Be sure to check it out soon (you can preview bits of each course right now for free), as we're offering a limited-time early adopter discount that's good for the life of your subscription. Our online courses are told by the authors themselves, with names that you'll recognize, as many are MSDN Magazine contributing editors and book authors on their topics.

Courses we now offer online include:

WCF Fundamentals by Aaron Skonnard

Windows Workflow Fundamentals, by Matt Milner

WPF Fundamentals, by Ian Griffiths

Silverlight Fundamentals, by Ian Griffiths

ASP.NET 3.5 Fundamentals, by Fritz Onion

ASP.NET Ajax Fundamentals, by Fritz Onion

LINQ Fundamentals by Scott Allen

BizTalk Fundamentals by Matt Milner

BizTalk Server 2006 R2 Fundamentals by Jon Flanders

We'll be expanding this library of content in the months to come, as we continue to grow this online resource. I plan on adding modules on the Geneva family of identity products (Geneva Server, Geneva Framework, Geneva CardSpace) announced at PDC this week.

I've learned a lot of interesting tidbits as I helped to develop the back end infrastructure for Pluralsight On-Demand, and now that I'm not so crammed for time, I'll be sharing those insights here on this blog.

Congrats to all who helped bring this incredible resource to the public!

Aaron has more details if you want to know about pricing, customer feedback, and so on.

The best security program is at the business with the happiest customers.

There's a fine line between happy customers and playing piano in a bordello.

Sees a lot
Can tell the king he has no clothes
Can tell the king he really is ugly
Does not get killed by the king
Nice to have around but…how much security improvement comes from this ?

Changes happened faster that he was able to move
Did not read the signs
Good intentions went unfulfilled
A brutal way to ending a promising career
Sad to have around but…how much security improvement comes from this ?

Obviously these models of CISOs are not solving our information security problems. Instead Dr. Garigue points us to Charlemagne as a better model

King of the Franks and Holy Roman Emperor; conqueror of the Lombards and Saxons (742-814) - reunited much of Europe after the Dark Ages.

He set up other schools, opening them to peasant boys as well as nobles. Charlemagne never stopped studying. He brought an English monk, Alcuin, and other scholars to his court - encouraging the development of a standard script.

He set up money standards to encourage commerce, tried to build a Rhine-Danube canal, and urged better farming methods. He especially worked to spread education and Christianity in every class of people.

He relied on Counts, Margraves and Missi Domini to help him.

Margraves - Guard the frontier districts of the empire. Margraves retained, within their own jurisdictions, the authority of dukes in the feudal arm of the empire.

Missi Domini - Messengers of the King.

This is the way forward! Find software security champions in the architecture and development groups,help them understand the real security issues. They will find solutions you have not thought of. Same for DBAs, same for business analysts even. Its all about beating the bushes, education, and decentralizing security services. Specifically, he points out this important mandate for IT security

Knowledge of risky things is of strategic value

How to know today tomorrow’s unknown ?
How to structure information security processes in an organization so as to identify and address the NEXT categories of risks ?

To me this is our mandate and measure of effectiveness. Empower our customers, educate, and create business value. If I am a CISO  I don't want 20 people reporting to me who do firewall ruleset changes. I want one champion in 20 different groups - development teams, architects, DBAs, business analysts.

A concrete example, infosec can continue to go along with the herd and follow the "what everyone else is doing architecture" meanwhile developers are connecting every single thing in your business to the Web. I have been doing integration and new technology projects for a long time, and let me tell you - Change does not always create happy customers in the short run. But the chart below shows that information security is maybe more concerned with not causing waves rather than adapting.

The best security program is at the business with sustainable competitive advantage.

This is a quick and dirty video documentary of the things that when on around the talks and event at Phreaknic 12 (2008). Don't watch if you get sick at shaky cam movies like Blair Witch or Cloverfield. A rough timeline of the content in the video is as follows:

        Intro and leaving Louisville with Brian. Morgellon talks about hacking the Arduino micro controller platform. Sorteal talks about the LiVes Open Source video editor. AT&T Batman building by night. Mojo-JoJo soldering some stuff for the shooting range. The patron gods of hackerdom. Registration. Con swag overview. Morgellon  gets his discreet logic on. AK-47 building with HandGrip and Buttstock. Froggy talks up Notacon, which I plan to go to next year. Skydog explains the Jware chair toss event, and then we compete. Rootwars hacker wargames. I ask Int80 about using his nerdcore music in some of my videos. NotLarry explains rootwars. Some iPhone hacking with Lee Baird and John Skinner. I do a little Bluecaseing/Warnibbling with the Bluetooth on my Nokia n810. John, Lee, Brian and I go to the German restaurant. I blind DOSman with the light from my camera and check out what folks are doing with the Arduinos Droops brought for folks to play with. I check back in on R00tW4rz. I blind Droops. I talk Ettercap filters with operat0r. USB door key fun with the Arduino. More breadboard fun. Nokia n810 + Ettercap Filter + Lemon-part = win. Int80 gets down with his own bad self, and the rest of Phreaknic. I find an energy drink with protein. Folks play with the hardware keyloggers I brought, and we have some epic fail with the IBM Model M + USB adapter + Mac OS 10.5. Winn Schwartau joins in on the keylogger fun. DOSman and Zack use a directional antenna from the 9th floor to search downtown Nashville for WiFi access points. Zoom in on Al. John and Lee eat jerky. Daren and Shannon from Hak5 blind me this time. :) Then they do a quick interview. I interview TRiP about the legalities of wardriving, sniffing and leaving your access point open so you have plausible deniability of copyright infringement (most likely it won't hold water in court if you are a computer geek). I give Hak5 Daren beef jerky. Ziplock had more con badges than God. I meet up with Iridium. I talk with Nightcarnage about the audio/video setup at Phreaknic. As I predicted, the Potters won the WiFi Race. I say why this was the best Phreaknic ever. Using green lasers on crack dealers. Techno in the dark, the Aiptek action HD does not do well in low light. Nicodemius shows off his Minority Report like multi-touch table. Hula hoop contest. I check back in with Jeff Cotton and his USB keyed door. I strap on my gear to leave the con. Brian and I do a wrap up of our thoughts on Phreaknic 2008.

This is a quick and dirty video documentary of the things that when on around the talks and event at Phreaknic 12 (2008). Don't watch if you get sick at shaky cam movies like Blair Witch or Cloverfield. A rough timeline of the content in the video is as follows:

        Intro and leaving Louisville with Brian. Morgellon talks about hacking the Arduino micro controller platform. Sorteal talks about the LiVes Open Source video editor. AT&T Batman building by night. Mojo-JoJo soldering some stuff for the shooting range. The patron gods of hackerdom. Registration. Con swag overview. Morgellon  gets his discreet logic on. AK-47 building with HandGrip and Buttstock. Froggy talks up Notacon, which I plan to go to next year. Skydog explains the Jware chair toss event, and then we compete. Rootwars hacker wargames. I ask Int80 about using his nerdcore music in some of my videos. NotLarry explains rootwars. Some iPhone hacking with Lee Baird and John Skinner. I do a little Bluecaseing/Warnibbling with the Bluetooth on my Nokia n810. John, Lee, Brian and I go to the German restaurant. I blind DOSman with the light from my camera and check out what folks are doing with the Arduinos Droops brought for folks to play with. I check back in on R00tW4rz. I blind Droops. I talk Ettercap filters with operat0r. USB door key fun with the Arduino. More breadboard fun. Nokia n810 + Ettercap Filter + Lemon-part = win. Int80 gets down with his own bad self, and the rest of Phreaknic. I find an energy drink with protein. Folks play with the hardware keyloggers I brought, and we have some epic fail with the IBM Model M + USB adapter + Mac OS 10.5. Winn Schwartau joins in on the keylogger fun. DOSman and Zack use a directional antenna from the 9th floor to search downtown Nashville for WiFi access points. Zoom in on Al. John and Lee eat jerky. Daren and Shannon from Hak5 blind me this time. :) Then they do a quick interview. I interview TRiP about the legalities of wardriving, sniffing and leaving your access point open so you have plausible deniability of copyright infringement (most likely it won't hold water in court if you are a computer geek). I give Hak5 Daren beef jerky. Ziplock had more con badges than God. I meet up with Iridium. I talk with Nightcarnage about the audio/video setup at Phreaknic. As I predicted, the Potters won the WiFi Race. I say why this was the best Phreaknic ever. Using green lasers on crack dealers. Techno in the dark, the Aiptek action HD does not do well in low light. Nicodemius shows off his Minority Report like multi-touch table. Hula hoop contest. I check back in with Jeff Cotton and his USB keyed door. I strap on my gear to leave the con. Brian and I do a wrap up of our thoughts on Phreaknic 2008.

