Motley Moose – Archive

I don’t blame Him, I just wish He could have waited a little bit longer.

Rest in Peace, Goldenpipes. Miss Etta James, lost at 73.

America was founded in part by a bunch of Christians whose kids couldn’t celebrate Christmas in school Back Home and who were also fleeing from all the gay people in the military. While all that may not have worked out so well for them in the long run, they brought with them the tradition of Christmas and for this we thank them.

Today we celebrate the birth of a child who grew up to argue that people should be nice to each other. We remember our forefolks’ hope that lengthening days would bring relief and new life. We stop to look around us, perhaps, and note that our own lives are more full of joy than we might have realized. We weigh our struggles against those of our fellows, our neighbors, our distant kin and people far away.

For all of us this day is sometime in our life a hard day, where we are the ones who need an open face and a warm embrace. All of us on this day will find ourselves at some point the one to offer that face, that hug, that hand.

Whether this is your year to nestle in the glow of family and friends, or to sit quietly alone, know that you are loved. You are part of a family that stretches around the world and into the depths of time. Where there is love there is hope, where there is hope there is joy to be found.

I wish you all the Very Merriest Christmas and all the best for a prosperous and peaceful New Year.

Since – as has been recently noted – Moose are ruminants, here are some thoughts I have been having on addressing cybersecurity in industrial control systems.

The articles that end up instantiated as Moose markings are by nature and fact often completely off the political reservation. This topic does have significant political implications, though, as the stability of these systems both at home and abroad pose tactical and strategic challenges to social structures and political balance. To that point it is in fact very much a matter of interest for all members of our shared social experience.

The following is a set of slides describing a program that has been developing over this year.

The premise of the program is that there are hundreds of thousands of facilities in the United States alone where cyber systems control physical processes, and where the intentional subversion of these cyber systems could cause human and social harm, and that there is a need to secure these systems in a timely and effective fashion.

This particular set of slides is made for the Water sector, where more than 18,000 US water systems remain largely unaddressed from a cybersecurity perspective.

I will be interested to see how much sense this makes to all of you. There are parts of it that I believe may cause some interesting debate, but I will let you decide which those might be. ;~)

“ICS” = Industrial Control Systems”

I just watched a wonderful 1951 movie: “Go for Broke!” . It is about the 442nd Infantry Regiment of the US Army during World War II. The 442nd was a regiment of Japanese Americans who fought in Europe and became the most decorated unit in US Army history. The movie itself is very well made – excellent script, great acting and well shot – but the story it relates is a fascinating look at struggle in America.

Last night I spent some time skyping with the Egyptian Moose delegation. The current situation post-Mubarak remains in flux, concerns about abuse of power by the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) are rising while the country seeks a democratic solution to governance.

Libya similarly is beginning a path that – at least in theory – would see democracy take hold in the country.

While there is understandable concern among all who care about the region – most importantly those who live in it – I remain optimistic that the series of fits-and-starts that should be expected will lead eventually to a positive outcome.

What do you think, Mooses?

The NTC is set to declare the war for the freedom of Libya officially over.

The country has its future ahead of it, what will that bring?

Considering this an optimistically Open Thread.

On October 13 the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) released CF Disclosure Guidance: Topic No. 2. This document establishes requirements for public companies to account for the cost of cybersecurity incidents and defenses, as well as to disclose their cyber risk mitigation plans to investors.

This sets the stage for a scene where a public company loses in court, a judge ruling their cyber risk mitigation plan not reflective of diligent best practices.

How this reflects into actions by enterprises will tell whether this matters or not, of course. But putting the question explicitly into the class-actionable hands of investors could focus many organizations on a topic they can relate directly to:

“When you are standing in court, do you really expect the jury to believe you have done enough?”

Crossposted from Infosec Island

Stephen Colbert has a great idea: don’t stop with taxing just the poor, get the dead to carry their fair share.

Whatcha think, Moose? Is there any reason not to dig up the dead and get them to pitch in so folks making $1M/year don’t have to?

Consider this a posthumously Open Thread.

President Obama went on the air today and argued for his Jobs Bill. His argument is based on the idea that taxes for the rich should not be less than taxes for the middle class.

Radical idea.

I forecast extreme resistance to the idea. Because it is, well, his.

This was originally posted on Tue Jun 22, 2010. I just thought I would bring it out for our new guests because Karl is someone everyone should know. Karl is 91 now, still writing and still a better man than I.

I am very happily in Valparaiso, Indiana for my step father’s 90th birthday party.

Karl Lutze was born in 1920 in Sheboygan, Wisconsin.  As a boy he watched his father and his uncle pull up in the Automobile his father had ordered, picked up at the train station, read the operators manual and driven home.  During WWII Karl studied to be a wartime pastor, but by the time he finished seminary school the war was over.  Instead of going overseas, Karl was assigned to a poor black parish in Muskogee, Oklahoma.  The rest of Karl’s life was cast at that moment.

Happy Birthday, Karl.  And thank you.