Inside the ALOHA!

Originally posted Nov 25, 2013

I shot this a couple years ago in Hawaii during Thanksgiving week and wanted to express my gratitude to all of you for watching our videos throughout the year. With Honolulu as a backdrop, I share a little Hawaiian history along with why I open my videos with 'ALOHA!'

ps

Technorati Tags: hawaii,hawaiian,ali'i,honolulu,diamond head,maui,history,iolani,oahu,f5,aloha,silva,video

Connect with Peter:	Connect with F5:

Identity Theft: Not So Scary Anymore?

This article originally appeared on F5.com on 10.20.15.

With Halloween in our rearview mirror and the holiday shopping season upon us, a couple surveys are out examining our fears and in particular, our concerns about identity theft. Apparently, ID theft is not so scary anymore - like entering a haunted house for the hair-raising screams but walking out with nervous giggles.

Over at Bankrate.com, only 54% of surveyed tricksters says they are somewhat or very frightened of ID theft. That's down 80% from those who expressed the same level of concern back in 2008. Almost half, 43%, claim they have little or no fear, trouncing the 19% who were brave in 2008. This is all while the overall victim count remains at similar levels - 12.5 million in 2008 verses 12.7 million in 2014 according to Javelin Strategy & Research. As far as knowing someone who has been hit, 46% say they or a friend has been a victim compared to 34% in 2008.

They chalk it up to people being desensitized to breaches due to the almost weekly confessions of data intrusions. The general feeling is that if large retailers, health care providers and credit agencies can't keep my data safe, how can I. More of those same folks however are also following some good advice of shredding sensitive documents (72%), checking their credit report regularly (56%), avoiding insecure WiFi (54%) and almost 20% have frozen their credit files. These are all good ways to help you worry less.

And Chapman University published their Survey of American Fears, Wave 2 (2015) examining the fears of average Americans. The domains of fear include areas like crime, natural and man made disasters, personal anxieties, environment, technology and others. Along with the corruption, terrorism and warfare, identity theft comes in at 39.6% and credit card fraud sits at 36.9%. Both in the Top 10.



So, while ID theft is still one of our top fears, by the time you get to Nightmare on Identity Street 4, Freddy isn't so freighting and you have some tools to deal with him.

Besides, your insecure connected kettles could be exposing your WiFi passwords without your knowledge. Now that's scary!

ps

Related

• Survey: More Americans say 'boo' to the ID theft boogeyman
• America’s Top Fears 2015
• Connected kettles boil over, spill Wi-Fi passwords over London
• The Breach of Things
• The Reach of a Breach
• 5 Stages of a Data Breach

Technorati Tags: identity theft,breach,privacy,crime,fears,silva,fraud

Connect with Peter:	Connect with F5:

Connecting the Threads

What was first used to protect humans from the outside elements is now monitoring our body's inside environment.

According to eMarketer.com, wearable usage will grow almost 60% in 2015 verses 2014. This year, almost 40 million U.S. adults will use wearables, including smartwatches and fitness trackers. And that's only 16% of the penetrable market. They expect that number double in two years with close to 82 million adults wearing something connected by 2018. Almost two in five internet users by 2019. You probably think that it'll be all those youngsters growing up with connected objects but over the next four years, older Americans will see the biggest growth with the flood of wearable health monitor devices. Don't fret, I'm sure that new outfit for special occasions will monitor something. These connected wearables will soon be able to cover our body.

Even with that growth, adults are still exploring the value of wearables, above the wow-cool factor, for the real benefit of the investment. With prices still high for many of these gadgets, the adoption will be slightly lower than the recent mad rush for smartphones and tablets. Yet like many new technologies, as sticker-shock drops, the adoption grows. In addition, as more apps are developed to work with this new wardrobe, more people are likely to use it...just like the mobile device market. After all, that's what these things are - mobile devices. And once that happens, the advertisers will be all over that segment, which is currently very sparse.

And what typically follows mass adoption of technology? Vulnerabilities and security risks.

More connected personal devices in the office means more enterprise security risks. Whether it be from smartwatches having access to sensitive corporate data or the lost bandwidth from all the updates and alerts sent to these devices. Corporate BYOD security policies could soon include smartwatch use or any other wearable that poses a risk to the organization. As Steven Wright says, 'Right now I'm having amnesia and déjà vu at the same time.' BYO2.0

And we haven't even touched on the lack of security being built into some of these devices.

