Security Post

After a super delicious Thanksgiving diner at Saju, I had to prepare myself for my trip to Vienna. In Vienna I joined the ISC² ISSMP (Management Professional) Review Seminar. This certification is an extra concentration to the CISSP exam I did earlier. Although I don’t expect to prepare for a 6 hour exam, it will still be a heavy course and exam.

ISC² recommended a small and simple hotel just 2 blocks away, The Homestead Suites. After a pretty long drive from Dulles Airport I arrived. All seemed well, indeed a small and simple hotel, but it looked clean and ok. I dropped my bags, and went out to look for some diner. First it looked very quiet on the streets, just a few restaurants and nothing to fancy. I had some diner at Olive Garden, nice Italian food but again…the American way. After diner I went of to find the local Starbucks. I found the Mall, it looked like 3 giant stores. When I found an entrance and went downstairs, I found the Mall. There were 3 big stores on top, but maybe even a hundred underground! This was a huge American Mall, in the middle of a small village. Later on I heard many people drive from Washington to go to this mall during shopping seasons.

The next day I woke up with a strained back, this bed was terrible! Well I had to find the ISC² building now, I expected something modern and something that would be easy to spot from the streets. So I started walking towards the address I got from an employee because I didn’t receive the official invitation. After an hour and a half searching, I went back to the hotel to see if the address was on the website. So I found out they gave me the wrong address, the number they gave me didn’t even exist. I went over quickly so I wouldn’t miss to much, just to find out the even started an hour earlier than I expected. So my advise to ISC²: Don’t stop working with your old system, if it takes 4 months to setup up the new one. If you need help on this, read your own books and have a look at tha chapters about Business Continuity and Change management.

Oh well, although the hotel was terrible to sleep and they clean just once a week, I searched almost 2 hours for a non existing address, and due to lacking communication I missed a few hours of training, I did indeed enjoy it, and I met some new and interesting people.

After a long but interesting second day I left just in time for Dulles Airport to fly back to New York!

It has been a week since I came to Minneapolis, so it’s time for an update.

The first weekend in Minneapolis was almost shocking, I found big shops but there where only a few people walking around. It was really quiet on the streets, in the shops and in the restaurants. Starbucks here closes a 7pm! Minneapolis is a city that comes alive during the week. Especially around the Skyway, this is the best feature of Minneapolis so far. You can walk all around downtown without going out on the streets, very handy when it is very cold outside! Most of the bigger hotels, shops and centers are connected to the Skyway system.

I had some nice meetings with Travis from Orange Parachute, he introduced me to several other people like customers and colleagues. We started off having lunch at “Hell’s Kitchen“, where we discussed a lot of different business opportunities. We both have to look for some extra information on how to make this possible, but we now both have a good idea of the things we can work together on. I think we have some nice opportunities ahead of us.

That same evening Travis invited me to a Riesling tasting dinner at Sage with his wife. The people running this new wine bar are friends of Travis, and they needed some “testing”. We had a smashing dinner at this fine location, with even more amazing wines. They invited their wine specialist from Iowa to tell us about the wines we were tasting. Riesling wines are not new to me, but that’s because Germany is just a 2 hour drive from home.

The next evening Travis invited me to have dinner with some friends at Chino Latino, a nice and busy restaurant in uptown Minneapolis. They some great dishes all around the world, mostly dishes to “share”. So this results in a fusion type of food with the atmosphere of a dim-sum dinner. I didn’t expect it to be such a good match, but it was! And I’m sure I am not the only one, because it was a very busy place. After that we met up with some other friends and had some drinks downtown at a few bars.

The next morning I felt very sick. I thought I had too much to drink, but I was shaking, freezing and was sweating. I couldn’t even keep one little sip of water inside. And wasn’t feeling too good since a few days, so I think the alcohol pushed me over the edge to catch the flu. So I spent one day above the toilet and in bed, and another day mostly in bed. So today I feel a whole lot better, but I’m still careful.

Tonight I am spending my last night in Minneapolis. So Travis invited me again to dinner with another friend he said I had to meet before leaving the city. So I am sure this will be a nice evening. I just have to be careful not to end up having the same conversation with the white guy and the glasses in the bathroom all over again.

Tomorrow I’m flying to New York City again. I am going to spend Thanksgiving in Manhattan. I heard some great stories about the Thanksgiving parade, and all the other festivities. More about that next week!

You can track my flight over here. Lift off is at 12:55PM CST (I guess that is 19:55 Rotterdam time)

This Friday I will fly to Minneapolis. I am meeting up with Travis, the owner of Orange Parachute there next week to do some brainstorming on how we can start working together. I’m flying over a bit early because the hotels in Chicago downtown are all sold out for this weekend, or way over-priced!. Although it is even colder over there than it is here.

You can track my flight over here. Lift off is at 12:55pm CST > 19:55 or 18:55 in Europe, I am not sure due to the recent Daylight saving time change in Europe.

