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The Humanity of ShmooCon

I’m missing the ShmooCon hacker conference for the second year in a row because of family activities. But it remains a favorite of mine for several reasons. One is how its not afraid to explore how the human condition affects the security profession.

Mood music:

For starters, ShmooCon has given Johnny Long a platform.

Long, one of the world’s foremost hackers, has given presentations on why he started Hackers for Charity, a nonprofit organization using the skills of technologists to solve technology challenges for various non-profits and provide food, equipment, job training and computer education to the world’s poorest citizens.

Besides the obvious good that comes of this, the organization has done much to humanize hackers and help the world see them as more than introverts in basements using technology to break into networks for nefarious purposes. More than ever, hackers are seen as agents of positive change. Long deserves our thanks for that, and ShmooCon deserves thanks for giving him valuable exposure.

I also appreciate how ShmooCon has showcased the gifts of those who are different.

A powerful example of that was a talk renowned security engineer Marsh Ray gave at ShmooCon 2011, where he used the fragile mental condition as the basis of a talk called “A paranoid schizophrenia-based model of data security.”  In that talk, he described working in a psychiatric hospital more than 20 years ago and getting to know Keith, a fellow who usually sat on the park bench strumming his guitar for spare change.

“Sometimes I would take a break from reading microprocessor manuals and listen,” Ray said at the time. “Keith had paranoid schizophrenia. He could explain how the world worked: ‘There is a great international conspiracy…’ he would say. Electromagnetic fields, government satellites, resonant dinner plates, you name it: He had it all figured out.”

Ray noted how Keith couldn’t trust the conflicting information coming from different parts of the brain. He knew he was vulnerable and spent much time and energy thinking about it.

“Does this not also describe our current relationship with data security?” Ray asked. “Our architectures have become so complex that they are inherently susceptible to internal schism, leaving us vulnerable to sudden manipulation by shadowy external forces.”

Ray noted that many of the things Keith predicted have come to pass. For example, including radio transmissions being monitored by satellite and underground markets emerging for the purpose of trading information.

There are many more examples from previous years. But those are the ones that really stand out for me.

Sorry to miss it this year, but I wish those who are there a fabulous, enlightening weekend.

 

ShmooCon logo

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6 Things Every Graduate Should Know

Graduation season means a rush of news articles about famous commencement speakers and their words of wisdom. US Secretary of State John Kerry just gave one, as did recently fired New York Times Executive Editor Jill Abramson.

David McCullough Jr., longtime Wellesley High School English teacher and son of one of my favorite authors, gave one of my favorite commencement speeches of all time last year when he told graduates they’re not special.

Much is made of these words of wisdom, but wisdom can come from the everyday, the hard knocks and the failures.

Here are six bits of advice from my own school of mediocrity.

Mood music:

  1. Your first three jobs will pay little. The really good jobs and pay must be earned for years after graduation. Employers will rarely give you a plum assignment right out of school. They want to see what you’re made of first. You’ll get the shittiest tasks and, as entry-level employees, you won’t make enough money to live independently. The key to the good stuff is to pay your dues with grace and good humor.
  2. Nobody likes whiners. Because of that first point, you’ll probably find yourself working more than 40 hours a week and seeing people who don’t work as hard as you getting ahead. Life’s unfair for most of us, and you have to make the best of what you have at the time. Life is a series of tests and the winners usually smile and bear the tough stuff. Also, fairness is hard to measure. For all you know, that colleague who doesn’t work as many hours simply learned through experience how to work more efficiently.
  3. Kindness beats ruthlessness every time. Some will disagree with me on this, especially those who find ruthlessness necessary to get ahead. But it’s been a simple fact that when I’ve been a cut-throat asshole, my work life has been miserable and innocents have been hurt. When I’ve been helpful and kind, I’ve always felt better for it. Too, the bosses I’ve learned the most from have been the compassionate ones. When you’re kind, colleagues want to work with you — and help you through the inevitable rough patches.
  4. If work becomes everything, you lose. I once put work so high above everything else in life that it nearly ate me alive. Remember that a job should be something you do to live, not the other way around. Jobs come and go. Sometimes it ends before you expect it to and it’s not on your terms. If you have a balanced life with other interests and friends outside office life, you’ll survive and probably thrive more than you had before. If not, it’ll feel like your life has ended with the job you just lost.
  5. Neglecting children for work is the biggest mistake you can make. Some of you will marry. Some of you will become parents. If so, don’t put work ahead of them. I know what it’s like and it sucks. I’ve also been guilty of doing it to my kids in the past. Your neglect will fill them with bitterness that causes them more pain in adulthood. Today, I rearrange my work schedule around my children’s needs. It’s not always easy and I don’t always do it well. But it’s the least I could do, since I helped bring them into this world.
  6. It’s never too late to renegotiate your life. Hate your career? Feel trapped by the choices you made? Start over. You may think you can’t. But people do it all the time, with spectacular results.

