The current U.S. military prowess strikes fear into the hearts of friends and foes. I was talking to a friend of mine in the Air Force about the ongoing mission to shorten the "kill chain". The kill chain is made up of the steps it takes to kill one of the enemy. It has become so short in favor of the U.S. in the air, on land, and at sea that there are orders of magnitude between the next capable military force and us. This gap will continue to widen as new technologies are brought to bare that eliminate the need for human assets to be present on the fields of battle and allow a single human asset to control multiple weapons and/or larger destructive capabilities.
John Robb and I were discuss the casualty statistics from the Gulf War and Operation Iraqi Freedom. We both misquoted the real stats. Check them out here. This page list casualty statistics from the Korean War to Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Security concerns have become a part of daily life on in a networked world. Everyday new security bulletins come from Microsoft, IBM, Sun, Red Hat, Oracle, and non-profit organizations that provide free notifications of potential application vulnerabilities. Microsoft issued bulletins almost every day this week. To avoid potential threats to your machines, a good anti-virus program and firewall is a must on any machine connecting to the Internet. For the truly paranoid, services from McAffee, Symantec, and others help safe guard your identity by deleting cache files containing information you enter into web forms, allow users to easily restrict access to sensitive files, and highlight security features already available in your operating system by making them more user friendly. How safe are you? How well do these products work? What is your exposure between the time a vulnerability is discovered and the time an update is provided? These are questions that quickly come to my mind and I hope to have them answered as I dive more deeply into studying the art of information security.
I have accepted a job with Wolters-Kluwer U.S., the company I have been working for since January. I will not be going to work for Darwin Partners on Monday, as previously announced. Wolters-Kluwer swooped in at the 11th hour and made me a great offer. What is that they say at circuses? "Don't try this at home." Or, in automobile advertisements? "Closed course. Professional driver."
