News in the Category "Written Interviews"
Page 14 of 18
On People, the Death of Privacy, and Data Pollution
The following is an excerpt from an interview with Bruce Schneier. Matt Pasiewicz, EDUCAUSE content program manager, conducted the interview at the EDUCAUSE 2007 Annual Conference.
Full podcast
MP: Bruce, perhaps you can get us started by sharing some of your thoughts about the psychology and economics of security.
Schneier: Security is a lot more about people than technology. One thing I’ve learned from studying economics, the psychology of risk, security, and people is that those problems are actually way harder than the tech problems. We have as much technology as we need, but securing the people end is hard. I’m doing a lot of research in psychology right now. People are very complex: they’re not linear and rational, and they’re not computers at all. We try to think of them as logical and rational, and that’s just not true. People have internal contradictions…. No matter how good the tech is, if we don’t solve the human end, it’s just not going to work…
Q&A with Bruce Schneier
Expert says security benefits must be weighed against tradeoffs
Q: When a company or government entity has a security proposal, how should they evaluate that? What sort of principles should they be looking for to determine whether this is going to be an effective security solution?
A: First, you have to understand that security is a tradeoff. Whether you give money, or time, or convenience, or civil liberties, or American servicemen’s lives, you give something and you get some security in return. There’s no such thing as absolute security: It’s a continuum and it’s a tradeoff.
The next question to ask is, is it worth it? You have to go through a security tradeoff, tease out what the risks are, how good the countermeasures are, what the costs are, and then decide “Is it worth it?”…
The Insider
Bruce Schneier, founder and CTO of Counterpane, outlines the cybercrime landscape enterprises face today. He explains to CWHK‘s Stefan Hammond that insiders are a problem, managed security services are a solution, and a determined crew with a chainsaw and a truck is a big problem.
CWHK: Computer security never seems to get better, only worse. Why?
Bruce Schneier: Because security is fundamentally not a technology problem—it’s a people problem. And while the technology continues to improve, increasing complexity makes the problem worse.
It’s war. But it’s much more interesting, and it’s always pervasive…
Talking security with Bruce Almighty
When the good folk at Linux Australia sat down with the organisers of the Australian national Linux conference and decided that Bruce Schneier would be the keynote speaker on the opening day of the main conference, they couldn’t have made a more correct decision.
Schneier is a man whose security credentials are impeccable, who’s probably the world’s top security technologist. At the same time, he can talk about security concepts to a teenager – and the kid will understand exactly what he’s saying.
When you realise that this same man is an inventor of the Blowfish, Twofish and Yarrow algorithms, then you begin to understand what the word intellectual means…
Information is our Only Security Weapon: Bruce Schneier at Linux.conf.au
Computer security expert Bruce Schneier took a swipe at a number of sacred cows of security including RFID tags, national ID cards and public CCTV security cameras in his keynote address to Linux.conf.au this morning.
These technologies were all examples of security products tailored to provide the perception of security rather than tackling actual security risks, he said.
“Camera companies are pushing it, but all the actual data points the other way,” Schneier said. “RFID is another one—the industry pushing it is very much distorting facts.”…
Bruce Schneier Reflects on a Decade of Security Trends
Author, blogger, cryptographer and security luminary Bruce Schneier shares his opinions on the trends and technology of the last 10 years in information security.
Share your opinion on the most important trend(s) of the last decade; technology trends, as well as overall strategic/business trends?
Bruce Schneier: The most amazing thing about the last ten years is how little things have changed technologically. Firewalls, IDSs, worms and viruses, spam, denial of service: they’re all still here. Sure, there have been technological advances in both attacks and defences – phishing is relatively new, for example – but for the most part we’re using the same technological defences against the same technological attacks…
Bruce Almighty: Schneier preaches security to Linux faithful
Schneier is one of three keynote speakers at Linux.conf.au 2008 and speaks with Dahna McConnachie about his presentation, books and thoughts.
Internationally renowned security guru, Bruce Schneier, will be encouraging technologists at linux.conf.au to take a lesson from Luke Skywalker, and “feel the force” a little more when it comes to security.
Schneier, who is CTO of BT Counterpane, is one of the three keynote speakers at the 2008 Linux.conf.au. He joins Python release manager, Anthony Baxter and founding member of HP’s Linux division, Stormy Peters.
Dahna McConnachie speaks with Schneier about his talk, “Reconceptualising Security” and how technologists need to remember the importance of the human element. He also discusses cyber-war, what Linux has done for security, and the likelihood of another edition of Applied Cryptography…
Bruce Schneier Blazes Through Your Questions
Last week, we solicited your questions for Internet security guru Bruce Shneier. He responded in force, taking on nearly every question, and his answers are extraordinarily interesting, providing mandatory reading for anyone who uses a computer. He also plainly thinks like an economist: search below for “crime pays” to see his sober assessment of why it’s better to earn a living as a security expert than as a computer criminal.
Thanks to Bruce and to all of you for participating. Here’s a note that Bruce attached at the top of his answers: “Thank you all for your questions. In many cases, I’ve written longer essays on the topics you’ve asked about. In those cases, I’ve embedded the links into the necessarily short answers I’ve given here.”…
Guru Beaks Farewell to IT Security Firms
They'll be absorbed by big companies as security gets built into products, Bruce Schneier predicts to OO GIN LEE
He is sounding the death knell of the consumer IT security market.
IT security guru Bruce Schneier is “100 per cent sure” that consumer security products will cease to exist in the future.
“Companies like Symantec, Network Associates and Qualis will be eventually subsumed as part of larger IT vendors,” said Bruce, who was in town earlier this month to give a talk to the local security industry.
Bruce who is mentioned in the Da Vinci Code novel as a modern cryptologist, gave the recent examples of IBM buying security company Internet Security Systems (ISS)and British Telecom (BT) acquiring Counterpane, the company he founded…
Interview: the Value of Bruce
BT Counterpane's Bruce Schneier talks to Eleanor Dallaway about why he hasn't been fired yet
Bruce Schneier has increased BT’s press mentions in the North American press by 21% since the UK telecom giant’s acquisition of his firm Counterpane one year ago. BT insists that the acquisition ran smoothly and that the two companies are working well together, and Bruce tells us that the Counterpane people are happy. But it seems there are a few creases in the BT Counterpane story that still need to be ironed out—Bruce’s job title being the first.
“I thought that by now I’d have had a BT title, but find me the person to give me one,” Schneier said, speaking to Infosecurity at the RSA Conference on 23 October. “You see I’m not going to lose my CTO Counterpane title—it’s a good title. But I think they’d [BT] be smart to make me something in BT. But it has to be a title equally good or I’m not going to give this one up. She [talking about BT’s PR representative who accompanied Bruce at the interview] says you just do it, but I don’t know what that means. There has to be someone who says yes and no-one knows who that someone is.”…
Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.