I probably have made this point more often, but I will make this point again: Security is for the most part simplicity. If you understand something, you can make it more secure, and if something is simple you will more easily understand it.
This is, of course, why e-mail will never be secure. It takes special training to get right, also on the receiving end. I found this out when I tried to e-mail health data to my insurance because "WhatsApp was entirely too insecure".
Speaking about WhatsApp, it usually backs up unencrypted messages to the cloud. Signal does it slightly better. Both Signal and WhatsApp do better than email. Actually, any chat service that is built with security in mind will be better than e-mail.
But I digress.
My manager and I spent the pas week looking into getting a proper ISMS in place. Right now we juggle Excel files and use several edges of the Azure/Office infrastructure. That was fine when the ISMS was managed by the singular (and impressive) brain of my manager, but no longer when there is two of us and we constantly lose time communicating and searching for information.
In fact, we can summarize it (and by a touch of providence, he and I both realized this) in the current process not being simple. The fact that Excel is a default tool included with almost any paid Microsoft subscription, does not mean that management using separate Excel files is simple. What is simple is working through a set of tools (Notion.so, Airtable, TugBoat logic) and see what makes the simplest of implementations.
Now, moving away from the corporate story (we have no decision yet), we can look at more areas that are useful in your own life:
Get yourself a password manager (1Password, KeePass, LastPass, Dashlane). Make it easier to manage accounts. Maybe also print a physical list of important accounts, but hide them in a physical vault.
Another place where simple is more secure is in "smart"-phones. Of course a dumb phone is better. The battery stays charged longer, it distracts you less, and it is less hackable. Having one as a backup measure is good.
In all honesty, I just wanted to elaborate again on how simplicity is always your best bet, but I wonder... What simplicity did you adopt to better your life?
There is so much more to this one chapter, but it is so good already!
I had to cut it short because guests arrived, but this should get you started on your own study :)
@calvinrempel Thank you once again for the Theology Tuesday you did, I refer back to it in this one :)
@JamesDerian Congratulations with your Marriage :)
Next time there might (almost certainly) not be a Theology Tuesday, so the official next one will be February 22nd! I have a marriage to attend. As the groom. Our home is still half a project.
Fun times!
Alc and I talk about my book that is now officially finished. This is part 1 of 2. Parts have not been neatly cut. Part two will air 5 minutes after part 1 for coninuity!
Hope you enjoy :)
This is the third corner to have persistent discussions and talks in. I love tech, but especially once it transcends hardware a little. I have two degrees; a bachelor's in Software Engineering and a master's in Information Security Technology. My graduation thesis focused on assembly-level optimizations (that is, one level above the hardware level) and my free subjects were in formal verification. This is why I love programming in the security corner, or maybe it is the other way around.
I started going down the Security path because I early on saw that the world around us would become a dangerous cesspool of badly-implemented and hostile tech. Now I am one of the people that understands the field around that mess :)
So in here you can discuss secure phones, weird programming languages, sad truths about internet-connected fridges. Also about malware, adblockers, and so on and so fort!
A lot of tech talk I do over at the @Lunduke community, where a lot of nerds hang out and it is ...
Much like the reading corner, let's have a music corner! A few rules for this one, since some music can be provocative. I don't mind much but let's keep youtube links with risque thumbnails out of here.
Other music I might also mind. "Do you find that offensive?" might someone ask. Yes, there is some music I choose not to listen on principle, and I walk a thin line there sometimes. But do not worry, I have a wide taste otherwise so feel free to share almost anything :)
Either way, here is the music corner!
Many times when we talk about security, we mean to say "Digital security". In essence we mean to say that our hardware and software that we use stays safe no matter what we do. And even though the ISO27001 standard (and by extension, for example, the NEN7510 standard) make it abundantly clear that security is a people-domain problem, we usually take that as a process-like truth. Meaning, we think that being secure is a matter of regulating people.
The truth is very different. For example, while writing this I am pretty shot. I slept five hours and I an under influence of a bunch of painkillers and some alcohol. Before you ask what I was thinking, let me mention that I have a genetic defect in my spine that I am dealing with right now by taking measured doses of all three (and yes, to get the Bible into this conversation, there is even a biblical ground for the inebriation with alcohol - see proverbs and the letters to Timothy - , although I did not use red wine. But hey, I am still on top of ...