All of this isn’t meant to depress young adults heading out into the world. It’s meant to assure them that it’s within their power to learn, grow and thrive. It’s just not as easy as some are led to believe.

Good luck!

skull graduation cap and scrolls

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Work-Life Balance in the 21st Century

A friend noted the other day that he actually gets annoyed about holidays and mandatory paid time off because he simply loves his work and would rather keep at it each day. He’s not an all-work-no-play kind of guy, either. He’s a dedicated weight lifter, traveler, music lover and bee keeper, all things that require time away from the computer.

I see some of myself in his outlook on life. I too love what I do, and I don’t mind a bit when I find myself thinking about work stuff on weekends and days off.

Mood music:

True, we’re lucky because we have great jobs that come with a lot of freedom. If we worked in retail or drove trucks, we might feel quite differently. But to me, what we’re experiencing reflects a change in the way technology has allowed us to live our lives.

For my part, I treasure and protect my personal time. I rearrange work schedules to accommodate family, whether it’s to drive the kids back and forth to appointments and scouting activities or simply to keep an eye on the kids so my wife can hole up in her office and meet deadlines. On weekends I rarely do work activities these days, though my brain will often spin some ideas around that I need to jot down so I won’t forget come Monday.

I manage to get my work done despite a busy personal life that includes guitar lessons, church activities and chores. I’ve actually found that on my work-at-home days, I can participate in call-in work meetings while folding laundry and emptying trash, activities that require little thought and allow me to focus my mind on the work being discussed.

In the bigger picture, I think my generation is pretty fortunate. Our parents had to be out of the house to do their jobs and often would have to be gone early in the morning and not be back until late in the evening. Some jobs are still like that, but if you work with technology and your company’s brands all reside on the Internet, you can work pretty much anywhere where there’s an Internet connection. And you can find the Internet almost anywhere.

I have my office days and my work-at-home days, but I also get work done while sitting in waiting rooms when the kids have dental appointments or in the Jiffy Lube during an oil change.

Some say these things aren’t necessarily changes for the better. Indeed, it’s harder now to completely separate work from personal time because with smart phones, iPads and the like, work can always find you. For me, the trick, one I admittedly haven’t mastered yet, is to not pick up the phone every time it rings or answer emails the second they hit the inbox.

There’s plenty of room for a workaholic to get lost and get sucked away from home life. But my life is better for having these things. It’s up to us to put the technology in its proper place and balance the work with everything else.

Work-life balance

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Farewell, CSO and IDG. Hello, Akamai!

Today is my last day as managing editor of CSO Magazine and CSOonline. Monday, my new job at Akamai begins. I’m excited about the new challenges that await me. But I’m going to miss the place where I spent the last five years of my professional life.

Mood music:

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It’s been an excellent ride. I worked with some of the best talent and sweetest human beings on Earth. I got to burrow deeper into the information security community and made many new friends along the way. And I’m a better man for it.

Just a few of the folks I’ve loved working with:

Derek Slater: A gentle soul with a mighty laugh, Derek gave me a ton of creative freedom. My only regret about this relationship is that I never succeeded in getting him to drop some F-bombs. Trust me, I tried. The dirtiest thing this man will say in a moment of crisis is pickles. One night at a dinner we hosted for CSOs attending one of our events, he introduced himself this way: “Hi, I’m Derek. I ‘manage’ Bill Brenner.” The room erupted in laughter, and Andy Ellis — my new boss come Monday — raised his glass and congratulated Derek for managing a guy like me without losing his grip on sanity. I’d like to think Derek’s rational ways have rubbed off on me.

Joan Goodchild: Joan is a powerhouse whose videos, slideshows and articles have been key to CSOonline‘s rise  in monthly traffic. I worked with her at TechTarget and was thrilled when she joined CSO a few months after me. She’s been a good friend through some turbulent times, and I’m forever grateful for that.

