Rational Survivability

Uncle Mike suggested that I be tasked with something worthy of my "innovation" title.

I thought that while I let something else percolate around in my little brain, I should flex my creative muscle a little and demonstrate the value I add to the security community.

It’s all about giving back, people.

Had I adequately prepared, I would have had 3-4 coffees prior to writing this, but I’m in Reston, VA and it seems you need a jet car to get anywhere.  I should have chartered that chopper.

So I am stuck here, decaffeinated and trying to get this other idea out of my brain and down on "paper" before my head explodes.

(Read to the cadence of ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas)

Remember when firewalls were firewalls, my friend?
it suggested our security problems would end.
They promised the perimeter breach to abate,
but alas became products we just loved to hate.

The attackers got smarter, and the exploits malicious,
the perimeter’s holes made the threatscape pernicious.
Sadly the breaches were never quite stopped,
whilst we measured our value in per packets dropped!

IDS soon was added, let us know we were sunk
yet we kept buying more costly security junk.
So we took the bit blocking, tuned our IDS mess,
yet again our risk metrics still didn’t trend less

As we patiently waited for our career ascension,
it seems IDS died, but LONG LIVE PREVENTION!
While signatures worked and were certainly handy
NBA as a feature would surely be dandy.

We looked for the good stuff and blocked bad behavior,
but NBA wasn’t our security savior.
But now we blocked traffic all up/down the stack
we were sure to have something to repel an attack.

UTM came along, married IPS to AV,
our security god boxes hummed along merrily.
And finally it came, our salvation arrived
NAC promised to secure us from all the bad guys.

Pre-auth, and post-auth, we had tons of checks,
It still didn’t fix it, we need 802-dot-one-X!
Admission or Access, we must have control,
and deeper we went down the NAC rabbit hole.

So Cisco blew that one, and we all looked confused
should we turn on that feature that nobody used?
But relax, do not worry, we’ll secure that border,
find another new feature, want fries with that order?

Stand your watch, remain valiant, stand that post at your station,
for the next frontier’s here…YES!  Virtualization!
Like perimeter viagra, from our security Pfizer,
we’re all solid now, all hail…Hypervisor!

Blue Pills and Red Pills, detection’s a bust,
but protecting our VM’s security’s a must!
What to do, what to do…what next shall I add?
What new valley startup will become the next fad

Is it content, DRM, or perhaps DLP?
Ask Rothman, ask Mogull, just please, don’t ask me.

/Hoff