I don't know about everyone else, but I tend to send hit 'Reply to All' much more frequently than just Reply. So when the Gmail labs feature to make 'Reply to All' the default became available, I was rather excited. It isn't much (a simple click on a drop down) but it made life more convienient and I rather enjoyed it. The other day I replied to an email intended for 4 people and realized that I'd sent it only to the person who sent the last email in the thread. Confused I went back into the thread and replied again, only this time did I realize that reply was the default and not 'Reply to All'

I searched Labs and discovered that the feature was gone, after some googling I came across this link. It contains a very minimal comment stating that it was removed because it was causing issues for people who had enabled it, followed by a series of responses requesting the feature be brought back. Obviously it was working for a number of people, myself included.

Now, I can accept that in my lifetime the beta tag on my Gmail may never disappear and I can accept that adding a Labs feature may break my "Gmail experience". What I don't get is how a feature from Labs could be pulled because it's causing some people a bad user experience? Perhaps those people just shouldn't use it. Let those of us that want to risk the alpha release (after all if Gmail is beta, Labs can only really be considered alpha). I assumed risk when I enabled the feature, I've accepted that... those people who are having issues also assumed risk... let them suffer on their own.

Anyways, this post had two purposes... the first was to inform anyone who hadn't yet noticed that their "Reply to All" feature was gone and second to rant about an alpha feature being pulled.

IT gmail, google labs, reply to all

When you speak to individuals working in our industry, you'll get a variety of answers for what they do. This near endless list of titles includes:

• Software Engineer
• Software Developer
• Security Engineer
• Support Specialist
• Research Engineer
• Network Admin
• System Admin

The list goes on and on. Historically, I've divided those within IT into one of four groups:

• Developer
• Information Security (IS) Professional
• Information Technology (IT) Professional
• Web Developer

These days Web Developer could probably be folded into Developer since there's so much beyond simple HTML used to build web sites. That leaves us with Developer, IS Pro, and IT Pro. I tend to think that that is a fairly reasonable distinction, at a high level with one caveat. IS isn't really on the same level as the other two. Most people that you talk to have experience in either IT or Development when they move into IS. IS is a skillset that's built onto one of those two. Let's look at this another way...

Imagine this is a RPG and your Level 1 IT Worker. You can choose the abilities you upgrade and they include "Programming", "Router Config", "OSI Model", etc. The level ups for these may include "C++", "Java", "Routing Protocols", "Routed Protocols". This means you could follow the path of IT Pro, Developer or "Jack of all Trades". It isn't until you reach one of these levels that you unlock the next round of abilities (the IS skills) which may include "Packet Analysis" (requires Routing and Routed Protocols) and Binary Analysis (requires "Programming" + 1 Level UP). Only at that point do you move to "IS Pro".

You're probably saying to yourself, "WTF is he talking about?" After all, I'm reading this and thinking that. What I'm talking about is this blog post, 'what do you need to know to work in infosec'. To put it plainly, the list is wrong. Well the list isn't wrong, the list is correct, but the title is wrong. With the exception of one or two items, this list reads more like a "what do you need to know to be a sysadmin" or "what do you need to know to work at a helpdesk"

Now as I said, IT is a stepping stone to IS, so yes, at one point or another you probably learned many of these if you now work in IS, but these aren't the things you need to know to work in IS, these are the things you need to know to work in IT.

So let's take a look at the 'What you need to know...  ' list and figure out where the line items fit. If we take the ones you really need to know to work in IS we've got maybe 5-7 items (1, 11, 14, 15, 17, 18 and 19) - I'll let you decide if it's some or all.  Let's think about some of the others. Numbers 2 -5 are all networking related, I know people in IS who've never touched them... now as a network admin or member of the network group (which would fall under IT) these would be important skills. With numbers 6 - 9, we're looking at a sys admin, or help desk employee (again positions I'd consider to be IT related). Now 10, 12, 13, and 16. These could be argued a few ways but I'm going to call them help desk or support type things and bundle that up into the IT category.

