However, I got a few emails from my readers asking me something along these line, thus this post. For example, I got asked "Should I focus more on targeting security professionals or general IT users?", "Any pitfalls I should be aware of?" as well as general questions about how to start, what content is best, etc all the way to "How did I profit from my blog?"

Q: Who should I blog to?

A: Blog to colleagues first i.e. infosecurity pros. Blogging to IT or general public is - in some sense - harder or - gasp! - will turn you into a journalist (someone who knows nothing about everything BUT writes about it as an "expert" :-)) Maybe you can broaden it later. Even better, write for YOU (!)

Q: What area of security I should focus my blogging on?

A: Focus on the area of security that you like the most or know them most: IDS? Patching? PIX administration? Linux? AD esoterica? Logs, maybe? :-) Then broaden if you feel like it or as you learn new areas

Q: Any advice on site design, themes, etc?

A: Site design, themes, etc will all come later; just pick something basic and FOCUS on content, not on SEO, design, etc. MUST have RSS feed; make it highly visible (HTML is out, RSS is IN :-))

Q: Any security blogging pitfalls that I should avoid? Any other tips?

A:

• Don't stick to only long, deep posts? Unbelievably, people often prefer shorter posts or a mix of short/shallow and longer/deep posts (that came as a shock to me early on!)
• Tips on how to do whatever useful work well; comments on hot issues (that you understand) works too for a shorter post.
• Definitely comment on other bloggers posts (more often early on, later - as you wish...)
• Avoid long breaks in blogging (>7 days); it will  lead to reader loss (you should only care about it later - focus on fun content first!)
• Join Security Bloggers Network (drop an email to Alan Shimel for it)

Q:  Has blogging in this niche generated any income for you? If so, how much?

A: Exactly $0. The reason is that I never wanted to "monetize" my blog;  I don't have banners, etc. This is by design.

Q: How did it help your professional career in a significant way?

Yes, I think it helped my career and connected me to a lot of fun people! I sure hope I am not "known only as as blogger", but blog can definitely make one much more known professionally, especially if you create fun and/or useful content.

Overall, blog is a time commitment, but it is also a passion. It does help your career, but "forcing " yourself to do it just for "career benefits" is,  IMHO, a wrong approach.

Yo, my fellow bloggers; help the newbies out, will ya?! Let's start a series of posts on "how to be a good security blogger!"

Well, the results are in! Our servers nearly crashed thanks to the influx of responses, but, fortunately, that wasn't the case. Here are the results...]]> Thu, 28 Aug 2008 05:00:00 +0000 iso results piece question posed adoption weeks ago standard rule influx ISO 27001 Adoption Poll Results are In http://securityratty.com/article/a2ffa8d411dc417bdb5a774ee6ab5207 http://securityratty.com/article/a2ffa8d411dc417bdb5a774ee6ab5207

"The rigorous studies clearly show red-light cameras don't work," said lead author Barbara Langland-Orban, professor and chair of health policy and management at the USF College of Public Health. "Instead, they increase crashes and injuries as drivers attempt to abruptly stop at camera intersections."

Comprehensive studies from North Carolina, Virginia, and Ontario have all reported cameras are associated with increases in crashes. The study by the Virginia Transportation Research Council also found that cameras were linked to increased crash costs. The only studies that conclude cameras reduced crashes or injuries contained "major research design flaws," such as incomplete data or inadequate analyses, and were always conducted by researchers with links to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. The IIHS, funded by automobile insurance companies, is the leading advocate for red-light cameras since insurance companies can profit from red-light cameras by way of higher premiums due to increased crashes and citations.

And, of course, the agenda of the government is to increase revenue due to fines:

A 2001 paper by the Office of the Majority Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives reported that red-light cameras are "a hidden tax levied on motorists." The report came to the same conclusions that all of the other valid studies have, that red-light cameras are associated with increased crashes and that the timings at yellow lights are often set too short to increase tickets for red-light running. That's right, the state actually tampers with the yellow light settings to make them shorter, and more likely to turn red as you're driving through them.

In fact, six U.S. cities have been found guilty of shortening the yellow light cycles below what is allowed by law on intersections equipped with cameras meant to catch red-light runners. Those local governments have completely ignored the safety benefit of increasing the yellow light time and decided to install red-light cameras, shorten the yellow light duration, and collect the profits instead.

The cities in question include Union City, CA, Dallas and Lubbock, TX, Nashville and Chattanooga, TN, and Springfield, MO, according to Motorists.org, which collected information from reports from around the country.

Complicating factors is the impact (or lack thereof) of incidents on stock price.  Many researchers who identify themselves with the New School of Information Security (yours truly included) want to immediately look at stock price as a bell-weather metric for incident impact.  I think this stems from our days of slinging FUD, back when we could scream “Buy a firewall or we’ll have an incident and you’ll be on the front page of the paper and the stock price will go down!”  But these days notable incidents seem to suggest that the impact on stock price for an incident is short lived.  With qualifications, of course.

So what would/should we make of this from Money.co.uk?

£12million ($24m) Wiped off Helphire Stock after Malicious Email Sent to Clients

Car hire firm Helphire have taken Google to court after a malicious email sent from a Gmail account saw their shares plummet £12million in a single day.

The Bath-based business who specialise in providing replacement cars to ‘no-fault’ drivers involved in accidents on behalf of car insurance companies, initiated legal proceedings against the search engine giant as part of their attempt to find out who is responsible for sending the defamatory mailing.

Google are now known to have complied with the court order and have controversially supplied details of the email account and ISP used by the meddler.

Written under the psudoname Peter Franks, the 1200 word email is know to have been sent from a gmail account that was opened specifically for this purpose and closed a few minutes after the damage had been done…

…The misdemeanour couldn’t have come at a worse time for the struggling firm who have undergone a £45million rights issue and seen a 75% drop in the value of their stock already this year.

That last paragraph, for me, explains some of the difficulty in tying reputation damage to stock decreases.  It’s like when you read the headlines from Bloomberg about why the days stocks (or commodity) prices are up or down.  You know, the “Oil closes $3 higher on news that a notable South American dictator has a rather unpleasant boil in a very uncomfortable area” type of headlines.  You really do have to question the causality and correlation.  So in the Helphire case above - is this new drop in stock really because of the email sent?  If so, should we view that $24mil number as an independent data point to describe this sort of attack on reputation, or is the magnitude aggravated due to the long-term trend of stock price?

Even when we have “Objective Data” (an in-joke for Adam S.) like this decline in stock price, it is really difficult to provide any sort of precise estimate or measurement - about the future, present or past.  The best we can do is use ranges, distributions, that are reasonable based on evidence and observation.

So it’s worth filing away this sort of datum for future use - while dutifully acknowledging the qualifiers we might place around it.

So the questions I ask here - what should we make of this new information, and how should we view the $24million drop - they’re not rhetorical.  I am very interested in your views and welcome your comments!