Rational Survivability

As previously mentioned, last week, Mogull and I presented at SOURCEBoston.  Our offering was a bit of a rough first-pass mashup at peering my talk on "Disruptive Innovation" with Rich’s excellent "Future of Security" presentation.  It went over decently well and five minutes after the preso., I bailed to the airport for a flight to New Zealand.

Upon my return, I was catching up on email and noticed all manner of really great feedback on Dan Geer’s keynote that he gave the day after I left.  I was saddened by the fact that I missed it and was really looking forward to reading the transcript of Dan’s talk given how much of a fan I am of his work and intellect.

What followed next ranged from confusion to amusement to happiness and then annoyance and disgust.  I’ve been wrestling with how to frame this so as not to imply anything at all negative about Dan as I respect him tremendously and do not in any way wish to besmudge him.

I attribute what you are about to read to serendipity and kismet with the unfortunate side-effect caused by a small but persistent group of annoying individuals who have nothing better to do than create conspiracy theories in between games of Halo3 and unrequited love via match.com.

If you read the transcript of Dan’s presentation, you will be struck when comparing presentations that a large portion of it mirrors the content and thematic representation in my presentation, down to some incredibly specific examples and references as well as a choice number of unique analogs and anecdotes.

I wasn’t particularly concerned by this, in fact I was jazzed when I realized that Dan was not only saying the same things I was but that we were interlocked on some really cool examples…all until I started getting emails and blog comments suggesting that I had ripped off Dan’s work.

So, let me just (sadly) state for the record two things:

1. The material in the presentation I gave on 3/12 was an updated version of my keynote presentation I gave at the Information Security Decisions show in Chicago in October 2007.  In fact, I posted the narrative slide-by-slide in four parts:
   • Security and Disruptive Innovation Part I: The Setup
   • Security and Disruptive Innovation Part II: Examples of Disruptive Innovation/Technology in the Security Space
   • Security and Disruptive Innovation Part III: Examples of Disruptive Innovation/Technology in the Security Space
   • Security and Disruptive Innovation Part IV: Embracing Disruptive Innovation by Mapping to a Strategic Innovation Framework
2. Rich and I presented the day before Dan did.

So, for those of you who have decided to annoy me and call into question my honor and credibility, you can take both those issues above and stuff ’em in your…it’s clear that I authored and published the bulk of my presentation almost 6 months ago and I spoke before Dan did.  This would make it difficult for me to rip him off unless I was psychic.

I know without a doubt that he didn’t take any of this from me, either, and there’s no reason to suggest otherwise.  I’ll just chalk it up to a great mind (his) and a mediocre one (mine) thinking alike.

So in closing, I’m thrilled that we both spoke of punctuated equilibrium, dampened oscillations, disruptive innovation, cyclical evolution, etc.  It means that I’m doing the same sort of thinking as someone that I truly admire.

I intend to reach out to Dan and tell him how much I really enjoyed his keynote and share with him ahead of time some of my emerging work on chaos theory, the dip and predictive economic modeling theory as applied to InfoSec…I only wish our presentation went over as well as his did 😉

I trust we can put this to bed now?

/Hoff

Hey y’all.  Here’s some of my upcoming planned speaking engagements.  If you’re in town or going to any of the conferences, look me up:

• SourceBoston: Boston MA, March 12th, 2008*
• SecureWorld Expo: Boston MA, March 26th, 2008
• RSA Security 08: San Francisco CA, April 7-11
• Troopers08: Munich, Germany, April 23-24, 2008
• Financial Information Security Decisions, NY NY, June 19-20th
• IT Security World: San Francisco CA, September 15-17*

Hope to see you there.  I’m sure there will be others between April and June.

* Rich Mogull and I will be co-presenting at these events.

As it goes in football, so it goes in life…

I delivered the closing presentation of the InfoWorld Executive Virtualization Forum in San Francisco on Monday.  The title of my presentation, which I will upload soon, was "
  Addressing Security Concerns in Virtual Environments."

The conference was a good mix of panels and presentations giving some excellent perspective to senior-level managers and executives on virtualization and its impact.

The night before was obviously the Super Bowl and InfoWorld hosted a get-together complete with beer, snacks and a big screen for us to watch the Big Game.  Most of the InfoWorld staff are out of the MA area, so except for a few Giants fans, it was a room packed with Pats fanatics. 

Ultimately, sad, depressed, and shocked Pats fanatics…

So the next day after having to listen to the fantastic keynote from David Reilly, Head of Technology Infrastructure Services, Credit Suisse — an Irishman who grew up in England and now lives in New York — bleat on about "his beloved Giants," I thought it only appropriate that I take one last stab at regaining my pride.

So, when it was my turn to speak, I slipped a borrowed Randy Moss jersey over my silk shirt and took the stage to stares of bewilderment and confusion.

I explained my costume and expressed my disappointment with the team’s performance in one fell swoop:

You may be wondering why I’m up here presenting in my beloved Patriot’s uniform.  Well, this *is* a security presentation, so I thought I could give you no more spectacular illustration of what happens when you fail to execute on a defensive strategy than this (pointing to the jersey.)

Further, I find it completely amusing and apropos to be standing here in a virtualization conference talking about security *last* in the order of things because that’s exactly the problem I want to talk about…

The crowd seemed to enjoy those couple of opening shots and the rest went quite well — I try to make stabs at involving the audience.  I always gauge the success of a show by how many people come up and talk to me at the podium and afterwards.  By all accounts, it rocked since I spent the next 45 minutes talking to the 30+ folks that engaged me between the podium and the beer stand.

Adrian Lane was kind enough to blog about my performance here…

I very much enjoyed the conversation that ensued with some really interesting people.

Looking forward to the next one in NY in the November timeframe.

Hope to see you there.

/Hoff