So what's my point? To state that I disagree with a definition of infosec that "needs" all those abilities. Then again, people may even disagree with the 5-7 I felt could be kept. In the end that list is a great list if you want to go get the title of Network Admin or Sys Admin, or even in some cases Security Admin but even at that, working in a enterprise security group where you may deal with all those tasks (it seems doubtful that you'd rely on the security team to install software though) that's one very small aspect of infosec.

IT, Security infosec, IS, IT

I use Windows XP on all of my 4 primary machines (work, work, laptop & home). The only reason I like Windows XP is because it holds PuTTY windows so nicely and allows me to Alt-Tab between them. No Linux distro or Window Manager has ever really had the Alt-Tab experience that Windows XP provides.

The main problem with XP is that to do anything remotely useful with it you need a decent terminal/shell. I love rxvt/bash and the best rxvt you can find for Windows is via cygwin. Out of the box cygwin is an ugly brute - bash in cmd.exe != a real term.

Install rxvt via cygwin, then add some Consolas fonts (from Windows Vista) and edit your .Xdefaults to get a much nicer term.

Download a sadistic editor. Drop in a beautiful colour-scheme (brookstream). You now have a sweet shell and editor.

Install Python via cygwin and away you go.

Perfection?

I was attempting to connect to a remote MySQL DB when my sweet setup failed me.

Nothing in cygwin's repository could help -- there is basically no support in cygwin for MySQL (odd). There is tons of support for Python and Postgres, so this MySQL FAIL surprised me.

After an entire morning of Googleing it turns out the people at Cygwin Ports have solved this problem. For the sake of your sanity follow these simple steps to get Cygwin + Python + MySQL working.

1. Follow the steps above to create a sweet cygwin development environment.
2. Follow the overly convoluted steps to enable cygwin ports in your setup.exe
3. Install the following package "python-mysql" including the crucial dependancy "libmysqlclient-devel"
4. Test your setup

Rejoice?

This process has saved you the experience of python eggs, installing gcc, compiling anything from source and best of all it just works.

Enjoy!

- Graver

One last note - if you have ever found a slick PNG that you wanted as an ICO (for Windows XP) check out this online converter site!

Python, Tutorials

One of the coolest booth prizes at RSA had to be from an appliance builder that was having a draw for a free prototype appliance ($2000 value). Thinking this would be an awesome win, i quickly filled out the form and placed it in the fish bowl. That was the last I heard of this until yesterday. I came into the office and had a voicemail from last week. It went something like this (close approximation):

Hi Tyler, it's Ed ******** calling from MBX Systems. I just wanted to let you know that we drew your name for the RSA drawing and it would be great if you could give us a call back to go over the details.

Now at this point I'm rather excited... I've got plans for this win. I'm thinking ComputerDefense.org appliance installed in a rack somewhere instead of a hosted page for this blog. I call back and end up having to leave a voicemail. After a brief game of phone tag, I finally get Ed on the phone. He does some standard sales guy talk and then asks how he can meet my needs, and since I just want my free system that I won, I ask how it works. At this point I'm informed that someone else won the free prototype... I've won a free eval! W00T! Stop the presses... a FREE eval! Needless to say the phone call quickly ended.

This was, to date, the sneakiest trick I've seen to get someone on the phone. At this point I may not be directly involved in appliance purchasing but I'm a big fan of the vendor space and who knows where I'll be in 1, 5 or even 10 years. I do, however, know who I won't be doing business with.

You know, if I'd won and their systems were half as good as their marketing material claims, I probably would have written up a blog post praising them... at the very least they would have gotten positive mention just because I'd won it. Since I didn't win, they could not contacted me or gone with a standard sales call and I wouldn't have had anything bad to say about them, at least I'd know the name should I ever be in the position to purcahses appliances in the future. Instead they took this sleazy approach and now I'm going to always know who I'm not doing business with.

