Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Episode 67: Working Safe Online and On The Road
Friday, December 11th, 2009Amrit Williams, BigFix CTO, discusses how to work remotely while maintaining a secure online environment with Mike Rothman, founder of Security Incite.
Episode 53 – Web Applications Need Security, Too–Part 1
Tuesday, September 29th, 2009Episode 52 – Information Security and the Application Stack–Part 3
Friday, September 25th, 2009Episode 51 – Information Security and the Application Stack–Part 2
Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009Episode 50 – Information Security and the Application Stack–Part 1
Friday, September 18th, 2009Episode 49 – Do We Need to Regulate Software Development?
Tuesday, September 15th, 2009Amrit Williams, BigFix CTO continues his conversation with Adam Shostack, Emergent Chaos leader of the band, about the tradeoffs of emphasizing security versus user experience in software development. Amrit asks the question why shouldn’t security be built into software instead of being treated as an add-on? And if society agreed that should be the case, should software product development and release be subject to external regulation? Both speakers concede that compliance efforts such as PCI and Sarbanes-Oxley have not had a magic effect on software security. Shostack posits an alternative approach to software development, adding economists, sociologists and anthropologists to development projects to better understand user behaviors and insulate software from them.
Episode 48 – Overcoming the IT Security Crisis
Friday, September 11th, 2009Amrit Williams, BigFix CTO, begins a three part conversation with Adam Shostack, bandleader of the Emergent Chaos blog site and author, most recently of “The New School of Information Security,” co written with Andrew Stewart. Shostack believes that the current information security crisis results from viewing the problem as a technical one disconnected from social and economic contexts. Here, Shostack cites the work of economist George Akerlof in analyzing economic actor choices in markets characterized by incomplete information, a situation often faced by buyers of software products trying to determine how vulnerable the product is to security attacks.
Episode 47 – The IT Security Industry Winter
Tuesday, September 8th, 2009Amrit Williams, BigFix CTO talks with Peter Kuper, former analyst Morgan Stanley and SC Gowen, now associated with the IANS organization on the impact of the recession on the security industry. IT security spending is down, and with it, investments in security start-ups and innovation initiatives. Kuper believes that good new technologies and well managed companies can still attract investors and customers. Furthermore, the industry supports tier of robust, established private IT security companies weathering and even prospering in current conditions. While the short term remains challenging, Kuper believes that good technologies and companies can still get a foothold in the current economic environment.
Episode 46 – Coping With the Malware Explosion
Friday, September 4th, 2009Amrit Williams, BigFix CTO, continues his conversation with Al Huger, founder of Immunet, focusing on how the explosion in the types of malware has completely overwhelmed conventional anti-virus technologies and how Immunet is developing community-based solutions to the malware problem. Huger says that every month, 2 million new strains of malware appear on the Internet, swamping conventional signature-based malware products. Furthermore, the nature of malware has changed from loud, obvious pranks to stealthy attacks that require only a few seconds to steal desirable data and then disappear or lay dormant. Immunet works by identifying malicious files and preventing their download onto protected PCs, a sharp contrast to current generation products that fight malware only after it has put down roots in an infected machine.


