With my coffee this morning came some Internets. So I thought I’d share them with you:
NEW (TO ME) BLOG
I had somehow missed it, but my friend Dr. Jeremy Ward of Symantec has an IT Risk Management weblog up. The RSS feed is not self-evident, however, and you’ll have to dig around and copy and paste the link and such…
NEW CONTENT - ECONOMICS AND SECURITY
ENISA, The European Network and Information Security Agency has released a report on the economic barriers to Information Security, pdf here.
OLD BLOG - GOOD, NEW CONTENT (ECONOMICS, SECURITY, & COMMUNICATION)
Speaking of economics and security… Amrit covers the topic of security budgets very well in his piece, “Why Should We Spend on Security?“. He’s not inherently advocating a risk-based approach, but when you think about the conclusions he draws, using risk is the most probable answer to the problem.
MORE COMMUNICATION
Speaking of communication, Junk Charts weblog has a great article on how people use data visualization (graphs) to lie. Not that you’re going to lie, but if you’re building dashboards with your KPI’s for InfoSec - be sure to invest time into getting the visualizations right.
MACS CAN DO ANYTHING
It’s finally getting to be spring here in the US - and that turns my eye towards baseball. I like following the discussions between those who quantify player production and create projections based on probability - and those who claim it’s folly. Mostly because the structure of argument has some parallels that interest me (hmmm). So here’s the attack and rebuttle from the weblog firejoemorgan.com that caught me funny. The exchange is between Rick Morriessey, the long-time Chicago Tribune beat writer who hates quantitative analysis, and Michael Schur, a writer and producer for the US version of The Office who goes by “Ken Tremendous” on the weblog. Turns out Michael is big on the “Moneyball” Quants and the new class of metrics they use:
Chicago Tribune: The cold, hard facts might back up Baseball Prospectus’ opinion that the Mets will beat the Cubs in the NL Championship Series. New York acquired Johan Santana from the Twins, shifting the balance of power eastward in the weak-by-comparison National League.
But …
Ken Tremendous: …Johan Santana has a heart condition? The Mets (have the backbone of) earthworms? Your knees ache, portending humidity? The entrails of the goat you just slaughtered say that the Gods are upset and we should move our armies West through the mountain pass? Poseidon may take vengeance upon the Greek fleet because Athena zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Chicago Tribune: Do feelings count? Or hunches?
Ken Tremendous: Not really, no. I mean, they’re fun. They’re fun to toss around and stuff. But they don’t “count” when you are trying to scientifically project a team’s performance. That is kind of the point of scientifically projecting a team’s performance.
Chicago Tribune: Computers have no use for heart, or least they can’t quantify it. They can’t analyze what’s inside an athlete, for example. They can’t tell you who has the heart of a lion or the backbone of an earthworm.
Ken Tremendous: Actually, the new MacBook Air has a program called iGrit, where you can enter a player’s physical attributes, family history, propensity for diving, and which college he punted for, and it will give you a % by which his stats should increase next year. Macs can do anything.
