Hash functions are the most commonly used cryptographic primitive, and the most poorly understood. You can think of them as fingerprint functions: They take an arbitrary long data stream and return a fixed length, and effectively unique, string. The security comes from the fact that while it's easy to generate the fingerprint from a file, it's infeasible to go the other way and generate a file given a fingerprint.

Originally created to make digital signatures more efficient, hashes are now used to secure the very fundamentals of our information infrastructure: in password logins, secure web connections, encryption key management, virus and malware scanning, and almost every cryptographic protocol in current use. Without cryptographic hash functions, the internet would simply not work. At the same time, there isn't a good theory of hash functions. Unlike encryption algorithms, there are no secret keys involved; this makes it harder to mathematically define exactly what hash functions are.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology, NIST, is holding a competition to replace the SHA family of hash functions. "SHA" stands for "Secure Hash Algorithm." It was developed by the NSA in 1993 to replace the commercial MD4 and MD5 algorithms, and has been updated several times since then. All the SHA algorithms are very similar, and have been increasingly under attack, so NIST wants to replace them.

The competition is important because, unlike other technological standards, committee design — balancing the interests of diverse constituents — isn't conducive to good security. Security is best when it's designed by expert teams and then subjected to public review. And cryptography is best when it's chosen by competition.

In 1997, NIST held a competition for a block cipher to replace DES. Fifteen candidates and three-and-a-half years later, Rijndael became the new Advanced Encryption Standard — AES. NIST is doing the same thing for what it's calling SHA-3 (not, for some unexplained reason, the Advanced Hash Standard or AHS).

The deadline was October 31, and NIST received 64 submissions. This isn't surprising — I predicted 80 — as most of the 15 AES submitters were professors, whose students at the time have become professors themselves, with their own students. (If NIST does a stream cipher competition in another ten years, they should expect about 256 submissions.) These submissions came from academia, from industry, and from hobbyists. CIO magazine recently interviewed one of the submitters, who is 15. Twenty-eight submissions have been made public by the submitters, and six of those have been broken.

NIST is going through all the submissions right now, making sure they are complete and proper. Their goal is to publish all accepted submissions by the end of November, in advance of the First Hash Function Candidate Conference, to be held in Belgium right after the Fast Software Encryption workshop in February.

The group expects to quickly make a first cut of algorithms — hopefully to about a dozen — and give the community a year of cryptanalysis before making a second cut in 2010. After another year of cryptanalysis, NIST will choose a winner in 2011. Expect a final standard by 2012.

My advice for software developers is to let the process run its course. While it's tempting to use the new cool algorithms in your designs, it's far too soon to trust any of them. This process is likely to result in all sorts of new research results in hash function security, and some real cryptanalytic surprises. Give the community a few years to figure out which ones are good and which aren't.

I've previously called this sort of thing a cryptographic demolition derby: The last one left standing wins. But that's only partially true. Certainly all the groups will spend the next few years trying to cryptanalyze each other, but in the end there will be a bunch of unbroken algorithms. NIST will select one based on performance and features.

NIST has stated that the goal of this process is not to choose the best standard but to choose a good standard. I think that's smart; in this process, the best is the enemy of the good. While there's no rush to choose a new standard — the SHA-2 algorithms will remain secure for the foreseeable future — we don't want to analyze the candidates forever.

Personally, I was part of a group of eight cryptographers that submitted Skein to the competition. A decade ago, writing Twofish and participating in the AES process was the most fun I had ever had in cryptography. These next few years promise to be even more fun.

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Bruce Schneier is chief security technology officer of BT. His new book is Schneier on Security.

The panelists were:
William P. Crowell – former Deputy Director of the National Security Agency
Michael P. Jackson – Deputy Secretary, Department of Homeland Security
Jose A. Rodriguez, Jr. – former Director CIA, National Clandestine Service & CIA, DCI Counterterrorist Center

Overall, it was a very nicely arranged event on a brisk fall evening with about 100 CXO attendees; mostly large but some small government contractors and a few product companies like ScienceLogic that conduct business with military, intelligence and the public sector.

