The Ashimmy Blog

Security Blogger Awards 2013 News

Well we are one week from Thanksgiving and RSA has notified those who will be presenting this year.  That means the voting for the Social Security Blogger Awards cannot be far off.

As promised this year we are going to do things a little differently. First of all we are adding some new judges. I think you will find them beyond reproach as some of the best in our community.  Secondly, we are going to let you nominate some of the finalists!

In order to do this we are going to set up a nomination process where sites trying to be nominated by popular vote can put a “vote for me” badge on their web site.  The top vote getters in nominations along with the judges picks will be the finalists that will then be voted for by all bloggers.

If you are interested in the vote for me option for your blog or podcast, please write to info@securitybloggersnetwork.com.

The categories for this year are:

Best Corporate Security Blog

Best Security Podcast

The Most Educational Security Blog

The Most Entertaining Security Blog

The Blog That Best Represents The Security Industry

The Single Best Blog Post or Podcast Of The Year

The Security Bloggers Hall Of Fame

Stay tuned for more news soon!

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Security Blogger Awards 2013

Well it getting to that time of year.  The organizing committee is already hard at work planning the Security Bloggers Meet up for 2013 at RSA Conference. Once again we will also have the Security Blogger Awards.  Based on the feedback from last year, we are going to try to do things a little different this year. 

First of all I am going to ask some of the most prominent bloggers in the community to help nominate the finalists this year. Of course this means there blogs will be ineligible for awards.  Also I am going to ask you, the blogger community to nominate blogs and podcasts.  We will have some sort of open vote to get to finalists.  It will result in a finalist list made up of nominated blogs by judges and those nominated and voted by readers.  Once finalists are selected, voting will be open only to fellow bloggers though.

In terms of categories, I am thinking pretty much the same as last year. We may add one or two more though if you have a good suggestion.

We hope that this addresses some of the suggestions we had last year. If you have any input or other suggestions, now would be a good time to put them in.  Email us at info@securitybloggersnetwork.com

In the meantime the clock is ticking. RSA Conference 2013 will be here before you know it!

Trainer PR and the Security Bloggers Network Renew Partnership

I am very happy to report that the Security Bloggers Network and Susan Thomas, Joe Franscella and the rest of the gang over at Trainer Communications are going to team up again this year.  Trainer helps us a ton at the SBN with anything we ask from them. To helping to run the blogger award voting, traditional PR and industry awareness, Trainer is a huge help to the SBN.  Many thanks especially to Joe Franscella for all of the help and support.

Also Trainer is running a special offer for Black Hat week out in Vegas. If you are looking for a great, security market savvy PR firm, Trainer is offering free 20 minute consultations, as well as a money back guarantee.  If you are interested you can find out more here.

Speaking of Vegas, next week the security industry descends on Vegas for its annual fest. Black Hat/Defcon and of course Security Bsides Las Vegas are all great conferences and all of them will be full this year. I get out Tuesday night and will be there through Friday.  Hope to see lots of you out there.

Have a great week and again many thanks to Trainer Communications for the support of the SBN. 

Who Is Up For A Bloggers Meet up At InfoSec Europe?

Every year after our RSA Security Bloggers Meet up I am asked why we don’t have bloggers meet ups at other large security conferences. (I think we had one once during Black Hat. I remember Rich Mogull, Amrit Williams and David Maynor and drinking at some Star Trek themed bar. But that is another story.)

Anyway, many people ask why don’t we have a bloggers meet up at either RSA Europe or InfoSec Europe. With so many of our finest bloggers living on that side of the pond, it really does make a lot of sense.  The only thing holding us back is that I don’t think any of our organizing committee attends these shows on a regular basis, so logistics and such are difficult. But where there is a will, there is a way.

My friends at Firemon have volunteered to sponsor a Security Bloggers Meet up at InfoSec Europe. They are already having a cocktail party and there is a secluded private area they are going to allow us to use as a bloggers meet up as part of that party.  Many thanks to Jody Brazil and the Firemon folks!

Brian Honan had said he will try to help, but we will need more than just Brian. So any of you bloggers out there who will be at Infosec, are you up for a party? Would you be willing to help organize a bit. It really won’t take much, but we need some feet and eyes on the ground.

Who knows, if it goes well, next year we can expand and make it more like the RSA bloggers meet up at RSA. But for now we have a sponsor and host willing to give us room and pay for drinks. That is a hell of a start in my book.

So if you are interested in please either twitter me, comment on here or contact me at info@securitybloggersnetwork.com.  I need to let the Firemon folks know what they got themselves into

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Pink Hat Security, The Doobie Brothers and Infraguard, Oh My!

Lets face it South Florida is not Mecca for the information security world. But it is home for me. So as I wrote about before I was pleasantly surprised to run into my old friend Jeani Park a few months back and found out that she had relocated down here too. 

Jeani is working for a security company called Spectorsoft, which I was not aware of either. Spectorsoft is pioneering something called User Activity Monitoring (UAM).  Jeani runs product and a bunch of other stuff there.  They have had a tremendous amount of success in both the commercial and consumer markets.  I am doing some work with them and will be appearing on a webinar on compliance and UAM on April 18th. Will post more details on that soon.

Anyway, I was bugging Jeani to start blogging as I knew inside of her a great potential blogger lived   Well she finally put up her PinkHat Security Blog just a week or two ago.

Jeani is also speaking a bunch at Infraguard meetings and other locations around the country. She is chairing a panel down here in South Florida on April 19th. You can read about it on her blog post about it today.

She has a great line up for the panel on the 19th. But I liked that in her blog she mentioned Jeff Baxter of Dooby Brothers & Steely Dan fame who is now a cybersecurity expert for the DoD.  Anyone who can weave in some Dooby Brothers on a security post is getting the hang of this blogging thing.

Anyway, Pink Hat Security is now part of the Security Bloggers Network.  Congrats to Jeani and keep blogging!

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• SpectorSoft Releases NEW Spector Server 2010 - Surveillance Edition- New Product Provides Administrators with a Visual Record of Exactly What Happens on Servers (prweb.com)

CompTIA CASP and the SBN

I am happy to report that the good folks at CompTIA have signed on to be a sponsor of the security bloggers network (SBN). Thanks very much to CompTIA!

If you are not familiar with CompTIA they offer a full range of IT certification courses including some excellent security certifications.  Their newest certification is called CASP which is CompTIA Advanced Security Practitioner.  It is a master level certification for people with significant experience in the field.

I had a chance to speak with Rick Bauer, director of research and development at CompTIA. We spoke about CompTIA, the different certifications they offer and the whole technical certification space.

If you are interested in achieving technical certifications you should certainly look at what CompTIA has to offer. In the meantime you can listen to my conversation with Rick below.

If you are interested in finding out more about CASP or other CompTIA certifications, click the banner to the right.

How To Get An Invite To Next Years Security Bloggers Meet-up

As I wrote about earlier this years RSA Security Bloggers Meet-up was the best one yet! We had over 170 people, mentalists/magicians, photo booths, great food, top shelf liquor and most of all the best, coolest people in the security industry.  It is invigorating to see and chat with so many intelligent and fun folks.

The organizing committee for the meet-up loves having as many security blogger community folks as possible at our parties. We do try really hard to make it a “marketing free” zone though. We even put limits on what our sponsors do. But stopping bloggers from coming to party, never!

A party like this though takes a lot of time, effort and most of all money.  We plan to make sure we have enough food/drink for everyone. We use our invite list and past experiences to estimate this. So you can imagine when we have a lot of people show up who are not on our list it could be trouble. This year we ran out of wrist bands for guests and had to pay 40 dollars a head for each person who came in after we were out of wrist bands. Can you guess how that ends?

So I am asking each of you reading this to do me a favor. If you were not on the list for this years event, but we let you in anyway, or if you want to make sure you are on the list for next years event (we actually start planning it soon), please send us your email now. 

You can send your email to info@securitybloggersnetwork.com or to mediaphyter@gmail.com . Please include your name and blog/podcast or place you write about security. If you would like to include your twitter name, that is fine too.

Next year, if you’re not on the list, you won’t be let into the event. So please, do us and you a favor and do this now!

In the meantime, the pictures from this years event are being posted to our Facebook page. You can check them out here: https://www.facebook.com/bloggersmeetup

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Social Security Blogger Award Winners

So the 6th annual Security Bloggers Meet up at RSA Conference is now in the books. I don’t know about you but I thought it was our biggest and best one yet!  We had about 170 folks at the party this year. As I said at the party if you were not on the list please make sure we have your email and blog so that you can be sure to be on the list next year.  You can send your info to info@securitybloggersnetwork.com or mediaphyter@gmail.com.

Thanks to my fellow committee members Rich Mogull, Martin McKeay, Jeanne Friedman and most of all Jennifer Leggio. These folks work all year long for these couple of hours to go smoothly. Also a huge thank you to our sponsors who stay with us year after year and make this party possible: Fortinet, Sourcefire, Barracuda Networks, Core Trace, Akamai, Qualys and especially our friends at RSA Conference.

For the 4th year this year we of course had the Social Security Blogger Awards.  Our finalists this year truly are the best of the best.  The winners are the very top of our community.  Before I tell you the winners, let me also give a huge shout out to our blue ribbon panel of judges: Bill Brenner, Kelly Jackson Higgins, Larry Walsh and our special guest judge, Wendy Nather.  As many of you know Wendy was not able to join us at the show this year because she is home getting better. Everyone who blogs in the security world wishes her a speedy recovery and look forward to her joining us here next year!

So here are the winners for the 2012 Security Blogger Awards:

Best Corporate Security Blog Nominees:

Fortinet Security Blog http://blog.fortinet.com/

Denim Group http://blog.denimgroup.com/

Trend Micro Cloud Security Blog http://cloudsecurity.trendmicro.com/

Veracode Security Blog http://www.veracode.com/blog/

Kaspersky Lab Blog https://www.securelist.com/en/

and the winner is:

Sophos Naked Security Blog http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/

Best Security Podcast

Threat Post http://threatpost.com/en_us/podcast The Network Security Podcast http://netsecpodcast.com/

Eurotrash Security Podcast http://www.eurotrashsecurity.eu/index.php/Main_Page

Pauldotcom http://pauldotcom.com/

The Southern Fried Security Podcast http://www.southernfriedsecurity.com/

and the winner is:

Exotic Liability http://www.exoticliability.com/

The Most Educational Security Blog

Cognitive Dissidents http://blog.cognitivedissidents.com/

F-Secure blog http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/

The New School Security Blog http://newschoolsecurity.com/

AppSecInc Blog http://blog.appsecinc.com/

Evil Bytes/John Sawyer http://www.darkreading.com/blog/archives/evil-bytes/index.html

and the winner is:

Tao Security http://taosecurity.blogspot.com/

The Most Entertaining Security Blog

Rational Survivability http://www.rationalsurvivability.com/blog/

Andrew Hay's Blog http://www.andrewhay.ca/

New School Of Information Security/Adam Shostack http://newschoolsecurity.com/

Naked Security http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/

Securosis Blog http://securosis.com/blog

and the winner is:

Uncommon Sense Security/Jack Daniel http://blog.uncommonsensesecurity.com/

The Blog That Best Represents The Security Industry

Uncommon Sense Security http://blog.uncommonsensesecurity.com/

SANS Internet Storm Center http://isc.sans.org/

Securosis blog https://securosis.com/blog

and the winner is:

Krebs On Security http://krebsonsecurity.com/

The Single Best Blog Post or Podcast Of The Year

Martin McKeay, Curing the Credit Card Cancer http://www.mckeay.net/2011/11/28/curing-the-credit-card-cancer/

Veracode Blog http://www.veracode.com/blog/2011/08/musings-on-custers-last-stand/

Idoneous Security http://idoneous-security.blogspot.com/2011/12/what-your-analyst-wishes-you-knew.html

and the winner is:

Moxie Marlinspike's ThoughtCrime Labs http://blog.thoughtcrime.org/authenticity-is-broken-in-ssl-but-your-app-ha

The First Two Members Of The Security Bloggers Hall Of Fame (please pick 2)

Adam Shostack (Emergent Chaos, New School of Security)

Rich Bejtlich, Tao Security Chris Hoff, Rational Survivability

Graham Cluley, Naked Security

and the first two honorees:

Bruce Schneier, Schneier On Security

Brian Krebs (Washington Post, Krebs on Security)

Congrats to all of our winners. Thanks everyone for coming and making this another great bloggers meet up. Now back to making next years event the best!

Last Chance To RSVP For Security Bloggers Meet up

If you have received an invite to the Security Bloggers Meet up at RSA Conference this year and have not RSVP'd yet, what are you waiting for?  Time is running out, as our available space is running out!  We only have limited room at out location, so have to stop allowing RSVPs when we reach the limit.  At this point we are near capacity. If you don’t want to be shut out, go find that invite and RSVP right now!

This years meet up, our 6rh annual one promises to be our best ever.We of course have the 4th annual Social Security Blogger Awards (winners have already been voted and will be announced at the meet up), the first two Security Bloggers Hall of Fame members being announced, great entertainment and even more surprises in store. Of course the usual good food, drinks and camaraderie in a marketing free zone are still there.

Now we are working on another surprise for Security Blogger Meet up invitees.  Another invite to another exclusive event.  Can’t tell you more about that now, but will later.

So don’t wait a second longer. Go find your invite and RSVP now or don’t complain about not being able to attend. If you never received your invite and blog, write or podcast on security, write to Jennifer Leggio at mediaphyter@gmail.com to request yours. If you were silly enough to delete your invite without responding, shame you on you. You are SOL.  Well maybe if you write to Jennifer and tell the truth that you “accidently” deleted it, she may send you another one.

Anyway, don’t miss our best bloggers meet up yet.  Thanks to our great sponsors, this is one event you don’t want to miss!

Now It’s B-sides and RSA

When I last wrote about B-sides a few weeks ago there was the drama of “show me the money”, as some folks questioned where money from sponsors was going. As a result the B-sides group seems to have emerged stronger with a definitive board of directors, more transparency in their finances and the better for the experience. However, now there is more drama around B-sides, this time around whether RSA Conference is trying to stamp out B-sides San Francisco by refusing to grant waivers to companies that sponsor both RSA and B-sides.

When I first heard the story on Twitter and read the post they put up I have to say I was skeptical. Let me say right up front that RSA Conference sponsors the Security Bloggers Network and sponsors our Security Bloggers Meet up every year at RSA. On top of that I have found the conference team to be the most professional, on the ball group of folks to work with. They care about the security community and this just doesn’t sound like their style.

I reached out to a contact there to find out what the real story was behind this new B-Sides drama today. From what I can ascertain here are the facts:

RSA Conference has not denied a waiver to any sponsor that asked to sponsor B-sides also. In fact this is not the first year that RSA Conference has worked with B-Sides on this.

So I am not sure where this is all coming from. If the folks at B-sides have been told differently, I would like someone there to stand up and say so. Let’s have a great RSA Conference week. A week big enough for Security B-sides, Americas Growth Capital Conference, Cloud Security Alliance conference and all of the other great security stuff that takes place in San Fran that week!

In the bigger picture, B-sides is a great idea and I love watching it grow. But drama is not conducive to growing B-sides. I hope that this will not be a reoccurring pattern.