This is a quick and dirty video documentary of the things that when on around the talks and event at Phreaknic 12 (2008). Don't watch if you get sick at shaky cam movies like Blair Witch or Cloverfield. A rough timeline of the content in the video is as follows:

        Intro and leaving Louisville with Brian. Morgellon talks about hacking the Arduino micro controller platform. Sorteal talks about the LiVes Open Source video editor. AT&T Batman building by night. Mojo-JoJo soldering some stuff for the shooting range. The patron gods of hackerdom. Registration. Con swag overview. Morgellon  gets his discreet logic on. AK-47 building with HandGrip and Buttstock. Froggy talks up Notacon, which I plan to go to next year. Skydog explains the Jware chair toss event, and then we compete. Rootwars hacker wargames. I ask Int80 about using his nerdcore music in some of my videos. NotLarry explains rootwars. Some iPhone hacking with Lee Baird and John Skinner. I do a little Bluecaseing/Warnibbling with the Bluetooth on my Nokia n810. John, Lee, Brian and I go to the German restaurant. I blind DOSman with the light from my camera and check out what folks are doing with the Arduinos Droops brought for folks to play with. I check back in on R00tW4rz. I blind Droops. I talk Ettercap filters with operat0r. USB door key fun with the Arduino. More breadboard fun. Nokia n810 + Ettercap Filter + Lemon-part = win. Int80 gets down with his own bad self, and the rest of Phreaknic. I find an energy drink with protein. Folks play with the hardware keyloggers I brought, and we have some epic fail with the IBM Model M + USB adapter + Mac OS 10.5. Winn Schwartau joins in on the keylogger fun. DOSman and Zack use a directional antenna from the 9th floor to search downtown Nashville for WiFi access points. Zoom in on Al. John and Lee eat jerky. Daren and Shannon from Hak5 blind me this time. :) Then they do a quick interview. I interview TRiP about the legalities of wardriving, sniffing and leaving your access point open so you have plausible deniability of copyright infringement (most likely it won't hold water in court if you are a computer geek). I give Hak5 Daren beef jerky. Ziplock had more con badges than God. I meet up with Iridium. I talk with Nightcarnage about the audio/video setup at Phreaknic. As I predicted, the Potters won the WiFi Race. I say why this was the best Phreaknic ever. Using green lasers on crack dealers. Techno in the dark, the Aiptek action HD does not do well in low light. Nicodemius shows off his Minority Report like multi-touch table. Hula hoop contest. I check back in with Jeff Cotton and his USB keyed door. I strap on my gear to leave the con. Brian and I do a wrap up of our thoughts on Phreaknic 2008.

Lots being written about the Cloud, most of it quite dark and gloomy.  In fact I’m surprised, that Hoff hasn’t got a preso spooled up called “The Toxic Cloud” or something similarly ominous for his next speaking tour.
That said, the Economist does a great job distilling the issue into a simple statement -

Cloud computing is a trade-off between sovereignty and efficiency.

Let me ask you -  if you had to put your money on one of those horses, considering your average profit-preoccupied business, which would it be?  I’d put my bottom dollar on the thoroughbred named “Cost Center Reduction”, to place.

WHO ARE WE TO STAND IN THE WAY OF “PROGRESS”?

I’m always fond of Jack’s rule that the role of information risk management boils down to three deceptively simple premises:

• Reduce Risk.
• Reduce Loss.
• Create Operational Efficiencies.

So it would seem antithetical to the charter of the Chief Security Officer to stand in the way of progress as embodied by “cloud computing” (not to mention dangerous to long-term job security).  And I think that this presents opportunities to discuss strategies for managing risk, strategies that aren’t too theoretical and have practical application (though actual “cloud” use by enterprises may be rare at this point).

ON RISK REDUCTION IN THE CLOUD (or, How To Learn From the Shortcomings of PCI DSS)

The good news is, there’s already a well-established model for managing the risk around outsourcing the processing of “confidential” information.  The bad news is, that model kinda sucks it.

The Payment Card Industry, known as the “PCI” or “meal ticket” to many in the industry, faced a similar problem with the introduction of GLBA.  As I see it (and I’m not at all close to the PCI, at all, so this is all just abstract soliloquy) the PCI had one of two choices when faced with the prospect of other people managing their sensitive information:

1. Accept the *massive* amount of GLBA risk their business creates and spend a TON of money to build out the infrastructure (both process and IT) to manage the consumer data themselves (in conjunction with the banks, of course) and never have it grace the computing systems of the retailer.  Or,
2. Transfer the GLBA risk down to the retailer and have them bear the majority of the risk (and cost of reducing risk to a level that might be tolerable to the US Government).

(Martin, you may recall our Twittering about PCI a while back.  This is the crux of my view on the subj.)

Now fortunately, the CSO’s of the world are going to be a little more “invested” in protecting the information they are stewards over, and unlike the PCI, will remain primarily responsible for the C, I, & A of the data in the Cloud.  The cool thing is, this actually presents a great opportunity to start building a meaningful model for co-management of risk!  In fact, we can take the PCI model of contractual risk transference but modify where it goes all wrong, and start working to create something better.  And we can start by euthanizing some faulty assumptions.

JUST HOW INFORMATIVE IS PCI DSS?

