Greetings, one and all. Apologies on not blogging as much lately, but life is busy! I wanted to share a few pieces of news from around the industry, on the off chance you missed it.
First and foremost, the former Chief Privacy Officer from AOL, Jules Polonetsky, has formed a new non-profit org called Future of Privacy Forum. From their about page: "FPF advocates for privacy advances that promote transparency and user control in a manner that is practical for business to implement to ensure personal autonomy for all who seek to embrace the benefits of our digital society." This is very interesting news, and it should be noted that one of their first objectives will be to put forth privacy policy objectives for the new Obama administration.
The second bit of big news is that NetWitness has announced the free availability of their Investigator software. If you're not familiar with NetWitness, then you really need to take a look. The software bit is just one component of their overall solution. It's actually rather difficult to describe what they are, because they draw from many different genres. The sniff traffic, but they also record full packets, and then they provide excellent analysis tools, including making use of their own metalanguage to look at and describe data. It's pretty powerful stuff.
In more mundane news, I spoke on a panel at CSI 2008 this week. My part of the panel discussion was "information classification." We had fun presenting and I think some people found it somewhat useful - as much as one can call a 15-minute preso useful. For me, this is an important milestone because it's the first time I've spoken at a major infosec event.
And, last, but certainly not least, I wanted to call out the other thing I became involved with this week: the ABA SciTech section's latest committee, e-Discovery and Digital Evidence. We held the kickoff meeting for the committee in DC yesterday and today, and I have to say, it was a very interesting and inspiring group. There is a lot of opportunity for outreach, growth, and improvement around these topics, including around records management. I'm very eager to continue my involvement in this committee going forward.
That's my news from around the beltway this week (so far). :)