it is time for me to find the next adventure in my life.  I wish all of my friends at StillSecure good bye and good luck as they continue to to make StillSecure a great company.

What am I going to do next?  I honestly don’t know.  I am going to take a few weeks to spend time with my wife and sons (whom I have been too often away from over all these years).  I am going to clear my head and see what opportunities are out there. 

In the meantime I will continue blogging as I have in the past. Now no one can accuse me of being a “vendor puke” and I hope I can be objective. I am going to change the name of the blog to “the ashimmy blog” and the domain http://www.ashimmy.com already should work.  I will be redesigning as well over the coming weeks.  I also want to spend more time making the security bloggers network site more of a destination and resource for the security blogging community.

You can reach me at ashimmy (at) hotmail. com if you would like or of course leave a comment.

I hope you will all continue to find the blog as entertaining and useful as you have in the past.

thanks

Alan