What might be the.greatest.mistake of the standards compliance mentality is the assumption of value for the past-state measurement.  That is, I believe that the CSO needs more than some “past-state” assurance in order to understand their risk.    If you look at the concept of “PCI compliance” it really is an examination of a past state of nature that is assumed to be relevant to current and future states.   Many people (myself included) are not at all convinced that this past-state is nearly as informative as those who mandate it’s measurement believe it to be.

That’s not to condemn past-state measurements as completely non-informative,  they most certainly are useful.  It’s just that no self-respecting CSO sleeps well because they were deemed “PCI compliant” 10 months ago.  They sleep well because they have good visibility into current-state information and confidence in their strategy concerning future-state (based on that visibility and the outcomes of sound IRM models).

MOVING PAST THE VULNERABILITY SCANNER INTO INTELLIGENCE AND WISDOM

So realizing this new importance (to me, at least) concerning visibility and IRM models, I’m lead to the conclusion that if we are to manage risk in the Cloud, we’ll have to move beyond “PCI Compliance” or the concept that some regular “audit” of controls in place at the host is all we need to understand our ability to manage risk.  No, the CSO must have good information concerning current and probable future states.   This is that “visibility” I spoke of above.  In fact, we’ll need significant amounts of piercing, transparent visibility.  And in order to gain that visibility, our insight into Cloud Risk Management must include significant provisions for understanding a joint ability to Prevent/Detect/Respond as well as provisions for managing the risk that one of the participants won’t provide that visibility or ability via SLA’s and penalties . These SLA’s must be expressed in measurable terms (more visibility), and those metrics must have their roots in the things that help understand how we manage risk (those aforementioned IRM models).

THE CLOUD COMPUTING SECURITY SILVER LINING (sorry couldn’t resist)

As I mentioned earlier, I do see an opportunity to create insight.  The need for visibility and IRM models would allow us to create a “guidance” if you’ll allow me to use the term.  Not a standard or a “best practice” to audit by, but simply a reference document that says “if you’re going to put information on somebody else’s systems and still hold some significant responsibility for that information, here’s the considerations, why they are considerations, and how you might go about collaborating on the management of risk”.

And I think that if we undertake this journey, there is going to be a lot of growth and risk management innovation along the way.  But keen insights into what it means to manage risk will be necessary, and secure and forthright collaboration will be of absolute importance.

I say that last bit because, if these pundits are right about the utility of a hosted computing model - the Cloud will happen regardless of the CSO’s ability or desire to manage it.

Welcome to Blue Box: The VoIP Security Podcast #85, a 32-minute podcast  from Dan York and Jonathan Zar covering VoIP security news, comments and opinions.   

Download the show here (MP3, 15 MB) or subscribe to the RSS feed to download the show automatically. 

You may also listen to this podcast right now:

Show Content:

• 00:20 - Intro to the show, contact information and how to provide comments.  Welcome to all the new listeners - and to all those listeners who have been here for so long!
• Programming notes:
  • Three-year anniversary of Blue Box coming up on October 24th - any thoughts you'd like to share with us? (Please send them to us by October 23rd.)
• The Times: "Internet phone calls are crippling fight against terrorism" - and my response on the Voice of VOIPSA blog
• FierceVoIP: "UK crimefighting concern over VoIP calls, social networks" 
• BBC: Data powers behind the times 
  
• GA Tech Survey (PDF) (link about the GA conference )
• Dark Reading: Cellphone Botnets, Blackmailing VOIP & a Healthy Cybercrime Economy
• bMighty.com: Georgia Tech Security Report Scarier Than Its Football Team
• cNet: Botnets on cell phones in 2009?
• telecoms.com: Smartphone is a hotbed of security issues
  
• VNUnet: Security industry falling behind hackers
  
• AP: Phone Jamming in NH
  
• GigaOm: EEF Challenges Telco Immunity in Court 
  
• Information Week: New Protocols Secure Layer 2
• Voice of VOIPSA: Asking The Cisco Systems IPICS and JPS Raytheon ACU-2000 Experts: Questions 36-40
• Other Voice of VOIPSA articles
• snom technology AG: snom 820 combines mature VoIP technology with exclusive design
• IDC Finds Increasing Hype Around Unified Communications Is Affecting How Customers Select Telephony Systems and Services (interesting movement in the top vendors used  - Nortel out and IBM in)
• Peerless VoIP Peering
• Comment (IM) from Christian Wieser
• Review of the last week's traffic on the VOIPSEC public mailing list
  
• Wrap-up of the show
  
• 32:10 - End of show 

Comments, suggestions and feedback are welcome either as replies to this post  or via e-mail to blueboxpodcast@gmail.com.  Audio comments sent as attached MP3 files are definitely welcome and will be played in future shows.  You may also call the listener comment line at either +1-415-830-5439 or via SIP to 'bluebox@voipuser.org' to leave a comment there. 

Thank you for listening and please do let us know what you think of the show.