No surprise, given the financial crisis the economy is suffering from that the panelists said we also have a crisis coming on the Federal budget front. This will put enormous pressure on the way Administration thinks, and how and where to spend the $$.

Obama’s tone regarding the issues he will be confronting in the world during the election was encouraging. Make the world more non-partisan and take on the threats that we have in front of us head-on!

The panel was very upfront about current threats. William Crowell said,

“It is highly imprudent to believe that there will not be another 9-11. We have to fund and support the work to stop other attacks. We can only mitigate risk but we can’t eliminate risk. We have to try to absorb the sense of urgency and wake up every day looking at the intelligence screens as if 9-11 happened within the last couple of months.”

He added,

“They (the intelligence community) need the innovation, sense of commitment and urgency that comes from the private sector – a sense of mutual commitment to that mission.”

Predicted Priorities for investment for DHS:

1. Cyber attack as the top issue
2. Nuclear threats including dirty bomb
3. Chemical and biological attacks
4. Explosive attacks against critical infrastructure with maximum # of lives and or financial disruption / loss.
5. Large scale natural disasters – hurricane + earthquakes
6. Border penetration - identity management and border management issues

An Obama administration will spend dollars around these threat vectors. They will want to spend $$ to help state and local governments. Grants to state and local governments should significantly increase with the Obama administration, so think about how you will increase your focus on the state and local government spending initiatives.

Secure border investments – the panelists believe that the new administration will feel compelled to invest here. Michael P. Jackson bluntly said, “You have to make investments in border tools to get meaningful immigration reform.”

Panelists agreed that the 1^st year will be an intense period of scrutiny about fundamental directions. We can’t afford it all at DHS; it is dramatically under budgeted. At TSA/DOT and then at DHS, we spent about $4 Billion on technology investments since 9-11; those investments are now reaching the end of the original service life.

One gripe from the panel that I found humorous: “We don’t have a group of people who think like entrepreneurs.” It is insane how long things last when you buy things in the government. As an example, we are still replacing vacuum tubes in some of the very old FAA gear… this is well beyond what any reasonable person would think these initial investments should/would last.

Final Thoughts:
I actually think that the Obama Administration will be quite favorable to COTS software products, SaaS offerings, and creative financing initiatives from the private sector. The government just won’t have the capital budget to do everything it wants to accomplish. I would say if you look at how intelligently and aggressively Obama used technology to assist his campaign, the odds are good that this new breed of IT talent (which is already really comfortable with SaaS products, blogs, wiki’s, hosted/outsourced Cloud solutions… this team really understands the latest technology trends) will quickly work to bring these new IT paradigms to the Federal marketplace. Clearly the private sector can help the Government achieve more with lower capital budgets – beginning to provide services rather than transaction-based selling. Another clear idea is to think about leasing as a better way to work with the government which going forward will have increased budgets restrictions.

They will likely be in confrontation with members of Congress that won’t change fast enough, however the future of our nation’s ability to fight terror lies in becoming more efficient and effective. It requires the government be flexible enough to figure out what jobs and IT functions to outsource in a nimble and smart way. My prediction: this is great news for Service Providers. Overall the next 4 years should be great for our business as well as the Managed Service Provider/SaaS industry!

The analysts paired up today:
Antonio Piraino (Tier1 Research)
William Fellows (The 451 Group)

My usual disclaimers on live-blogging: doesn’t include everything covered (just what was most interesting to me) and had to paraphrase some answers because I simply cannot type that fast.

Quick definition of Cloud Computing
WF: The cloud is a continuum of grid, virtualization and utility done right. It is about provisioning services instead of servers; flexible computing instead of fixed assets. Done right, the cloud abstracts users from the complexity of grid. Cloud computing is IT as a service. Cloud computing is the Third Way – not entirely in-house or outsourced, but an optimized hybridized version of both. In light of the Goldman Sachs report out resetting IT spending forecast from up 6% to down 1%, don’t underestimate the ability for enterprises to move from capex to opex by buying cloud computing instead of building it themselves.

