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Potential Positive of “CSI: Cyber” at RSA Conference 2016

The information security community is losing its collective mind because actors from the much-maligned CSI: Cyber TV series are on the keynote schedule for RSA Conference 2016. Dave Lewis, writing as @gattaca, captured the sentiment:

A lot of analysis has been devoted to RSA’s decision. I like the suggestion Violet Blue makes about how maybe, just maybe, RSA is playing a clever joke on us:

What if RSA’s ongoing keynote stew of disconnect and incompetence is part of something way more thoughtful and complex than we’re giving it credit for?

Jericho wonders in this post why anyone would be surprised, since, he believes, RSA has been a joke for years already:

It’s the party everyone shows up to, and the one you want to be at, to “be seen” and “catch up on the gossip”, even though you hate it. In our industry, it is the embodiment of reality T.V. in many ways. On the flip side, this conference hasn’t actually been relevant to our industry for a long time, where reality T.V. is sadly relevant in the worst ways.

He’s not wrong, though as I’ll note shortly, it’s not really as clear cut as that.

Crowd scene from RSA 2015

My thoughts:

  • There are many other keynoters. Though CSI: Cyber is getting all the attention, the agenda is crammed with a lot of people who practice infosec in real life, including Intel Security Group senior VP and general manager Christopher Young, Snort creator Martin Roesch and the annual Cryptographer’s Panel.
  • TV personalities have keynoted RSA before. And you didn’t see the kind of stink being raised today. To be fair, much of the ill sentiment is because CSI: Cyber sucks so badly, failing to portray our business accurately and fostering FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt, for the uninitiated).
  • It’s always been what you make it, anyway. Jericho is right that people attend RSA to see and be seen, hating it all the while. But my personal experience has always been that you get what you put into it. I haven’t attended a keynote in five years. Most tend to be the same old vendors pitching the same old message wrapped in whatever that year’s buzz topic is. I get far more value from the conversations. Reconnecting with peers I haven’t seen in a while. Meeting new people I can learn from. That’s what matters to me. I also believe it’s healthy to be in an arena where you have to keep selling what you bring to the table, be it the technology your employer sells or a side project you care about.
  • It’s an opportunity. What if we used the CSI: Cyber appearance as an opportunity to put the feet of the show’s writers and actors to the fire? If we stand up and tell them why their show offends us, maybe their shows stories start sucking less.

OK, probably not. But it was a nice thought.

I’m going to RSA because I’ve gotten much from it in the past. I also have a report to tell people about. My team worked hard on it and we believe it will provide value.

Cheer up, everyone. Have a song:

https://youtu.be/21ewvNVAYUw

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These Squabbles Make Us Small

Some of you asked why I don’t write as much as I used to. Partial answer: My real job and a lot of family business leave me with less time and motivation to do so.

But there’s something else, and it’s had a bigger impact.

Mood music:

The squabbling on social media has gotten so childish that it’s not worth commenting on anymore. This is especially true in infosec.

My job used to be writing about the security community and its research. Now I’m part of the security community, working and writing alongside researchers. Instead of hearing and writing about the challenges of incident management and compliance, I’m living it. No complaints there; it’s what I wanted.

It’s made me realize that it’s more important to keep learning and doing the work than to opine about every instance where my peers get their underwear in a twist. People once used social media to build up the security community. Now they’re using it to tear vast segments of it down. I see more bickering about tactics and positions than discussion about how we can do better. You’re either right or you suck.

For example:

  • Someone says they don’t like getting hugs at conferences. The people that do like hugs take offense.
  • Someone makes an off-color joke. The ensuing conversation revolves around people’s triggers being set off. Then people with those triggers get pissed on for having triggers in the first place.
  • Someone takes a position that’s unpopular. A cabal of naysayers question that person’s right to exist.

Now people are denouncing the whole idea of a security community. They’re suggesting the industry and community are two different things. The community, they say, is a collection of cliques — the so-called cool kids and posers — whereas the industry is where all the grownups are.

Like most things in life, it’s hardly that simple.

The problem isn’t that people pine for the idea of a community. It’s that too many people lack understanding of what a community is.

Communities are a mix of people with different beliefs. They’re places where people can come together for the greater good while still arguing about smaller things. Real communities are not offense- or trigger-free zones.

Infosec isn’t unique, either. These communities exist in many professions, and people behave in them much the way they behave in the infosec community.

I could write a post suggesting people stop being so ridiculous. I could suggest some of us stop getting so offended about everything. And before this year, I probably would have.

Right now, though, I have more important things to do.

It’s not that I’m personally offended by it all. I just don’t have time for it anymore. The challenges we face are big, and the squabbles make us small.

Boxing glove hitting boxer's face