IT MBX Systems, RSA

Note: this was a series of posts following RSA but some personal issues delayed this and now I'm posting a single post on the subject.

This was my first year at RSA, and via the wonder of blogging, I had a press pass.  I also, unfortunately, had an exhibitor badge. That isn't to say I didn't want to be at the booth (I actually love being at the booth -- although, while many people walked by and loved our shirts, I wasn't a huge fan... just a huge pumpkin ), it just meant I had less time to use the press pass. I also didn't have a lot of time to post while at RSA, so now I'm doing my blog posts... based on a few notes and lots of foggy memories.

I have an interesting flight story to share, but I feel as thought it might be better sent to the consumerist, I'm not entirely sure yet.

Anyways, day one I met with a few interesting people. First I meant with some people from Commtouch to discuss their technology and what they do. It sounded rather interesting and I look forward to testing it out at some point in the future. Following that, I met with Michael Sutton from Zscaler, who'd I'd met once previously. I really enjoyed this discussion and think we'll see some really cool things out of Zscaler in the future.

I spent the morning at the nCircle booth and expected to see masses of peopel everywhere after hearing about the number of people last year. I later heard it discussed that there were fewer people, so that might explain it. Working the booth is something I really enjoy. Being an engineer leaves you with few chances to interact with customers, something I love doing. The booth over the three days that I was there lead to some very interesting discussions with intriguing contacts.

Tuesday afternoon was spent walking the booths. A few vendors said they'd send me samples of their hardware to play with and review, however I've had no contact from them yet. This is disappointing because I was really looking forward to seeing some of the hardware in action.

Wednesday was the day that I was really looking forward to. The Securosis breakfast, the WASC meetup and the Security Bloggers Meetup. All three of these were amazing and they gave me a chance to finally meet up with the people that I talk to and hadn't be able to connect with at past conferences. I also had the opportunity to do a video interview with Martin McKeay, which I'm eager to see... I just hope it was shot in wide screen so that Martin can fit in the frame next to me .

Thursday brought more of the same with booth duty and visits to other booths. It also brought dinner at Basil Thai which was incredible. Ever since I was in San Francisco last year, I'd looked forward to returning to eat at Chevy's (which I just learned is a chain), which I managed to do twice but Basil Thai was even better. I'm already excited about my next trip to San Francisco just to go back.

Friday was my final day in San Francisco (I was flying back on the red-eye). Friday also held the highlight of the week -- the Mythbusters. It was incredible and my only complaint was that the moderator was too chatty.

Anyways, shorter than I wanted it to be but I had to mention that I did enjoy RSA and I'm eager to attend again next year.

Conferences RSA

Q. What is your role at $vendor?
A. Director Product Management

Q. What got you into IT/IS?
A. started programming in 5th grade on a Commodore Pet, got an Atari 800, self-taught assembly...many yrs later studied CS and went into a startup in early client-server out of college.

Q. What do you do outside of IT/IS?
A. 6yr+4-yr old twins...Reminisce about free time. Think about education reform and getting rid of incompetent politicians.

Q. What are  you most looking forward to / what did you most enjoy about RSA this year?
A. Low expectations. Most enjoyed meeting up with past colleagues.

Q. Was this your first time at RSA? Will you return?
A. 3rd or 4th. Will return.

Q. What will you be doing at your both?
A. usual booth duty, fishing for real customers amidst the noise of vendors/partners/exhibitors.

Q. Is there any swag available at your booth?
A. yeah, come take a look. cheap stuff if you're a vendor/partner/exhibitor. Good stuff if you have budget.

Q. If people wanted to chat with you when could they stop by the booth?
A. anytime

Q. Prediction for the future of IT/IS during 2009 and into 2010?
A. Budget cuts, heavy emphasis on quick, real ROI. Small companies go away.

Q. Any comments?

Conferences At the Booth, RSA

I've arrived!

