Tag: education

NIST, the US National Institute of Standards and Technology, released a report last December, “Dramatically Reducing Software Vulnerabilities.” It has multiple useful and interesting ideas for improving vulnerabilities in software. I want to highlight two that I felt were most important. 1. Education There is no technological substitute for developer discipline. Education is not just […]

Last month I wrote about the need for more women in cyber security. The research for that post has made me reconsider some of my views about STEM education and I’d like to share some of that with you. Specifically, I was probably wrong about something. Let me begin with a story: When I was […]

I have been blessed to work with female programmers and cyber security professionals. As a consequence I did not realize the magnitude of the gender gap in these professions. I’m including programmers and software professionals here because that’s what brought this to my attention, but, as I will explain below, the gender gap of women […]

It seems as though every week here in North America the news outlets report on another hack attack or data breach. (The unreported ones are a topic for a different time.) From OPM and other government agencies to Sony and now Ashley Madison, it is becoming clear that Internet defenses just aren’t as strong as […]

I am writing this on Hallowe’en.   A day – in modern times, at least – for children to dress up and ask for candy. While a few will dress as princesses, robots (as I did once as a child), pumpkins and politicians, many will dress to represent scary beings. I suppose that is appropriate, […]