Richard Stiennon: Security Can’t Get Any Worse… Can It?

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“It's just a straight sequence, which is mind-numbing to me… This is like a Computer Science 101 bad homework assignment, the kind of stuff that you would do when you're first learning how web servers work. I wouldn't even call it a rookie mistake because, as a professional, you would never write something like this."

-- Kenneth White, codirector of the Open Crypto Audit Project

On this episode of InSecurity, Matt Stephenson sits down with Richard Stiennon for a chat about a LOT of things. He has a new book coming, dropped TWO books in 2020 and we find time to take a look at recent security events unfolding around social media site Parler and the cyber attack on the US Government. Could these events have been prevented with a better approach? The Parler breach was ludicrously simple. The Solarwinds event was infinitely more complicated, but would a CI/CD approach have made a difference? Find out what an industry expert thinks…

About Curmudgeon: How to Succeed as an Industry Analyst

Curmudgeon is the first (and only) book on how to become and excel as an industry analyst. It is written by a 20 year veteran of the business, the author of UP and to the RIGHT: Strategy and tactics of Analyst Influence. In addition to Stiennon's first hand experience at Gartner, then as an independent analyst covering the cybersecurity industry, there are contributions from analysts such as Tom Austin, Bob Hafner, Jon Oltsik, and others. If you have ever considered becoming an analyst this is the book you should read. If you interact with analysts you should read Curmudgeon to inform your understanding of the analyst life.

About Security Yearbook 2021

Security Yearbook 2021 is the second edition of an annual publication that records the history of the IT Security industry and provides a complete catalog of all the vendors. Thousands of copies will be in the hands of media, analysts, and most importantly, security technology buyers.

The industry directory is updated to reflect the changes to the vendorscape in 2020 including M&A, launches, and new funding. Over 3,000 vendors are listed by country and category. Each entry includes the number of employees and growth from the previous year. Security Yearbook 2021 is the only place this data is published. Security Yearbook is an indispensable desk reference for IT security practitioners, marketers, CISOs, and investors.

About Richard Stiennon

Richard Stiennon (@stiennon) is Chief Research Analyst for IT-Harvest, the firm he founded in 2005 to cover the 2,200 vendors that make up the IT security industry. He has presented on the topic of cybersecurity in 29 countries on six continents.

Richard is the author of Secure Cloud Transformation: The CIO'S Journey, Surviving Cyberwar and Washington Post Best Seller, There Will Be Cyberwar. He writes for Forbes and The Analyst Syndicate.

In previous lives, he was Chief Strategy Officer for Blancco Technology Group, Chief Marketing Officer for Fortinet, Inc. and VP Threat Research at Webroot Software. Prior to that he was VP Research at Gartner, Inc.

Richard has a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering and his MA in War in the Modern World from King’s College, London

About Matt Stephenson

Insecurity Podcast host Matt Stephenson (@packmatt73) leads the Broadcast Media team at BlackBerry, which puts me in front of crowds, cameras, and microphones all over the world. I am the regular host of the InSecurity podcast and video series at events around the globe.

I have spent the last 10 years in the world of Data Protection and Cybersecurity. Since 2016, I have been with Cylance (now BlackBerry) extolling the virtues of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning and how, when applied to network security, can wrong-foot the bad guys. Prior to the COVID shutdown, I was on the road over 100 days a year doing live malware demonstrations for audiences from San Diego to DC to London to Abu Dhabi to Singapore to Sydney. One of the funniest things I've ever been a part of was blowing up a live instance of NotPetya 6 hours after the news broke... in Washington DC... directly across the street from FBI HQ... as soon as we activated it a parade of police cars with sirens blaring roared past the building we were in. I'm pretty they weren't there for us, but you never know...

Every week on the InSecurity Podcast, I get to interview interesting people doing interesting things all over the world of cybersecurity and the extended world of hacking. Sometimes, that means hacking elections or the coffee supply chain... other times that means social manipulation or the sovereign wealth fund of a national economy.

InSecurity is about talking with the people who build, manage or wreck the systems that we have put in place to make the world go round...

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