Amrit Williams Blog

Red Dawn: Unit 61398 – Now What?

amritw — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 19:32:11 +0000

Some of my ‘so-called’ friends that help organize the RSA Security Bloggers event have decided that folks that attend should actually have blogged something recently, well I haven’t so to make them happy… With the increasing frequency and severity of advanced threats perpetrated by highly-organized and sophisticated groups and nation-states, enterprises need to realize that [...]

20 Years in Infosec; Time to Party like its *1999

amritw — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 08:48:51 +0000

I am not a big fan of AT&T (here), but this video from AT&T released in 1990 is about the most insightful view into modern day infosec I’ve ever seen (here) and since it was produced pre-brick walls on fire and simple clouds to depict complex relationships it is more believable than most security marketing [...]

Searching for Privacy in a World Without Secrets

amritw — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 05:51:36 +0000

“I am not a number, I am a free man” IDC reported that we generated and replicated 1.8 zettabytes – that’s 1.8 trillion gigabytes – of data in 2011. To give you an example of scale you would need to stack CDs from Earth to the Moon and Back again – twice – to represent [...]

Class-action Lawsuit Against HP for Not Disclosing Security Vulnerabilities Has Huge Implications

amritw — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 09:58:53 +0000

On December 1, 2011 a Class-action lawsuit was filed in United States District Court Northern District of California against Hewlett-Packard, alleging violations of The California Consumer Legal Remedies Act for Injunctive Relief and the California Unfair Competition Law based on non-disclosure of a known security vulnerability (read the filing here) Nature of the Action l. [...]

One Warm Coat…Two Changed Lives

amritw — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 19:13:00 +0000

<Warning: This post has nothing to do with technology, information security, or anything else I normally blog about> This post is dedicated to the memory of Stephanie Renee Fong When I was in my early 20s I met a young women named Stephanie, we quickly grew very close. Stephanie was special to me in many [...]

Incomplete Thought: Are You Really Data-Driven or Just Using Data To Prove a Point?

amritw — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 18:10:09 +0000

I love data, I love the benefits that data analysis offers, and I love the concept of large amounts of data being massaged, queried, and providing insights through a whole new set of technical innovations – and there are many in data right now. In fact I believe that this year has probably been the [...]

Top 10 Most Overhyped Technology Terms

amritw — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 00:14:41 +0000

We have entered a new era of information technology, an era where the clouds are moist, the data is obese and incontinent, and the threats are advanced, persistent, and the biggest ever. Of course with all the paradigm-shifting, next generation, FUD vs. ROI marketing, its important to remember that sometimes we need to balance innovation [...]

Why I Suck at Blogging…and Twitter

amritw — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 06:59:30 +0000

So recently I posted some thoughts on big data and the increasing usage of Hadoop, the general theme was data management != data analysis…this caused confusion with some folks, as evidenced by the twitter exchange (tweets haven’t been altered but some extraneous ‘noise’ removed to maximize your reading pleasure) @Beaker @amrittsering I’m confused by your last blog. [...]

Needles in a Digital Hay Stack; Finding Value in Big Data

amritw — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 01:43:50 +0000

Big data is a scorching hot topic, currently capturing a lions share of the markets available stock of hyperbole and for good reason, data is growing at a meteoric rate. As we continue to innovate, as business accelerates technology adoption, as the line bleeds between corporate and personal computing and as we interact more in digital mediums [...]

Big Data; Are You Creating a Garbage Dump or Mountains of Gold

amritw — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 01:13:18 +0000

You’re not really sure how it happened, but some time between last year and the summer of 2011 you were suddenly facing a big data problem, or you were being told you were facing a big data problem, or more accurately you were being told that you needed a big data solution. Funny thing was [...]