John Gallant: John runs IDG Enterprise with good humor and grace, and he’s gone to the mat for CSO on countless occasions. We bonded over an interest in WWII history, our common geographical roots, cigars and movies. I’ll miss his always-entertaining editorial offsites.

Steve Traynor: Steverino designs all CSO‘s pages and helped us make CSOonline more visually compelling. He put up with a lot from me, and we had a ridiculous amount of fun concocting illustrations and layouts.

Bob Bragdon: Bob is CSO‘s publisher, a Marblehead Yankee and an all-around great guy. He took a lot of ribbing from me and gave it back in kind. One time, after I returned from a Washington, DC, trip that included a grilling from the Secret Service, I discovered that Bob had plastered my workspace with signs welcoming me to Gitmo. I got him back a million times over and had a hell of a lot of fun doing it.

Per Melker: CSO’s top sales guy for most of my time there, Per was my traveling partner in crime. He did the driving as we journeyed to Hoover Dam for a security tour and, more recently, a side trip to Amityville, NY, so I could take pictures of the famous house for a slideshow.

There are many more people who made my time at CSO richer, and I thank them all. CSO and its parent company, IDG, will always hold a special place in my heart.

Now it’s time to start a new adventure and kick some ass at Akamai.

CSO Cube

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Leaving CSO, Heading to Akamai

After five excellent years as senior editor and managing editor of CSOonline.com and CSO Magazine, I’m moving on. Starting June 3, I’ll be a senior program manager at Akamai Technologies in Cambridge, Mass. I’m stoked about this new challenge.

Mood music:

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I’m announcing my new adventure here because it’s the best way to reach the most people, since this blog is read by friends, family and many in the information security community.

Let’s address some questions:

Why leave?

The news will surprise some folks because I’ve always done this job with child-like glee. It’s been the best job I’ve had up to this point, and I didn’t start 2013 with plans to go anywhere. But along the way this and other opportunities arose, and the process of talking to people made me realize I needed to take the next step in my career. I’ve gotten too comfortable, which puts me at risk of becoming complacent. Complacency is never acceptable to me.

Will you still be in the security industry? Will you still be writing for a living?

Yes and yes. In fact, this change takes me deeper into the security community. That’s one of the things I wanted: to become less of a journalist and more of an advocate for this industry because I find the work done here so vital to the peace and prosperity of the world.

In the new job, I’ll be blogging, podcasting and creating in-depth reports and multimedia packages about the state of global security through the Akamai prism. It’s huge prism: At last check, the company was handling tens of billions of daily Web interactions for 90 of the top 100 online U.S. retailers, 29 of the top 30 global media and entertainment companies, nine of the top 10 world banks, and all branches of the U.S. military.

I’ll still write about what’s going on in the larger world of infosec (information security, for the uninitiated), and my job will involve a lot of community outreach. But now I’ll have Akamai’s data to compare with what other companies are seeing.

Above all, I’ll be telling the story of Akamai’s security program, which is powerful but not as universally understood as it could be.

When do you start?

I can’t wait to get started, but I will wait June 3. My remaining time at CSO will be for finishing up my current project load and ensuring that the group is in good shape when I leave. I owe them that and more. They’ve been truly fabulous to me, and I’ve made many friends for life. CSO and IDG will always hold a special place in my heart.

Will you still write THE OCD Diaries?

Absolutely. I wouldn’t have taken this or any other job if it required me to stop writing this blog. CSO and IDG supported my personal blogging from the beginning and in all of the discussions about different career opportunities these last few months, no one has asked me to kill this to join them. In fact, the support and enthusiasm have continued.

It goes to show how much progress the business world has made in recognizing and accepting those whose brains tick a little differently from the mainstream.

It makes me more optimistic than ever about the future.

Akamai

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Control Freak-Out

OCD sometimes makes me feel adrift even when things are going well. I’m feeling it a lot these days and this post, originally written in 2010, captures the malady well.

Mood music:

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There’s another byproduct of OCD that I’ve described indirectly before, but never head on. A byproduct for my own special blend of dysfunction, that is.

Sometimes, no matter how well things are going — and no matter how good my mood is when I wake up — I’ll sit at my desk and suddenly feel awash in melancholy.

It comes over me suddenly, and it can be even more frustrating than the black moods that hit me when there are visible troubles to spark it. When a wave of melancholy hits for no good reason, I sit here feeling like an idiot.

