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By the (ISC)² U.S. Government Advisory Board Executive Writers Bureau (EWB)   The title of a recent InformationWeek article, “Skills Shortage? Quit Whining” caught our attention. In the article, the author highlights data from a recent Deloitte Consulting survey, which report ...

Reading the observations, and recommendations of Dame Pauline Neville-Jones with respect of Internet Security, I must admit to having a flow of Déjà vu sweep over me. This driven by statements of a Government Minister who said “we need to speed up work on cyber security because t ...

By the (ISC)² U.S. Government Advisory Board Executive Writers Bureau (EWB) It takes many, many years for a business area of focus to emerge as a recognized profession. Certainly, cybersecurity is moving in that direction. How does one know? When the US government launches an initiative like t ...

  A UK Cyber Security Strategy has just been released by the Cabinet Office. The first thing I noted was that seven of its 43 pages are have a solid colour background but are otherwise blank – that's 16% completely wasted space. But as I read on I gradually came to the conclusion th ...

By the (ISC)² U.S. Government Advisory Board Executive Writers Bureau (EWB)   How many cybersecurity practitioners have had a colleague either in information technology (IT), or worse yet, from an unrelated field, offer advice on security matters and insist that they are a cybersecur ...

A recent Washington Post article, “The great jobs mismatch”, points out that structural unemployment is caused by a mismatch between types of positions available and those who have the wrong skill sets to meet them. The information technology area, particularly information security, has ...

While the Federal Government shutdown was averted thanks to some last-minute political gerrymandering and concessions by both sides of the aisle, it’s quite instructive to reflect on the implications of shutdown on the federal cybersecurity workforce, including contracts and contractors. More ...

This paper by the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF) was just brought to my attention. A piece of work that is definitely worth reading through. It lays out the problem space and then does a deep dive into the different sections: Governments Legislative Bo ...

"A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.." Or at least, that's what Mary Poppins says.  Personally, I have my doubts about her training as a medical professional – anyone who talks to their umbrella really shouldn't be prescribing drugs to minors if you ask me. So ...

Unless I am mistaken – and not being a lawyer, this is a distinct possibility – but the cybersecurity bill proposed in the senate earlier this month does nothing to create a so-called “kill switch” for the internet, one that would allow the president to disable the entire int ...

This is actually an interesting question. A lot of governments enforce rules and regulations on how you have to run your car, how often you have to check it, in which condition you have to keep your tires, etc. The same is true for a lot of other devices we are using. Now, it seems that the US just ...

Late April was highlighted by my first trip to Infosecurity Europe in London. While I understand that this event received its fair share of criticism in the press for being past its prime, there were certainly aspects of the conference that made it worthwhile to attend. (In all fairness, I must disc ...

For a few years we have been working with the Council of Europe in a partnership to help to drive a Cybersecurity treaty. We realise that a problem a lot of law enforcement agencies have is inconsistent legislation, which makes it unbelievably hard to catch cybercriminals. The Co ...