Author: jgamblin

Thanksgiving is next week and I always try to take some time to think about how blessed I am. I have a great job that I love, a great house and a great family. I am no where near the 1% but I am blessed beyond what I deserve to be.

Every year my church gives away Thanksgiving baskets to those in our community that are less fortunate. I try to be part of this program because it really grounds me and gets me ready for the consumer centered holidays of the next month or so. It also doesn’t take a lot to give back but hopefully those people who received the baskets will be blessed.

And do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased. – Hebrews 13:16

I will get this question 30 times in the next two weeks so I thought I would head it off at the pass.

When you buy that awesome new laptop on Black Friday here is what you need to do:

• DO NOT pay geek squad or staples easy tech to do anything to the laptop. Take it home as is.
• Set a password on your laptop.  Remember no password for you means no password for a hacker.
• Uninstall the 120 day trial AV that came with it and any other trial software that came on the laptop.  
• Install Microsoft Security Essentials Anti Virus.  Its free, its good and it never expires.
• Use OPEN DNS. It will stop your computer from accessing a list of known bad sites.
• Install Secunia PSI.  It will keep all the software on your system up to date without you having to do anything.  
  
• Buy a portable hard drive with back up capabilities and USE IT. Nothing sucks more than losing all your data because a hard drive failed.

If you do these simple things you and your laptop will have a great long term relationship.

Tim Tebow is a terrible quarterback.  He isn’t tall enough. He isn’t fast enough. He throws like a junior varsity quarterback.  He isn’t an NFL quarterback.  People openly root for him to fail every week.

So why would I want my son to be like him?  Tebow might not be a great quarterback but it doesn’t stop him from trying hard every day.   By all accounts he is a great teammate.  He believes in himself. He is a leader on and off the field. He doesn’t let what people say about him stop him from trying to be the best he can be.

He gives back to his community.

No matter what line of work my son goes into someone is going to be a naysayer. I want my son to be able to say “I might not be the best person in this position but I am going to come to work every day and work as hard as I can.”  If he does that there is no way that he won’t be successful.

I tell everyone how invaluable twitter is if you are in network security nearly daily and the next question is always “Who should I follow?”. The answer to that question changes all the time but here are my top 10 security voices on twitter to prime your pump as of today.

10. Mikko Hypponen (@mikko); CRO at F-Secure

09. Andy Ellis (@csoandy); Akamai CSO

08. Wesley McGrew (@McGrewSecurity); Mississippi State University CCSR

07. Jack Daniel (@jack_daniel); InfoSec Curmudgeon

06. Richard Bejtlich (@taosecurity); CSO at Mandiant

05. Brian Krebs (@briankrebs); Blogger

04. Sans ISC (@sans_isc); The Internet Storm Center

03. Naked Security (@nakedsecurity) Sophos Blog

02. Microsoft Security Response (@MSFTSecResponse) Microsoft Corporation

01. Cisco Security (@CiscoSecurity) Cisco Systems

Remember twitter is a two way form of communication. See who these people talk to and check them out. Before long you will have a really strong network of security contacts right in your tweetdeck.

Of course you could always follow me (@jgamblin).

This week I had a great opportunity to come to Portsmouth, New Hampshire (its pronounced Portsmith, honest.) and give a talk at the CyberCrime2011 conference that Sage Data Security was hosting. It was one of the most well put together “small” conferences I have ever been to.

The conference had an awesome line up of nationally known speakers including Kevin Poulsen, Brian Krebs and Joe Stewart. It also had a great presentation by the secret service on Point of Sales Terminal hacking.  Although in my opinion one of the best presentations at the conference was given by Benjamin Greenfield who will have me using the word “forensicate” for the rest of my life.

If you ever get a chance though you really need to visit this part of the country. The scenery is awesome, the people are nice and the food is great.

http://www.hulu.com/embed/dfX5Ax-IQM_b3YwQr_XEpg

Its not really Halloween without watching “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown”.

If you work in Corporate America there is about 100% chance that someone monitors your internet and email activity.

If you have a kid at home there is only a 32% chance that you monitor what they do on the internet.  I’d also be willing to bet a majority of that 32% thinks being friends with their child on Facebook is monitoring.

I have heard all the excuses on why not to monitor what your kids do online but here is the homerun on why you should. 

The 58 year old principal at your 14 year old daughter’s school emailing her this:

“Hey sweetheart … I really liked having you ride shotgun next to me Friday night… It was very special for me for you to take that spot in the front seat,” he wrote. “I love you and my only task right now is taking care of you.”

The moms answer on how she stumbled on to this is really sad:

“Otherwise, I probably wouldn’t have seen them, because I don’t go in and check them.” 

As the kids these days say SMH!

I hope at some point it isn’t uncool to monitor what your kids do online.

This is an awesome Halloween commercial from MidWestComputech. I am sure they want you to buy a new firewall or a spam filter but a real security awareness program is what this office needs.

TheHorror292

Today’s old time horror story is Ghost Hunt by Suspense.  One of my favorites.

My horror show for today is The House In Cypress Canyon by Suspense. This one is really good.