The 451 Group conducted a survey on cloud computing in March, and then revisited it a month ago. Some interesting results:

• 84% have no plans to develop an internal cloud. 5% had no answer to this question. And for the 10% who did answer – the uses for a private/internal cloud were the same as those for a public cloud.
• Top 6 vendors they look to help them develop an internal cloud: Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, HP, Oracle, VMware

Is it all “upside” when it comes to cloud computing?

WF: Watch out for the Trojan horse, the red flag. What about the software needed to manage all this stuff? Any management software needs to take a holistic approach to solve the problem.

AP: Increased management requirements and capability – this is actually a great story for managed hosters who can hold your hand while getting you up into the cloud. Hosters alleviate the pain points, and this is why we’re going to see continued growth and focus in the managed hosting sector.

WF: I would argue that they’re too expensive. Look at Amazon – 10 cents a hit adds up.

AP: It’s almost impossible to do an apples-to-apples comparison between cloud providers. One reason is that they charge differently. I’d say that when you’re talking about the big cloud providers, you are right – that they are expensive over the long-term, but for use in the short-term, they can be optimal.

WF: The cloud is setting big expectations. Can IT deliver? It’s nice to talk about “shared resources for the greater good” but in any organization, you will still run into issues of power and control! Plus it’s still early days for resolution of regulatory issues and compliance around the cloud.

Final Thoughts

AP: Think of the opportunities of using cloud computing resources in the areas of testing and pre-production – short-term use/environment (quick up/quick down), inexpensive, opex not capex. We’re already seeing the cloud fostering much innovation.

WF: “It’s okay to fall in love with the term.” It is real but keep the expectations lower and realistic.

AP: I agree with you. The reality is that the cloud is driving a very fundamental underlying platform change. This is not just a term or something that will fall out of fashion. There’s a real need to build trust in the cloud and leveraging shared resources in this way – so use the cloud computing term cautiously; don’t abuse it and make the cloud seem like IT’s new toy.

Sounds like the beginning of a joke, right?  So these two guys walk into a bar…

“The” Bruce Schneier and Marcus Ranum have an article up on TechTarget/Information Security Magazine called, creatively enough, “Bruce Schenier, Marcus Ranum debate risk management“.

Unfortunately, to get to the article, you’ll have to either already be a subscriber to IT Security, a subscriber to TechTarget, or go through the 20 minute process of signing up by giving TechTarget all sorts of “market information” about how you’re really Brandon Walsh, CSO of “The Peach Pit” Industries in Beverly Hills, CA 90210 (phone 714-867-5309).

For those of you who are already a TechTarget person, the link is above.  For those who aren’t, or those who just don’t have the time, I’ll summarize.  The “debate” is kind of awkward because both authors seem come to the same conclusion:

Risk Management, it’s something our profession should do, something humans do naturally, it’s necessary in business, but gosh - we don’t have enough data.

I’m not a cryptographer.  I don’t *nearly* have the insight on privacy and politics that Bruce has.  I’m not deep in IP communications.  I haven’t got a proven track record of innovation in IP Security products like Marcus has.  But here’s the thing, I hope you’ll never hear me pretend that I have the skill set to speak authoritatively on those subjects.  Heck, I wouldn’t claim to be a “risk” expert because I have a some insight into my shortcomings and what is needed to tackle such a complex problem.  But such a tepid article on something that (at least I think) is so important kind of, well, confuses me.

Why is it such a boring article?  I’m not sure.  Maybe because they’re just two guys who would rather debate the merits of specific controls or control activities (after all, their penetration testing debate was a huge success), but there’s no new information in the “debate”.  It’s the same old “insurance companies know risk because they have scads of data and we don’t have that” complaint. You know what?  I’m tired of hearing that line, so let’s talk about it.

HOW DO YOU KNOW WE DON’T HAVE THE AMOUNT OF DATA WE NEED TO DO RISK MANAGEMENT WELL?