Yet another week has passed. Since my arrival from Atlanta, I have started of in Downtown Chicago. I stayed at the Holiday Inn Express, a great, nice looking but very small hotel. I could only put my suitecase on the bed or on the floor, but I couldn’t open the door when it was on the floor. Oh well, the bed was great and I had a good night sleep.

By the end of the weekend I went north towards Lincolnshire. Here I attended the annual Midwest Information Security Forum, organized by The Institute for Applied Network Security. This is a forum more intended for end users, with just a few vendors on the second day. Consultants are a bit scarce here. This forum is a great networking event, I have met some interesting people. Because I enrolled just 2 days before the event, I did not have the time to look in to the agenda. So I was presented with a little more detail minded crowd than I expected. Although everybody dived in to the details of several presentations and discussions, I managed to get some good learnings out of it.

There were some presentations about Laws and regulation which gave a great insight on several recent cases from the court here in the US. The person who gave this presentation has some insights on the current international an European InfoSec issues and topics, so I am trying to get more information on this.

And also a great presentation by someone from Morgan Stanley. He gave a “Wallstreet background” on the current Information Security businesses and market. So I’ll be trying to meet up with him again later on to see if I can get some extra business ideas.

Before I went back to Downtown Chicago, I wanted to shoot some golfballs at the golf club connected to the Resort. But unfortunately they closed up the practicing range for the winter just a few days ago. And it has been too long ago to walk the complete course without practicing for a few years. So I went back to Chicago early… in a Limousine! I expected a normal airport transfer van, but because I was the only one the sent a car (limousine). So I had a relax drive back to Chicago, and the driver even dropped me off at my hotel although he should have dropped me off at the airport.

After a long flight from San Francisco airport I arrived in Miami. The weather here in the States changed almost everywhere the last few days, with mostly temperatures around 50 to 60 degrees (10-15 degrees Celsius). But here in Miami, it is still warm (75-85/F - 23-30/C), although there is a very strong wind and a few showers.

Here in Miami everything is about seeing and being seen. Everywhere on the streets are expensive cars, but on the other side there are Lamborghini’s parked all over the place with big signs in them: “Rent me!”. But even if you don’t own one, driving one isn’t cheap either I think. I thought I had a pretty expensive hotel, but all the others around my hotel cost between $400 and $800 a night for the smallest room.

Fortunately food isn’t too expensive here, you can have dinner in one of the small restaurants on Lincoln Road for about $25 - $35 including a drink and tip. And finally not too many Sushi restaurants, but variety all over. The dishes are so filled up, I could eat for three nights from one plate. But I don’t have a microwave of refrigerator in my room, so no doggy bag for me.

Miami is one of the cities where you can clearly see what matters most to almost all of the people here… money. But on the other hand, it is also a big trouble maker here in Miami. Many people have to sell their house for low prices, or even worse they get evicted because they can not make the payments. Because of this, real estate is booming business over here.

The people I talk to, tell me starting businesses here in Miami have a pretty high success rate.
But I can’t find any hard evidence on this yet, because all the numbers are dominated by Florida’s rich import and export businesses. Many billions of dollars pass through Florida every year. Although Miami doesn’t seem to be a real business city (asides the importing and exporting) there are a few big companies with their roots in Miami, the most internationally known is Burger King.
Others are more nationally known.

After many miles walking down the streets and the beach, I decided I am going to take a look around Washington next. But after some advice from Gilles and my mother not to wander outside the center of Washington DC, I took a look at some hotels near the Whitehouse. Shockingly enough, room prices are quite high. So I think I’ll switch to a cheaper hotel here in Miami first, and do some more detailed planning before I go there.

I’m am also planning to do an ISO27001 bootcamp like training. Orange Parachute gives several training courses, like “ISO 27001 Lead Auditor”, “ISO 27001 Implementer”, and “HISP” (Holistic Information Security Practitioner) training. This will likely be around the first two weeks of November at the main office in Minneapolis. And a second thing I am thinking about is the ISSMP review seminar. Most of you guys know I got my CISSP certification after a grueling six hours exam a few months back, and the ISSMP is the Management concentration for this certification. Fortunately this exam will only take 3 hours. There is also an exam scheduled for this certification the day I go back to The Netherlands.

After the weekend, I started my return trip to San Francisco. This time I started driving around lunchtime, so the trip was less boring. Driving during the night doesn’t give you things to look at, and there aren’t very many cars on the road. However this gave me the opportunity to look around, although traffic near the larger cities was a lot busier.

Here on USA television, there are some commercials about the oh so happy Californian cows. Well… I passed a Californian cow farm half way back. I noticed the bad smell 2 miles before I drove by the farm. The farm land for the cows was about one square mile, and it was packed with cows like cigarettes in a pack. The smell was real bad, and there was no grass anywhere. So we are doing real good back in the Netherlands. At least the pictures in our cow commercials are a bit more honest…are they ?

