Chuck's Blog

Understanding Advanced Persistent Threats

Next week is the big and uber-cool RSA security conference.  In preparation, I was chatting with Brian Fitzgerald and Nirav Mehta to get a quick synopsis of what they had planned for the show.

Half-jokingly, I asked "what's the big new threat that no one is prepared for?".  A lot of the conversation at the RSA Conference is inevitably along those lines, as you'd expect.

In a millisecond, Brian shot back: "APT -- advanced persistent threats".  

I had no idea what he was talking about.

He started to explain the basics.  I was fascinated, and asked him to send along some more info.

Maybe you'll be fascinated as well -- or at least, maybe a bit concerned?

Of WikiLeaks and Information Ownership

I happened to kick off a rather spirited discussion yesterday, when I tweeted that there were strong parallels between WikiLeaks and Pirate Bay -- both decided to widely distribute stolen information, and both are now in trouble for it.  

From my point of view, I couldn't see much of a difference.  I quickly found out that there were many alternative views on this topic, which -- for me -- makes it even *more* interesting!

DLP, Collaboration And The Cloud

Another fascinating example of convergence and synergy crossed my desk this morning. 

The news release is fairly straightforward: "RSA Helps Global Corporations Collaborate Securely With New Release Of RSA® Data Loss Prevention Suite". 

As press releases go, it's sort of ordinary-looking material -- what could possibly be exciting here?

And that's exactly what I wanted to share with you ...

Beyond Private Cloud: Towards Information Governance

Yes, I know -- all of this talk about private clouds can seem very futuristic to some.

In essence, though, we're talking about nothing more than the industrialization of IT infrastructure.  If you're inside the IT business, it all can seem so complex.  But if you're outside of IT, you might wonder "what's the big deal?".

Assuming that -- yes -- we can get our IT infrastructure to behave like other forms of modern infrastructure: telecommunications, power, water, transportation, etc. -- what lies beyond?

In my mind, the answer is pretty clear -- it's information governance.

EMC To Acquire Archer

It's 2010, and we're off to the races already ...

Today's acquisition announcement of Archer Technologies is likely a harbinger of what we'll see from EMC during 2010 -- swift execution around strategic themes that we've already discussed.

The first order of business -- a hearty "welcome aboard" to Jon Darbyshire and his world-class team.  We're proud and excited to have you as the latest member of the RSA and EMC family!

And, for the everyone else, I'd like to share a bit of the story behind the story ...

The New Face Of IT Security Infrastructure?

I was pleasantly surprised to see this article where some hands-on reviewers were favorably impressed with RSA's extended DLP (data loss prevention) capabilities.

Yes, it's a pretty cool set of capabilities.  And we could do a feature-by-feature comparison of our stuff vs. their stuff and probably come out ahead.

But it becomes an unfair comparison where we take these capabilities, and put them in the broader context of EMC's emergent stack.

Securing The Private Cloud

So much to write about, so little time. 

I guess I'm going to have to think carefully about the topics I write about going forward -- I could easily spend every day doing nothing but blog posts on interesting topics.  Sure, that'd be fun, but my day job would seriously suffer.

A few interesting announcements last week that we can correlate:

• VMware's vSphere announcement -- all about the private cloud
• The Jericho Forum issued their best practices around secure cloud computing
• VMware and RSA made an interesting announcement as part of last week's RSA Conference

Put it all together?

It's all about securing the private cloud ...

Opportunities for Telcos and Service Providers

Greetings from Istanbul, Turkey!

I'd never been before, but here I am.  It's a surprisingly rich and colorful city -- definitely on my list of gotta-get-back-here-some-time destinations.

I took a quick picture from my hotel balcony.  That's the Bosporus behind me, connecting the Black Sea with the Aegean Sea. 

My side of the water is essentially the end of the European land mass -- across the water is the beginning of the Asian continent and the Middle East. 

Kind of cool when you think about it from a geographical, historical and cultural perspective.

It's even more cool when you think about why I'm here -- it's for EMC's annual Middle Eastern Telecom Summit. 

The Information Protection Wheel

In my travels and discussions, I'm always on the lookout for new ways to create more complete views of challenges we all face.  Sometimes, I stumble on a useful graphic or picture that explains the concept in an interesting way.

My good friend Brian Fitzgerald (VP Marketing at EMC's RSA division) shared just such a graphic with me the other day, and I wanted to share it with you.   

No earth-shattering insights here, just an easier way to explain multiple topics in a single motion.

GRC Thinking From An IT Perspective

Over the last few weeks, I've been fortunate enough to spend some serious time digging into the current state of affairs regarding GRC -- the emerging topic of governance, risk and compliance.

Sure, the topic is hazy, poorly defined and all over the map.  That's probably one of the reasons I'm so interested.

That being said, I've seen a few patterns emerge that might make things a bit easier for all concerned.

Also, for those of you who don't like the long-ish posts that result when I dive into a new and complex topic, maybe you'd better skip this one!