Not particularly picking on Marcus, but in the article he uses the common complaint, “We lack the data to do risk management well.”  This mantra is repeated to the point where I’m blase’ about it.  But for some reason, this sentence really jumped out at me this time for two reasons.  It made me ask:

1.)  How do you know we don’t have the proper amount of data?

2.)  Can we even define “well” (i.e. what “good” risk management is) yet?

I really don’t know that the industry, especially concerning IT risk, is mature enough to really conclude that we don’t know (in the case of the former), nor that we can define (latter), conclusively.

PLAYING THE CONTRARIAN

Just because I’m feeling kind of zany this morning, let me suggest something.  Maybe there actually is lots of evidence out there for us to use.  Maybe:

1.)  It’s just that we don’t have particularly good models that provide context.

2.)  When that evidence isn’t an obvious phenomena that lends itself to easy measurement, we throw our hands up in disgust and fall back on “lack of data”, “can’t quantify risk”, “best practices work just fine” or any other number of arguments, no, excuses we use to justify our inability to be precise about the past (more or less the present or future - apologies to Niels Bohr).

IT’S IN THE WAY THAT YOU USE IT

Now I actually am happy to acknowledge that we don’t have enough data to be precise.  You, me, even smart guys like Marcus and Bruce - we’ll never be able to “engineer” risk management.  But you know what?  Neither can Insurance companies.  Sure, there are plenty of places where they have enough data to apply a traditional frequentist approach to risk valuations.   But there are plenty of times Insurers actually insure and they don’t have centuries or decades of data.  There are plenty of times when they rely on the “estimates” of subject matter experts.  There are many times they have enough information to be accurate rather than precise, and that’s good enough for them.

For that matter, it’s worth noting that there are plenty of scientific disciplines that have to deal in imprecise prior information, or evidence that’s fraught with uncertainty (what Ranum calls “squishy”, and what I’ve heard real honest to goodness physicists call “noisy”).  Unfortunately, we’re going to be like them.  Until we can read minds and predict the future, there will always be uncertainty in our measurements and posterior conclusions.  The trick is in how you deal with it and express it.  And while I really don’t know how much time Marcus or Bruce have really spent in the deep end on the subject of risk and its management - I have seen people doing brilliant things around risk (though they just aren’t mainstream).  Whether the tools are Bayesian methods, Monte Carlo engines, reductionist models of complex problems, there are risk analysts trying to deal with the problem.  These analysts are applying scientific method(s) and developing reasonable approaches to a very complex problem.  There are people trying, and our body of knowledge is growing, growing well beyond “gee, I haven’t got an obvious solution so I’ll blame it on lack of data”.  Heck, I’ve seen readers of this blog suggest Douglas Hubbard’s book in other security forums!*

I’VE GOT YOUR DATA RIGHT HERE…

But we don’t have enough data?  I have to ask, how much more do we need?  I mean crikey, JPMC just visited our ISSA chapter claiming, like, a bajillion events an hour.  There’s not one, but several companies out there that will want to tell you about how they have deep “insight” into the attacker community.  The boundaries of IT Risk losses are pretty well established by events that happen to public companies.  We have pretty mature testing/assessment tools and methodologies now that help us test our ability to resist the force an attacker can apply to us.  So what part of the Threat Landscape, Asset (Controls) Landscape, or Loss Magnitude landscape is too incomplete (and what are you doing to find the information you need)?

SO WHY DO WE FAIL?

Which brings me to a final, somewhat depressing conclusion.  Maybe there’s data, and maybe we’re starting to see the means to use it.  But in the end I do have to agree with Marcus that the vast majority of the infosec world *is* doing a really, really bad job with regards to “risk” and “risk management”.  The majority of people I know consider GRC to be a cruel, expensive joke.  Risk Assessment Methodologies tend to be built on the faulty premise that if we create a repeatable process, our measurements and conclusions will magically become accurate and wise.  Risk models tend to be factors loosely measured by ordinal scales and then somehow “multiplied” together to create a relatively meaningless qualitative value.  The State of the Union here is not good.  But after reading such a superficial treatment of an important and complex subject, I am left wondering if Bruce and Marcus were the right people to write about risk management in a mainstream publication.  As Inspector Callahan says, “A man’s got to know his limitations.”