Oh well, after a long drive I finally arrived at the Hotel in San Jose. Because parking is expensive in San Francisco, and the rental office was closed at that time, I decided to stop in San Jose the night before. That night I had some great Italian pasta on Silicone Valley’s well known University Avenue. I had a great night sleep at the Crown Plaza in San Jose, and all that for a great price. So if you ever need to stay in San Jose, go there!

Yesterday, I took my rental car and drove around Silicon Valley. This virtual valley stretches out over several cities and villages, so traveling around to the different companies can take hours. You can see some pictures of several big companies I drove by in the new gallery.

Next to driving by those companies, I spent some time at the NASA AMES Research center. This was a nice addition to my visit to several NASA sites some years ago in Florida. Some nice satellite, vehicle and airplane models were displayed all around.

I also paid a visit to the Intel Museum in the Intel building. I learned some extra things about making chips and their history. This is one of the examples where you can clearly see computers help building computers.

Weirdstuff warehouse is like my garage, only they make money with it. This store is huge! All packed up with old computer stuff. PC’s, servers, electronic parts, cables, cases, racks, switches and much much more. Walking through this store made me think about the first few years I spent my time on hardware. All the parts and things I had trouble finding in The Netherlands in those days, are available in big quantities in here, and they just cost a few dollars.

Fry’s warehouse is the biggest electronics store I’ve seen so far. For those in The Netherlands, it is as big as the Bijenkorf. The only difference is it’s just electronics. Al kinds of things for your car, PC, at home and more. The Mediamarkt is childsplay compared to this.

I ended my day at the San Jose Tech Museum where I visited the Bodyworlds 2 exposition. It was quite impressive to walk around real human bodies. It was clearly art, but if you take a close look at some details it can creep you out. Some of those things made me think of Gunther von Hagens like he could be a good friend of Hannibal Lecter.  He put a lot of work in to these expositions, and all the educational things around it.
Unfortunately I was not allowed to take any pictures, so if you want to see more of this, you will have to go yourself, or buy a DVD on the BodyWorlds website.

After the BodyWorlds exposition, I drove all the way down to Los Angeles. It was quite a long drive (6 hours), and it was quite boring in the dark. But I arrived around midnight to get a good night of sleep at the Westin Bonaventure hotel. The first 10 floors are just shops, restaurants, offices and things like the swimming pool and a fitness center.

After some really bad muscle and stomach aches and a relapse last evening, I feel better today. I had some breakfast and tea this morning, and I still feel fine. So hopefully I will be able to go out, and have a look around some of the bigger companies around this area.

Today I went to the other Expo here in San Francisco. This one was in South San Francisco, 20 minutes drive towards the airport.

When I entered the Expo, I didn’t have real good feeling about it. The Expo itself was really small, with not many interesting stands. Some of them were not even a security vendor. So after 10 minutes walking around the 10 stands, I moved on towards the opening keynote in the theater room. This also was not a really impressive, so I started browsing through the agenda and started picking some could-be interesting sessions. Unfortunately I needed an extra pass to attend these sessions, and after some carefull thinking, I didn’t think it was worth the money.

Because I paid for this Expo, I tried to hold on and visit some of the session I could attend. I started off with a session about server virtualization and security. Unfortunately the speaker couldn’t tell me anything new, even though I thought this was a subject I needed extra insight on. So I guess I know all there is to know about virtualization security…

Next was lunch, this was included with the admission. This was one of the things they did OK on. With our lunch we proceeded into the keynote theater. Finally we had an interesting session. It was a session about pickpocketing presented by Bob Arno. Have a look at his website, and be amazed! There are some video’s on Youtube as well. As usual, I get picked out of the crowd to go on stage, together with some other victims. After some great tricks on the others he tried me, but somehow he didn’t manage to steal anything from me. Although he could tell me exactly what I had in my pockets. I think my tie knot was just to tight for him.

After this awesome session, I tried to get an invitation for the roundtable sessions for managers and executives. After some interrogating questions from the host, if I was a vendor or anything, I was told he was not the one who could give me the invitation. But I could try for next year. Then why ask those questions then… Oh well… I wondered down the hallways, and noticed the roundtable sessions were not even half full. I decided to end my day, and go back to the hotel.

The second day at the MIS conference was mainly the EXPO, and a networking reception. I have met a lot of interesting and intelligent people. I have talked about several topics, and received some great comments and idea’s for the future. Not only for my technical skills, but also for my personal skills.

Next to these people, I have joined up with the guys from Orange Parachute again. Scott gave a great presentation at the CISO summit, and later introduced me to the owner Travis. We had some great conversations, and they invited me for some snacks and drinks afterwards at an Irish Pub (Foley’s). We had some great Irish beers, and I met some of the other people behind Orange Parachute.