From insulin pumps, to glucose meters to pacemakers, anything that is wireless enabled is vulnerable to attack. While the bad guys are always looking for an easy score, it could also be the disgruntled employee looking to fix someone's wagon. And when I say fix, I really mean break. There are also privacy concerns for those who might be wearing smart eyewear. That casual, always awkward conversation at the urinal now takes on new meaning. For highly sensitive meetings, there could be a clothes rack and changing station so someone doesn't need to strip down just to participate. Forget about spy pens with wireless mics, my shirt's logo has a camera weaved into the seam.

All is not lost though, as there will be plenty of top 10 lists guiding you so you do not become a social (real world) outcast. WT VOX has put together it's Top 10 Worst Wearable Tech Devices So Far list. From a tie that has a QR code built into its back, to smartwigs, selfie-hats and drum pants, they explore the wild gadgets that are clamoring to cover our body. And on the flip side, they also look at the 10 Wearables and IoT Companies To Watch In 2015. Here, you get a glimpse of the future of smart lighting, dealing with big data, new IoT chipsets, IoT cloud platforms and other entities focused on our networked society.

Hashtag: Amazing.

ps

Related:

• Wearable Usage Will Grow by Nearly 60% This Year
• The Dark Side of Wearable Tech Use
• Top 10 Worst Wearable Tech Devices So Far
• 10 Wearables and IoT Companies To Watch In 2015
• Wearables Head to Tail
• Oh, Is That The Internet You're Wearing?
• The Digital Dress Code
• IoT Influence on Society

Technorati Tags: wearables,iot,things,connected devices,security,privacy,silva

Connect with Peter:	Connect with F5:

Ask the Expert – Why Identity and Access Management?

Michael Koyfman, Sr. Global Security Solution Architect, shares the access challenges organizations face when deploying SaaS cloud applications. Syncing data stores to the cloud can be risky so organizations need to utilize their local directories and assert the user identity to the cloud. SAML is a standardized way of asserting trust and Michael explains how BIG-IP can act either as an identity provider or a service provider so users can securely access their workplace tools. Integration is key to solve common problems for successful and secure deployments.

ps

Related:

• Ask the Expert – Are WAFs Dead?
• Ask the Expert – Why SSL Everywhere?
• Ask the Expert – Why Web Fraud Protection?
• Application Availability Between Hybrid Data Centers
• F5 Access Federation Solutions
• Inside Look - SAML Federation with BIG-IP APM
• RSA 2014: Layering Federated Identity with SWG (feat Koyfman)

Technorati Tags: f5,iam,saas,saml,cloud,identity,access,security,silva,video,AAA

Connect with Peter:	Connect with F5:

Ask the Expert – Why SSL Everywhere?

Kevin Stewart, Security Solution Architect, talks about the paradigm shift in the way we think about IT network services, particularly SSL and encryption. Gone are the days where clear text roams freely on the internal network and organizations are looking to bring SSL all the way to the application, which brings complexity. Kevin explains some of the challenges of encrypting all the way to the application and ways to solve this increasing trend. SSL is not just about protecting data in motion, it’s also about privacy.

ps

Related:

• Ask the Expert – Are WAFs Dead?
• RSA2015 – SSL Everywhere (feat Holmes)
• AWS re:Invent 2015 – SSL Everywhere…Including the Cloud (feat Stanley)
• F5 SSL Everywhere Solutions

Technorati Tags: f5,ssl,encryption,pki,big-ip,security,privacy,silva,video

Connect with Peter:	Connect with F5:

Ask the Expert – Are WAFs Dead?

Brian McHenry, Sr. Security Solution Architect, addresses the notion that Web Application Firewalls are dead and talks about what organizations need to focus on today when protecting their data and applications across a diverse environment. He discusses many of the current application threats, how to protect your data across hybrid environments and the importance of a security policy that is portable across many environments. Move on from the idea of a traditional WAF and embrace hybrid WAF architectures.

ps

Related:

• The Death of WAF as We Know It
• F5 Security Solutions

Technorati Tags: f5,waf,security,web application firewall,cloud,data,silva,video,hybrid

Connect with Peter:	Connect with F5: