I was interviewed in December 2015 by Balabit for their monthly eXPRTLK column, which was published in January 2016. I hope you'll find my responses interesting and, dare I say, insightful. The full story is here:
http://csiblog.balabit.com/blog-posts/exprtlk-benjamin-tomhave
Recently in miscellaneous Category
Well, hi there! It's been a while. Sorry about that. It seems my personal site blogging has curtailed the past *mumble mumble* months. ;)
So, here's the deal: I changed jobs in March. It sucked. Badly. I knew by the 2nd day that I'd made a horrible error. But... going back wasn't an option... and so, I looked for a forward step. Which took a while.
Over the Summer I thought it'd be fun to, ya know, once again suffer a depressive episode that included drinking myself into oblivion one night, expressing rather dark thoughts to my wife (while blacked out) that led to my relinquishing my booze for a few months and going dry. But I digress...
The good news is: I'm feeling much better! I've changed jobs, heading over to Ellucian to play security architect for my manager from AOL days (the only person who's managed me successfully for more than 12mos).
The other good news is that I'm finally getting the writing bug back and hope to start contributing here again on a regular basis. I've done some writing over the past couple months, but all for clients, not for myself. Time to change that up a little bit.
Given my security architecture focus, spanning traditional data centers to hosted/colo to cloud/AWS, my hope here is to be equally broad in focus. As such, don't be surprised if I touch a lot of topics going forward.
And, best of all, if there are specific topics you'd like to see address, please hit me on twitter and I'll do my best to produce a post on the topic!
I'll be largely blogging over on the Gartner network now going forward, but will try to cross-post here as well. The first post is now up. It's just introductory, with substantive posts planned for the coming weeks. :)
Check out the post here: "New Analyst, New Blog"
You can follow my Gartner blog at: http://blogs.gartner.com/ben-tomhave/
With my transition to Gartner, my days of freelance public speaking will now be strictly limited. As such, I've decided to upload the presentation decks from some of my recent talks. You can find them on SlideShare as follows:
Title: Interesting Times: Will Business Survive?
Description: Cloud computing. Mobile computing and Bring your own device (BYOD). Global collaboration and communication. Big data. Governance, risk management and compliance. Rapidly escalating regulatory requirements. The world is changing faster than we can keep pace. Attackers evolve methods more rapidly than we can develop defenses, amplifying the asymmetric threat. These are, indeed, interesting times. The question is not how to win, but how to survive in the ever-changing risk landscape.
Title: Manage Your Risk, Not Somebody Else's
Derived from: SC Magazine article "Manage your risk, not somebody else's"
Description/Abstract: More than 99 percent of U.S. employer firms are in the small and midsize (SMB) space, and they're getting crushed by countless regulations and standards. There must be a better way to manage the seemingly endless train of auditors and fire drills. Even more importantly, do any of these regulations reduce business risk and help improve business resilience? Just whose risk is really being managed? This presentation will discuss cost effective steps to regain control while simultaneously meeting regulatory obligations and achieving a legally defensible risk posture that helps ensure business survivability.
Title: Talk Pretty: 7 Easy Steps to a Better Presentation
Description: This is a firetalk that I threw together after attending ShmooCon a few years ago and being thoroughly disgusted by the incredibly terrible quality of presentations. I've given the talk a couple times. It's intended to last about 10 minutes total and should be relatively self-explanatory.
My apologies for the lack of consumable content of late. A combination of work, new baby, work, and... well... work have been keeping me otherwise occupied. Rest assured, I have a handful of posts started, but I've just not had the time (or energy) to make tracks on them. Soon, though! :)
I have re-enabled comments on the site, at least for the interim. In order to accomplish this, I've implemented a very wide set of IP CIDR blocks to take out the main spammers. I'll continue to monitor over time, as well as research alternative solutions. The worst-case scenario will be to permanently disable comments on the site. TBD.
Think we don't have enough cybersecurity professionals? Think we need better-educated cybersecurity professionals? You're in luck! Here's your opportunity to directly contribute to the future education of cybersecurity professionals!
The ISSA Education Foundation is a 501(c)3 public charity dedicated to furthering the development of cybersecurity professionals. From their "About Us" page:
So, please, head on over to their site and donate now!
Due to an apparent (presumably scripted) DOS attack against the comments script, comments have been temporarily disabled by my hosting provider. I'll be contacting them during business hours Friday to discuss options within someone a bit more senior than a tier 1 support tech. Until then, sorry, no comment for you!
Howdy!
Just a quick note - several of us are haphazardly getting together in a social capacity next week Tuesday! No reservations required. This is just an opportunity to get out and unwind for a night. :)
Specifics:
When: Tuesday, June 12, 2012 - 7pm (+/- come when you can)
Where: Jimmy's Tavern in Herndon, VA
Tuesdays are also trivia night at Jimmy's, so if you want a distraction, then you can engage in that, too. :)
Hope to see y'all there!
A short post, to relate a story... just as I was about to hop onto a con-call this morning, my phone rang with a call from my Mom... given that it was first thing in the morning and that I still have a couple elderly grandparents, I answered fearing the worst... boy was I ever unprepared for the news!
Mom played for me a voice message left on her home answering machine. It was a recruiter from TekSystems, in a strong accent that I could barely understand, calling for me regarding an opening he was trying to fill. Yes, you read that correctly... a headhunter from TekSystems literally dug into the way-back machine and tried to reach me at my parents' home!
In case we've never met, let me baseline it for you: I'm well into my 30s, haven't lived at home since I was 19 (first Summer home from college), and haven't used their address as my "permanent" address since I was 22. Suffice to say, there is ABSOLUTELY POSITIVELY NO REASON that they should be calling for me there.
So, here's my reaction:
a) Tweeted my discontent.
b) Blogged my discontent.
c) Setup a gmail filter that will delete all mail from @teksystems.com, skipping my inbox completely.
What a galling way to start the day...