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* Speaking of which, if you want to do one cost effective thing to address your uncertainty - go find Douglas Hubbard’s book. It’s even got a nice recommendation from Peter Tippett.  The book is called “How To Measure Anything” - the title sounds rather hyperbolic, but there are good techniques in it we can use to identify useful information and refine our ability to frame that qualitative information into quantitative values. The key is how Hubbard has you deal with your uncertainty.  For those of you who are more scientific minded and want to dig deep into the subject, I have on good authority that E.T. Jaynes “Probability Theory, The Logic of Science” is a rather under appreciated work.

We have been conducting polls of our customers and of IT professionals at technology trade shows for the past two years and the results are in: Pulling together all of the management pieces and processes is even more crucial in a virtualized environment.

So what does this mean for you? You will need to refine your incident and problem management processes with new technologies in order to reduce downtime and maintain end user performance. But of course even the most basic technologies are not well integrated even in today’s world.

I recently participated in a Gartner Conference and watched to my amazement a real-time electronic survey of the audience. To my disbelief, the audience, filled with 300+ people from Fortune 2000 companies provided real-time responses to the question:

What level of integration does your IT org have between event management and service desk applications?

• None: 10%
• Manual Phone call from IT ops to IT service desk staff member: 46%
• Manual click button on event manager to open trouble ticket: 20%
• Automated event management system automatically opens trouble ticket without requiring human oversight or approval: 24%

Unbelievable… still very few of the survey respondents have yet to formalize problem management systems with event management systems. For 56% of the audience the process is still manual!

Another interesting real-time survey question at the Gartner Conference was:

Who in your organization is responsible for critical problem processes and resolution?

• IT Service Desk 13%
• IT Operations 49%
• Process Team 12%
• Other 9%
• Responsibility not formalized 17%

Virtualization adoption and the speed with which things change in a virtualized environment require automation and will transform Incident and Problem Management. Clearly with this new technology we are required to re-think Organizational, Behavioral and Cultural Challenges required to take advantage of the opportunities that virtualization provides.

Incident and problem management processes and metrics must bridge organizational silos that have been the norm within IT. With virtualization, people have to work more closely together in the different silos than ever before. IT leaders need to break down the walls between the technology-centric silo mentalities.

Business Imperative Action Plan:

1. What can you do today? –Understand the impact of virtualization on incident and problem mgt. workload, provide technology training for helpdesk/service desk staff.
2. What can you do in the next 12 months?

Formalize problem management processes, metrics and personnel.
Invest in tools and processes for systems on virtualized servers.
Long term: On the Radar Screen!
Instill teamwork into all groups responsible for the virtualized environment service and support. Map components and configuration items directly to end user services.

Final Thoughts: Know the management pieces and ensure that they fit together. It’s great to buy new technology, but be demanding to ensure that your vendors show you have they will help to link all these pieces together - Change, Inventory, Incident, Problem, Server, Capacity, Performance, Configuration, Event, and Integrated Workflow.

Here we talk to John Proctor, who started out as one of our first customers (and the first MSP customer). And he believed in it so much, he eventually became part of the ScienceLogic team. (Remember “I’m not only the President, I’m also a client” from the Hair Club for Men?)

John shares his perspectives about the service provider world and why he took a chance on a little-known product called EM7.

ScienceLogic: What is your background? How many years have you worked as a service provider and for what types of companies?

John Proctor: I have been working with Service providers for over twelve years. I worked at a major regional service provider for six years and before that I designed and built national and international networks for ISP’s and Fortune 500 companies as a consultant for PriceWaterhouseCoopers and WorldComm.

ScienceLogic: You were one of the first customers of EM7 – why did you choose it and how did you get over the hurdles associated with using a start-up company’s product?