I start to contemplate doing things that are bad for me, like going and binging on $30 of junk food. It used to be that less than 10 minutes after a thought like that entered my head, I’d be doing just that. (See “The Most Uncool Addiction” for a better explanation of why this used to happen)

Things are going very well for me these days. Yet the blues persist. 

As I sit here analyzing my head, an answer is emerging. What I’m feeling is adrift. Not in the sense that my life is adrift, because it’s never been more full of purpose. The adrift feeling is over things I can’t control.

Why yes, everything you’ve heard about OCD and control freakism is true. People like us crave control like a junkie craves a shot of smack to the arm. It grabs us by the nose and drags us down the road until our emotions are raw and bleeding.

That’s why I used to be such an asshole at The Eagle-Tribune. Every story I edited then went through three more editors and then to the page designer. Along the way, everyone after me had to take a whack at it. I’d hover over the poor page designers because it was the closest thing I had to control. Ultimate control would have meant laying out the pages myself. That would have been a stupid thing to do, mind you. I couldn’t lay out a news page to save my life.

When I was the assistant news editor for the paper’s New Hampshire editions, I was out a week when my son Sean was born. I came in one night to catch up on e-mail and saw the message where my boss announced my son’s birth. In it, he joked that I probably stood over the doctor and told him how to deliver the baby.

I wanted to punch him.

I saw red.

Because I knew that was something I could easily be pictured doing. It hit too close to the truth.

The control freak has emerged in a variety of other ways over the years. Getting stuck in traffic would send me into a rage because all I could do is sit and wait. Getting on a plane filled me with dread because I could only sit there and wait. There was the fear that the plane might crash. But the bigger problem for me was that I was at the mercy of the pilots, the air traffic and the weather. I had no control over the schedule, and that incensed me. Today, I love flying.

So what’s my problem now?

I think it’s that all the cool things going on right now are still in play. The various projects are set in motion, but now I have to sit and wait on others to work through their processes. A more normal person would just take these things as they come and just live in the moment. But I’m not normal.

I have to wait my turn. I don’t like that.

But then it’s appropriate that I should be made to feel uncomfortable about it, since I really have no business trying to control any of these things. Other people have their jobs to do, and I should trust them.

I’m working on it.

I handle it better than I used to.

And this particular strain of melancholy is like New England weather:

If I wait an hour, it’ll change.

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The Freak in the Newsroom

A tale of terror in newsrooms across the state of Massachusetts.

I love my job. I love the subject matter (IT and physical security, emergency preparedness, regulatory compliance). I love the people I work with, many of whom I’ve worked with at other points in my nearly 19 years in journalism. And I love my daily dealings with some of the smartest, passionate security professionals on the planet.

But it wasn’t always this way. Work used to be something to dread, binge eat and get sick over. And I had no one to blame but myself.

For me, one of the main triggers for obsessive-compulsive behavior was work. I was driven to the brink by a desire to be the golden boy, the guy who worked the most hours, wrote the most stories, handled the most shit work and pleased the most managers.

Golden Boy

I got my first reporting job at Community Newspaper Company, covering the school system in Swampscott, Mass. It was part time, but I put in more than 40 hours a week. Not terrible. I liked the people I worked with and felt pretty dang good about having the job even though I was still one course shy of earning my degree. But I spent much of the time in fear that I wouldn’t measure up. My head would spin at 3 a.m. as I tried to come up with things to write about and prove my worth. My weight soared from 230 pounds — already too much — to 260.

Sullen Boy

The next job was full-time as reporter for the Stoneham Sun. I pretty much worked around the clock, trying to show the editor, managing editor and editor-in-chief (all friends to this day, BTW) that I was THE MAN. Late in my tenure on this beat, my best friend killed himself and I binged as much on work as on food to bury my rage. It didn’t work. I gained another 20 pounds and wrote a column about my friend’s suicide, naming names and describing the method of death in way too much detail. To this day, his parents and sister won’t have anything to do with me, and I can’t say I blame them.

Lynn Sunday Post and Peter Sugarman

This was a bad year. My best friend had just died and I was given the task of editing The Lynn Sunday Post, a newspaper that was on its deathbed. You could say I was chosen to be its pallbearer. There was barely a staff. Few people read it anymore. My only day off was Monday. And my only reporter was an eccentric guy with a cheezy mustache: Peter Sugarman.

