Thaaaaaank goodness it is indeed Friday. It's been a very busy week, and I'm just glad it's over. Ran a few times (mostly poorly). Lifted on Tuesday (very well). But, the theme, by-in-large, has been work, work, work!
Overall, it's been a good week. A good couple weeks, in fact. And this coming week, we're heading to Colorado for a little skiing/boarding and, more importantly, R&R. I do, however, have to confess to being a bit annoyed this evening...
I read Stumbling on Happiness a couple months ago and began thinking about how to apply those psychological processes to infosec. Then, no more than a week later, Bruce Schneier announced a draft essay for RSA on the same topic. Well, now this is apparently the hot topic! Meaning I fully expect a small burst of interest that will completely dilute the topic. For example, ISSA's Journal has a feature article on the topic this month. So, here I am, planning to contact graduate programs in the next couple weeks to propose research on the topic of "the psychology of security" (or some such derivation), and it's going to probably look like opportunistic background noise. ARGH! Anyway...
I'm not an ISSA member, so I can't speak to the article or how relevant it is. Regardless, I feel increasingly trumped by all this, and have to wonder how it is that everyone is suddenly on this bandwagon. Is this the Bruce Schneier equivalent of the slashdot (/.) effect? Or has there been some sort of subliminal messaging pushing some of us infosec types in this direction?
The world may never know...
More importantly, how is it that every time I come up with an idea like this, it is immediately undercut by pretenders? For example, 1999-2000, * I * was talking about security management. * I * was trying to convince businesses to take a holistic approach. * I * was the one who developed nice, clean models for representing these concepts to businesses. And today it's all mainstream, and I'm none the better off (well, unless you count the MS and related thesis).
Ok, enough feeling sorry for myself. So, onward and upward for me. Plan the research, approach some schools, and prepare for waning interest as every half-assed infosec pretender tries to run off and join the psychology profession. *sigh*