After almost being removed from the plane (due to a double booked seat), I've finally made it to SF. I visited Denny's and now I'm going to grab ~3 hours sleep before I kick off my day. I'll be blogging the conference, as well as mentioning it on twitter. You can follow treguly on twitter (that's me) or ncircletweets (my employer). Rumor has it that nCircle will be giving away a Kindle 2 to a random new follower of their twitter feed.

I also want to take a chance to mention the "At the Booth" series that I'm doing. So far I've had three participants (2 from nCircle) and I'd really like to do a large series of these posts, so I want to once again invite everyone to answer the questions (found here) and send them in.

Conferences At the Booth, RSA

Q. What is your role at nCircle?
A. I am the Chief Technology Officer.  In terms of responsibility, it means that I try to add value in technical areas of the company and stay out of areas where I don’t add value.  nCircle has a ‘whatever it takes’ culture and it keeps things fresh and new.  I’ve been here since 2001 and I am still having a great time and learning something new everyday.

Q. What got you into IT/IS?
A. My computer career began at Broderbund Software where I worked on audio (auditory display) for the games.  In those days, there was a very fine line on the BBS’s between the gamer community and the hacker community.  I immediately got into the design of online games and a prerequisite was to know IT infrastructure inside and out.  I saw my infrastructure as instrumentation of the game and at some point, I was hacking kernels, applications and routers more than I was doing audio game interfaces.

Q. What do you do outside of IT/IS?
A. No surprise here but I still spend a lot of my time playing games.  I see ‘play’ in general as the method by which I learn and make sense of the world.  If I can’t play with it, I cannot truly understand it.  Lately, I’ve been ranking up on the Gears of War 2 online play so if you are into that stuff, drop me a line.

Q. What are  you most looking forward to / what did you most enjoy about RSA this year?
A. RSA for me is all about conversations.  I plan on having at least a dozen incredible conversations with customers, other vendors, and peers who are passionate about their work.  Last year at RSA 2008 I did a talk on Game Theory and its application in defensive strategies.  This year, I’ll be spending more time hanging out with peers and having great discussions.

Q. Was this your first time at RSA? Will you return?
A. It is not my first time to RSA and I have lost count.   It is difficult to imagine being in the information security domain and not being at RSA in some capacity.

Q. What will you be doing at your both?
A. I have a presentation to deliver on Tuesday and Wednesday which you may find interesting.  It makes the assumption that your network is made up of a prey species and through a discipline called Biomimicry we explore the dominant strategies of prey and how they can survive in a hostile environment.  Other than that, I’ll be just looking to have a great conversation with visitors.

Q. Is there any swag available at your booth?
A. The remote controlled helicopters have been a hit and I think we have a contest for a Kindle 2.

Q. If people wanted to chat with you when could they stop by the booth?
A. 11am to 2pm on Tuesday and Wednesday.  That is the plan so far but this week is all about exception handling.

Q. Prediction for the future of IT/IS during 2009 and into 2010?
A. I’m not a big fan of predictions but I can tell you an area of interest that I hope to influence its outcome.  I would like to finally see multi-vendor interoperability at the semantic level for customers.  I’m not talking about syntax level sharing of content, I’m speaking of the sharing of data _in context_ – sharing data with sense-making models and ontologies.  Come by the booth and I will talk your ear off on this stuff.

Q. Any comments?
A. Game on!

Conferences At the Booth, RSA

Q. What is your role at $vendor?
A. VP Product Management at nCircle. My job is to make sure that nCircle continues to build the most effective and most competitive solutions to the most urgent customer security and compliance audit problems.

Q. What got you into IT/IS?
A. Actually, it was 1982 and I was just starting college. I had one elective and was trying to decide between Economics and Computer Science. I picked Computer Science because it sounded more interesting and because my mother had been programming mainframes for 10 years. My first job out of college was as a developer with AT&T Bell Labs and I just never left it. I’ve been associated with IT vendors for close to 25 years now.

Q. What do you do outside of IT/IS?
A. You know, I’ve been thinking I need some new hobbies. I have two young kids that take up most of my free time. I read…a lot. I also like to write, though I haven’t done it regularly in years. I had my own blog for about four years and I’d like to find time to get back to that again.

Q. What are  you most looking forward to / what did you most enjoy about RSA this year?
A. I’m interested in seeing how the flavor of the show changes. For me, RSA is about economic trends – large scale swings in the market place. RSA has always been half-marketing/half-business development. This year, I suspect attendance will be down and we’ll see a larger percentage of the traffic representing companies trying to sell themselves. It’s a bizdev show in a buyers’ market right now.

Q. Was this your first time at RSA? Will you return?
A. Not my first show, no. (My first technology tradeshow was one of the early Interops in the 1980s where the protocol stacks were all so different. The main point of the show was to ensure interoperability and every vendor had to have a 10 Mbps (fast at the time) drop into the booth that they had to connect to successfully. Things have come a long way.)
I don’t know how many RSAs I’ve been to. I’ll definitely be back, if only for the annual ISS reunion that takes place each year.

Q. What will you be doing at your both?
A. Trying not to look too out of shape in my orange t-shirt?
Seriously, I’ve got booth duty as an “executive” plus there are a couple of 15-minute presentations I’m giving. Plus, it’s a great place to do market research if you’re a product manager. I have a couple of projects in the works that I’d like to bounce off the right personas, if I can I find them.

Q. Is there any swag available at your booth?
A. We have those cool tiny battery-powered helicopters for presentation attendees and we’re giving away a Kindle 2 to a random person who begins following us @ncircletweets.

Q. If people wanted to chat with you when could they stop by the booth?
A. Monday after 6:00 pm; Tuesday after 2:00 pm; Wednesday after 2:00 pm. Or just tweet me @markwood.

Q. Prediction for the future of IT/IS during 2009 and into 2010?
A. Security and compliance spending will rebound faster and earlier than the general economy. Virtualization is fundamentally changing the nature of our IT world and it’s going to result in customers getting a lot more choices when it comes to security and compliance solutions. That said, the drive to consolidate vendors will not abate in 2009 and may actually accelerate in 2010. It will, therefore, be critical to be a strategic vendor to your customers.

Q. Any comments?
A. I have always thought I could make a killing at RSA by having my own Dr. Scholl’s booth.

Conferences At the Booth, RSA

Q. What is your role at $vendor?
A. PCI QSA at TW.  or Payment Card Industry Qualified Security Assessor at RSA

Q. What got you into IT/IS?
A. Innate geekiness.  Been playing with computers since the Ti99/4a

Q. What do you do outside of IT/IS?
A. There's a life outside of IT/IS?  When I'm not on the computer, I'm spending time with my wife and kids.  God help me when the kids get old enough to IM, tweet and play Halo.

Q. What are  you most looking forward to / what did you most enjoy about RSA this year?
A. The Security Bloggers Meetup.  I'm hosting it with Rich Mogull; I'd have to say that even if it wasn't true.

Q. Was this your first time at RSA? Will you return?
A. 4th RSA, and I'll be back as long as they'll let me return.

Q. What will you be doing at your both?
A. Good question.  No one's told me yet.  Seriously.

Q. Is there any swag available at your booth?
A. Another good question.

Q. If people wanted to chat with you when could they stop by the booth?
A. Tuesday, 1-4 or Thursday 11-1.  I may have to leave early on Tuesday to participate in the "Avoiding Security Groundhog Day" panel.

Q. Prediction for the future of IT/IS during 2009 and into 2010?
A. PCI is going to continue to be a big driver in the security market.  Unless the federal government decides they can do better, then all bets are off.

Q. Any comments?
A. Who's bringing the economy size bottle of Tylenol?

Conferences At the Booth, RSA