He infuriated me from the start, writing epic stories dripping with his personal passion and political agenda instead of the objective writing I was taught to follow in college journalism classes (Peter would call it my J-School side, and it wasn’t a compliment).

It was only natural that he would become my new best friend, another older brother who was always tring to get me to see the light (his way of doing things).

He and his wife Regina were a constant presence from that time until he choked to death in May 2004, three weeks after I started my SearchSecurity job. But while he was around, I learned a lot about using my writing as an agent of change, a force for good, and about thinking about the readers instead of the higher ups I had been trying so desperately to please.

Another person put in the right place at the right time by God.

Interlude

Much of the same behavior while editor of The Billerica Minuteman, though there was some level of stability during this period.

Deep Slide

During this period I was night editor at The Eagle-Tribune.

Before I go further, I should mention that what follows is HOW I SAW THINGS AT THE TIME, NOT NECESSARILY HOW THINGS ACTUALLY WERE.

For a year and a half of that I was assistant editor of the New Hampshire edition. It started off well enough. But this was a tougher environment than I had experienced before. Editors were tougher to please and often at cross purposes with each other. Part of the task I was handed was to be the bad cop that called reporters late at night to rip them over one perceived injustice or another. I sucked at it. I mostly came off as an asshole, and it never made a difference for the better.

The most insidious, bitter part of the experience was during my time on the New Hampshire staff. The managing editor I worked for directly seemed to relish cracking down on reporters, putting them down and ripping their work to shreds. And he expected me to do it the same way, exactly as he did it.

To be fair, the guy wasn’t without a soul. He tried to do the right thing most of the time and genuinely cared about the people under him. But he was also consumed with the idea that all the other editors on staff were out to get us and undermine our efforts. Everyone was a back-stabber. Whenever I had the impulse to collaborate with editors from other sections or let some things slide, he came down hard.

More than ever, I was being the editor he wanted me to be and not who I really was. I called reporters at all hours. I put them down. I fought with other editors and hovered over the page designers on deadline.

I also came as close as I had to an emotional breakdown at that point. I started calling in sick A lot. I’d wake up with the urge to throw up. By mid-afternoon, the urge switched to binge eating.

That managing editor eventually moved on and I returned to the night desk. By then, I was burning out, a shell of the man I once was. By the time I left there, everyone on staff was evil in my eyes; the cause of everything that had gone wrong.

I was wrong for the most part. Fortunately for me, most of my co-workers from the period looked past my insanity and today many of them are among my dearest friends.

Working a Dream Job But Trapped in the Mental House of Horrors

For the next four years I wrote for SearchSecurity.com, part of the TechTarget company. The job was everything I could have hoped for. Excellent colleagues, a ton of creative freedom and plenty of success came my way.

It also coincided with another emotional meltdown as I started to wake up to the mental illness and the fact that I needed to do something about it.

I think I hid it from my colleagues pretty well, except for my direct editor, Ann Saita, who became something of a mom to me, a nurturing soul I could spill my guts to. I’m pretty sure God put her in the right place at the right time, knowing my time of reckoning was at hand. During this period, I untangled all the mental wiring, started taking Prozac (See “The Bad Pill Kept Me from the Good Pill“), officially became a devout Catholic (more on that later) and finally started to feel whole.

Managing Editor, CSO Magazine and beyond

My current job is truly the best I’ve had. I get to work with people like Derek Slater, Joan Goodchild and Jim Malone, who was my editor-in-chief during my first reporting jobs at CNC and one of the folks I went out of my mind trying to please. A side note that amuses me greatly: Peter Sugarman used to drive him nuts, too.

The most noteworthy thing about the last year and a half is that a personal focus has been to get a handle on the eating. In 2008 I discovered OA and started to regain the upper hand. I quit flour and sugar and started putting all my food on a little scale. My mind cleared.

Here’s the best part about my present situation: From Day 1 at CSO, I have not once worried about being a people pleaser. I’ve just focused on the projects I believed in and my bosses have been content to let me have at it.

I don’t work much more than 40 hours a week, and the funny thing is that I’m more prolific now than I ever was before.

Business travel I used to dread has become a joy. Speaking in front of people has gone from something to fear to something to do more of.

Now, five years into my stint at CSO, I’m headed for a new challenge, focusing all my writing and editing skills on the security data at Akamai Technologies.  I feel no dread, only happiness and glee.

And to think — All I had to do was get out of my own way.
Eagle-Tribune staffers