John Proctor: We were actually customer number five. Back in 2004 when we evaluated and purchased EM7 we could see that EM7 provided about 80% of what we were looking for in one integrated solution right out of the box. One of the things that sold us on EM7 was that the ScienceLogic founders had all previously worked for a service provider, so we knew they understood our business and our challenges. But in the end, it comes down to features. Once we compared EM7 functionality to the alternatives, it was clearly a “no brainer.”

ScienceLogic: What other alternatives were being considered?

John Proctor: Well, we had started with a few point solutions, but as our business and product offerings matured, this resulted in a growing number of point solutions. What started with 3 or 4 ended up as 14 separate tools. They all had strengths but what they didn’t have was integration and because of this they could not scale. And, if the tools could not scale, our business could not grow.

So, naturally we started looking at framework solutions, but they are expensive to buy, expensive to implement, and expensive to maintain. At one point, we even considered some open source projects. There were several that showed promise, but we would still be stuck with tools that were not integrated. So then we considered hiring developers to cobble something together that would work for our business. The only problem with this alternative was that we felt it would take 6 to 8 months before we could have something viable to work with.

ScienceLogic: What products were you using before EM7? What were your goals?

John Proctor: Before we purchased EM7 we used 14 different point solutions to deliver our products and services to the marketplace. Tools like NetCool, Openview, Argent, Heat, What’s Up Gold as well as several other point solutions, vendor specific applications and manually updated spreadsheets. And, as I mentioned before, this does not scale. This also adds a great deal of complexity when you begin to consider business continuity and disaster recovery. All these tools were vital to the delivery of our products and services. Any service provider will tell you it is all about uptime. So if the product is uptime, the tools used to deliver it have to be available 24×7x365.

Our goals were simple: scale and redundancy. As it turns out, the solution was simple as well. EM7 provided a tool that could replace the functionality of almost half of the existing point solutions and the applications that could not be replaced were integrated with EM7 to provide our staff with a “single pane of glass” to see the status and performance of each area of the business from one application. We had visibility into everything from facility systems to applications using EM7.

ScienceLogic also delivers an extensible configuration that addressed uptime and redundancy. We deployed collectors throughout our network that reported back to a central pair of redundant database servers and with this configuration we were able to perform backups and add capacity without taking the system down.

ScienceLogic: Why are service providers different from enterprises? How are their needs different?

John Proctor: First and foremost, service providers face the same challenges that only the largest enterprises ever face and they also have many unique challenges that only service providers experience.

One challenge we faced was that we had multiple datacenters in different states. They were all interconnected with plenty of bandwidth between each site, but the tools were not designed to be used across the WAN. Our staff in our remote data center did not have the same access as our staff in the corporate office. Since EM7 is web-based, it immediately eliminated this problem.

Another challenge is that service providers must manage systems across multiple domains. Back in the early version of a specific tool we were using before EM7, the only way you could implement it across multiple domains was to put the same username and password on every computer that you monitored. Beyond the security concerns, maintenance was a nightmare. Anytime we had to change the password, we would get locked out of dozens upon dozens of systems. When the password was changed on the monitoring server, it would attempt to login to the remote machines and fail. Repeated attempts would result in the account getting locked. I think that vendor eventually addressed this issue, but service providers seldom find tools that were designed for their unique situations.

ScienceLogic: How is EM7 geared to service providers?

John Proctor: Enterprise IT is a trusted part of the business; they are one of the team. Service providers are outsiders that must earn trust by showing the customer exactly what they are doing.

EM7 provides a multi-tenant environment that allows service providers to manage systems across many different customers while at the same time providing the customer access to see the same information but only what’s relevant to them.

EM7 was built by service providers and even includes a few features just for them. Two of my favorites are bandwidth billing and the emergency notification system. Take bandwidth billing, for instance. EM7 provides a way to collect bandwidth utilization, store subscription information, and calculate a bill from any one of about 10 different methodologies. And at the end of the billing period, EM7 sends the completed report out to whomever you chose via email.

