Lohrmann on Cybersecurity

Albert Einstein once said, "If I had one hour to save the world, I would spend 55 minutes defining the problem and only five minutes finding the solution." So how can we even begin to define cyberspace and take baby steps towards enabling the good and disabling the bad?

When we go to the dentist for our semi-annual checkup and teeth cleaning, we typically get asked a series of questions about recent patterns of personal behavior. Perhaps its time for instituting a regular cyber check-up?

I had the opportunity to travel to Springfield, Illinois, during this past week to speak at the Illinois Cyber Security Forum. This blog offers some of the highlights, random thoughts and what I lessons learned during the trip.

Over the past few days, numerous news sources reported that President Obama is strongly considering an executive order on cybersecurity. It appears cybersecurity is becoming more political.

I noticed ads showing up all over the place asking me to come back to their websites. Whether I was checking baseball scores at ESPN, doing a Google maps search for driving directions or researching a cybersecurity article at various tech websites, the computer browser was beckoning me to return and buy plane tickets, with targeted ads asking me questions. Will governments be next to use targeted ads online?

One of the hot topics at the MS-ISAC Annual Meeting and GFIRST in Atlanta this week was the recent Wired article by Mat Honan entitled: 'How Apple and Amazon Security Flaws Led to My Epic Hacking.'

As in previous years, the GFIRST conference in being held during the same week as the MS-ISAC Annual Meeting and the InfraGard annual meetings. This allows a diverse group of experts from around the country to attend multiple events during one trip.

I'm at the Multi-State Information Sharing & Analysis Center (MS-ISAC) Annual Meeting in Atlanta, where the state and local government Chief Security Officers (CSOs), Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) and many of their top team members have gathered for three days.

Back in late June, I wrote about connectivity options while traveling during my vacation in Ocean City, Maryland. The blog was entitled: Vacation WiFi: What Networks Can We Trust? Now, thanks to some emails from an online friend who wishes to remain anonymous, I can offer Part 2 of this story.

Have you noticed some new words showing up in magazines and newspapers around the country? Words like: cyberattack, cyberwar , cybercrime and cyber... whatever.

Suddenly, without warning, no power. The blackout spreads. The grid goes down. What can we learn from this?

The 2012 Summer Olympic Games are here, and the five to eight hour time difference between the mainland USA and the UK may be just the right combination to bust your work network(s).