A good friend in the UK has recently kicked off this site; Surfing Safer. They’re only new and expect things to grow as they spend a bit more time on it.

Their aim is to provide practical security advice about what solutions could be used both within a home environment and at work. As Information Security professionals, they’re trying to impart their expertise in security to a wider audience, and try to reduce the number of computers compromised through inadequate or non-existent security. I say all credit to anyone who puts back into the industry like this. Good luck to the team at Surfing Safer. Everyone starts somewhere and it looks better now than many others I have seen, including most government sites.

I am sure the guys are open to feedback and suggestions so let them know what you think.



This article in CW reminded me of a story in Hong Kong many years ago during an audit we did.

Looking at the Data Center controls for a large multinational….in the event of a fire/emergency/disaster, the Data Center doors would lock immediately……Anyone in there, would not be able to get out! Seriously!

We had to explain to the CEO that more than likely, IT staff were going to be in there at any point in time. Once the gas (very toxic) started, you would be killing your staff.

Response: “Oh…You think we should change that?”

Well in Australia we would have…….I hope…….

Haven’t been back since….I hope it has changed. Really I do!



Well it’s been a while since I talked about Securus Global. I thought I would take a bit of time to post an update on what we’ve been up too.

Aside from the usual consulting work which has seen us have our biggest year to date – big thank you to all of our clients, we’ve continued on with the projects that we believe deliver the indirect benefits to our clients, help promote the industry in general and try to build awareness of Information Security.

- We’re about to start our Breakfast Brief sessions again. We’re planning the topics for the first few events at the moment, and hoping to fit in 3 sessions in Sydney and a couple in Melbourne (if possible) before the year ends….and depending upon demand, possibly elsewhere. In addition, this will kickstart again the Qualys User Group meetings that will take place after the presentations. I know many of you have been keen for this to restart. If you want to be added to the Qualys User Group mailing list, let me know through the contact form here.

Read on…..

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Posted in: news


The in-laws live on a large property just outside of Townsville in a place called Alligator Creek. (Aside: no idea why it’s called Alligator Creek given we only have crocs……strangely, there’s about 4 Alligator Creeks in Queensland…..Queenslanders for you).

They recently moved over to “town water” at a pretty significant cost to the locals.

Local council dude comes out to finish off the connections and then spends the rest of his time putting stickers and signs on all “old” taps connected to the existing tanks and bores:

“Rain Water or Bore Water – Not Fit for Human Consumption”

Father-in-law turns to him……as he would; “We’ve been drinking this stuff for 20 years and now because you bastards have decided to let us pay for the privilege of having town water, the stuff we had is no longer safe?!”

You have to ask; WTF? :-)

Posted in: Too cool, WTF


The “cloud”!! The thing we knew as the Internet on many a whiteboard for so many years…..that thing we all decided to know little about, (okay, at least layers 1-2), because it was magic!!!!

WE HAVE LEARNED OUR LESSONS NOW YOU DUMB PRODUCT VENDORS!!!! We don’t need another cloud…..we’re smarter than that now! WE KNOW YOU USE THAT TERM TO HIDE THE FACT THAT YOU HAVE NO IDEA AND WANT TO “CLOUD” THAT FACT IN A BLOODY CLOUD!!!

Can you seriously believe, that we believe that by “hiding” the “difficult” things, you make us think you know what you are doing and keeping us secure?! You’ve lost the plot….not that most ever had it, so to regain face (ie; keep revenue growth on path), lets hide sh*t in a “cloud” to cover up our inadequacies.

So, I am starting an anti-cloud movement and I ask you all that anytime you hear and see a sales rep talking about “clouds”, you ask the question; “what happens when many clouds come together….do we have a storm? and what does that mean to my investment with your company?…will I get my money back if I cop a category 5?”….. Please share your stories here!

BG did a post in the forums about this today:

http://beastorbuddha.com/forums/index.php?action=vthread&forum=1&topic=108

I had to comment. Some of the people’s thoughts are priceless….I also need to rethink the software I use for this blog :-)



Nothing new here. We’ve all seen the progression from IT “news” sites to bloggers for the latest, more up to date and investigative journalism news in our field of information security. The smart “mainstream” publications have recruited their own industry specialists to write for them – not trained journalists.

It’s interesting after studying e-business (and continuing to) and how things that were predicted many years ago are happening now. (ie; convergence of media, marketing etc etc). It all seems to follow the trend of predictions being made, people assessing those predictions, many critics….”hey, it won’t happen for a long time for these reasons or never at all……” and then, almost in the blink of an eye, it happens and people go; “WTF?!” …. okay…you’ve come this far, read on….

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Posted in: Bad Stuff, Research, WTF, news


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