May 31, 2010
Woodinville, Washington
The year 2010 has been a tumultuous year, and as we see first hand in along the gulf coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Florida, when mother nature is tinkered with by those who cut corners (BP this is you) the unintended consequences are that we witness the destruction of a coast, a way of life and shoulder an economic hardship. If BP was a nation state and instigated this on the ocean floor of the Gulf of Mexico, I dare say we would have frozen 100% of the assets in the United States and unleashed the anger and fury of the nation. Yes, I am disgusted by the damage to our nation - Thomas Jefferson must be rolling over in his Monticello grave as he sees the Louisiana in the grasp of disaster.
While this tragedy to our nation's coast has been taking place, I see our children and families continue to be targeted online by the miscreants of the world, and those entities who forget that our privacy is important, and becoming more fragile everyday. We learned, via Google's apology to us all, that while they were creating that nifty Google Street View that they were *inadvertantly* also engaging in war-driving. So please lock down your home networks and educate all in your home on how to stay safe online. If you use Facebook, check your privacy settings regularly, as Facebook unilaterally changes the way your data is used and availed on a regular basis.
My work required I take a hiatus from both updating Secrets Stolen as well as my personal blog "Veritate et Virtute" which continues to be defined as: "A personal blog. I speak from the heart and shine light upon the many safety, security and humanitarian issues." I will not shy away from touching difficult topics, and give voice on behalf of those who can't speak for themselves.
As I noted in January, my writing is also now appearing on other blog sites: I am putting content up on a regular cadence in Huffington Post and CSO Online's Cisco on Security and infrequently on the CIsco Security Blog.
I also had the pleasure of providing keynote presentations at Carnegie Mellon University CyLab and the Rocky Mountain Information Security Conference. I so enjoyed meeting so many interesting and engaging people at these events.
In June I will be a part of the team conducting a workshop at the Social Media Summit at Cisco Systems' Headquarters - My workshop is titled: "Social media's legal implications, considerations and pitfalls." Contact me for discounted admission via Twitter or email.