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My GWU Discussion – Part 3 – What to do About Cybersecurity

This is my third (and thankfully to most readers, last) post about a class at I gave at George Washington University earlier this year. The professor, Dr. Robert McCreight, invites me to be a guest lecturer on cyber-security from time to time. I posted a copy of my slides in the previous two posts and do so again here:

George Washington University Slides on Cyber-Security

In the last post I returned as I often do to the question “How to be secure when each component of your solution is itself insecure?”. I find that most practitioners, and in particular their management, are in denial on this issue. While my first suggested step which is to practice security hygiene is useful it does not help against a determined attacker.

While I am not sure if anything short of not connecting to anyone will work all the time, two possible approaches seem promising.

My GWU Discussion – Part 3 – What to do About Cybersecurity

My Guest Lecture at George Washington University on Cybersecurity

Every year or so I am lucky to be invited by Dr. Robert McCreight who teaches a graduate class on National Security and Technology to be a guest lecturer on Cybersecurity.

Since the classes I teach at the University of Maryland and Syracuse University are on-line distance learning, it is always a treat for me to have actual live students in the same classroom as I am to interact with. This year the exchange of information was really great, Dr. McCreight has a wonderful class. For all of these activities, I deal with what I call the “avoidance of appearing like an idiot in front of people syndrome”, which forces me to at least to scan and keep up with the literature before the class is held.

While I am one of those people who learn best by doing, being able to talk to and/or discuss with bright students is still very helpful and fun to do.

I have posted my presentation below and during the next few weeks hope to write a few columns based on the later slides, of course I have still not written my last two posts I promised on cloud computing, as as usual what I plan to do with this blog and what actually happens continues to diverge.

My Guest Lecture at George Washington University on Cybersecurity

Our Passover Seder – Quotes

As I mentioned in my entry yesterday, each year at our Passover Seder we put together a series of readings and activities focused on a theme (or set of themes).

We pull the readings from an Haggadah named A Different Night.

In addition to going around the table asking people to read selections from the Haggadah we also pass around 3 x 5 cards with quotes on them that I have selected and Ellen has approved which each person reads and is encouraged to comment on.

The themes this year start with the broad issue of freedom from slavery which is the foundational message associated with Passover. We include some thoughts on the revolutionary activities going on in the Middle-East. We also will touch on the issue of how the Bible and the Exodus story deals with how Jews were dealt with as strangers in a strange land and the general issue of the ‘other’ in society. Finally we will talk a bit about the issue of the role of women in society. It remains my contention that how women are treated is a societal “canary in the coal mine”. That is, how well societies deal with women tell one a lot about the society in general.

The quotes we will be using follow:

Our Passover Seder – Quotes

Our Annual Passover Seder

For a number of years now we have a Passover Seder at our house on the first night of Passover.

We have between 15 and 25 people (I recognize that is a bit of a range) including family, friends, guests from various sources, Jews and non-Jews.

Each year we try and focus on a few themes to focus the more general topic of the Exodus and its implications to us today.

The following is what we are sending out to the participants this year. In addition to the readings we do, we put quotes that at least loosely tie to the themes we are focusing on, on 3 x 5 cards. During the course of the Seder we ask participants to read the quotes and comment on them. Tomorrow, if I remember, I’ll post the quotes we are using.

Our Annual Passover Seder