Another unique service provider feature is the emergency notification system. EM7 allows the provider to track what customers used their unique infrastructure components. If they have to perform maintenance on the infrastructure component or have a problem they can send an email to all of the impacted customers in a matter of minutes.

ScienceLogic: What trends do you see for service providers? What about big trends such as virtualization and cloud computing – how will they impact service providers?

John Proctor: Virtualization is really hot for service providers right now and for the same reasons as in the enterprise. Service providers run data centers and data centers must be powered and cooled. So, anytime they can use a virtual server instead of adding physical equipment it is a good thing. But then you add the complexity that multiple customers reside on the same host and you must track things like bandwidth utilizations by guest OS, and it all gets a little harder. Lucky for us this is not a problem for EM7.

I still think it’s early days for cloud computing. Depending on who you talk to, much of what service providers (especially the big ones) have already been doing with SAAS offerings and hosted applications could be described as cloud computing already. In which case, service providers are ahead of the game. But whatever the “final” definition, cloud computing actually shares many similarities with virtualization – in that service providers (or enterprises) will need to be able to manage far more “devices” in real-time with “zero downtime” expectations by customers. What this really means is that you’re going to see much more automation in provisioning and IT monitoring tools to handle the scale and speed with which things can change in the data center given vm migration and the talked-about switching between “clouds” that can be used for high availability.

When I walked up on stage and accepted the Inc 500 award, it hit me square in the face that this is a rare accomplishment, and even more difficult for a product company that started without the benefit of VC funding.

Dave with wife, Anne, at the awards ceremony
Over the 2 day period, I heard from some great speakers with entrepreneurial passion, many who never had accomplished making the list. It is so highly competitive and just plain hard to do.

I loved hearing some of the speeches during the conference and getting to know other entrepreneurs that attended the conference talk about how they created their niche and ultimately built a successful company from a good idea.

Because I enjoyed hearing some of what I like to call “golden nuggets of wisdom” so much, I thought in my conference wrap-up I would pass on a few to our blog readers:

Tom Peters – Author In Search of Excellence and The New World of WOW

“Only 7% of our great nation works for Fortune 500 companies. Small businesses and the entrepreneurs are the jet fuel that makes our country fly.”

“Brand is shorthand for a collection of experiences, memories of what it will be like the next time a customer deals with you. With the advent of blogs and consumer activism, Brand is impossible to fake; it is like the temperature in the room… it is there… it exists.”

Chester Elton – SVP Carrot Culture Group

“At the casino – they train the heck out of the Valet! Why do they spend 3 months on Valet training? Because he is the first and the last person to greet and interact with a visitor during their trip! Who is your company Valet?”

Paul Bennett – Chief Creative officer IDEO – speaking on — Creating a culture of optimism:

“You need to ditch B-B and B-C Need to become P-P Person to Person.”

“You don’t buy loyalty… you earn it… this is an interesting challenge, but small allows us to behave like human beings… Going off script and doing something human is a great place to start.”

“Stop obsessing about ROI and start obsessing about ROC! Return on Customer/Consumer is much more powerful than ROI!!!!”

“Happy people, unabashedly doing, happy things, makes for happy companies, which create happy businesses which enable happy cultures… IN WHICH THRIVE”

Marilyn Carlson Nelson – Chairman and CEO Carlson Companies – A family owned $40 Billion empire including TGI Fridays, Radisson Hotels…

“My leadership was tested terribly - after 9/11 the travel industry was particularly harmed. It was an extraordinary time for Carlson. “

“Put tactics around these strategic initiatives”

• Whomever you serve, serve with caring
• Whenever you dream – dream with your all
• Wherever you go, go as a leader
• And never, never give up
• Whatever you do – do it with integrity

“That builds trust, trust builds relationships and relationships build results.”

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Actually, I took about 40 pages of notes throughout the two days… So I can’t say that this will be my last summary post on the Inc 500/5000 conference, but I can say that the conference did leave a strong impression about how I can help shape the future of ScienceLogic in an even more positive way.