A Few Words of Advice to The New Cyber Security Czar…And the Race to 2010!

A Few Words of Advice to The New Cyber Security Czar…And the Race to 2010!

"Every time we were beginning to form into teams we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tried to meet any new situation by reorganizing, and a wonderful method it was for creating the illusion of progress whilst producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization." Petronius (AD 166)

The quote above was the preface to an open letter you can see at any time on the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) website. The letter was written by former Under Secretary National Protection & Programs, Robert D. Jamison. Jamison has since been replaced in the new hierarchy by Deputy Under Secretary Philip Reitinger. This is the governmental division established in January of 2008 by President Bush to coordinate national defense and protection of our technological infrastructure, in particular the .gov domain and just about anything the government handles in the public domain.

A year later we hear numerous reports about the creation of yet another government cyber security infrastructure and the appointment of yet another cyber security Chief. This follows, according to numerous reports, more than 20 previous efforts by the government over the last few years to reorganize, reshuffle, and recreate the government body with responsibility for keeping our electronically run world safe.

The truth is, the scale of the problem is, not as former Under Secretary Jamison put it, ‘monumental’, but more accurately securing our technological resources under a single authority is nigh on organizationally impossible.

I relate this experiment to the example of the amalgamation of the small, localized advertising agencies into the monoliths of teetering global consultancies that, while dominating the global ad market, are forever on the verge of financial rack and ruin. In the nineties a select few ad agencies started buying and merging with every agency they could find. If you really want an erudite and comprehensive, if long winded, dissertation on the subject then go read Goldman’s book, “Saatchi and Saatchi.”

The result is that the monoliths can always produce volumes of work, but they’ve more or less lost the creative competition that their clients made extraordinary efforts to acquire in the first place. In advertising agencies that creative competition is their only raison d’etre. Similarly, by amalgamating all of the cyber security personnel into one organization you accomplish the goal of saving duplication of resources and provide singular levels of matching security across all applications, but you sacrifice the ability to respond to and prepare for threats flexibly and you also lose the competition between colleagues to find better and better ways to enhance security. You also lose the advantage of having multiple systems of defense by restricting implementation to only those that suit the purposes of the monolith – the one-size fits all approach.

This means that all they have to do is beat your one standard and they can replicate their success across any barriers you’ve erected because they know how you think.

So my first piece of advice to the new Czar? Delegate. Delegate back down the chain to establish functional zones of protection that share techniques and technologies with each other but that have a certain autonomy so that they can achieve successes independently and hold each group accountable independently.

My second piece of advice is to minimize the number of government organizations that have been replicated already to do the same thing a dozen different ways.

Ok, so that sounds like contrarian advice but hang with me for a moment; my intent is to develop mid-level authorities and capacities coordinated by a singular, central authority. The reiteration of competing authorities all imbued with presidential authorities to rule the roost is quite a different thing altogether. Negotiate, coordinate, and delineate responsibilities with and between your corollary agencies sensibly. It is not the time for a power grab and to establish political empires – this is far too serious a time for that.

And now, dear readers, how this applies to you… I bet you’ve been waiting for this since the beginning of the blog, right?

One of the biggest challenges that will face the new administration is their promise to make all medical records electronic within the next few years so as to create financial efficiencies and improve medical responses by offering consolidation and coordination of medical records in a single government authority.

In plain English, to crooks, terrorists, and wrong-doers, it means that they (the government) are creating one of the biggest targets for personal and government data theft in the world. The ability to steal, hack, adjust or delete electronic profiles of biometric data (the same thing used to make sure your passport says you’re you) will be the primary target of some of the most unsavoury individuals in the world. And the data they’ll be stealing or attempting to steal will be yours.

The good news as that there are thousands of trained professionals working on solving the problem of cyber security worldwide. The bad news is they need millions of people working on it 24 hours a day, 365 days a year because the size of the problem is that immense.

The action you need to take, therefore, is this – until we can solve the problems with the security of the data and facilities we have today, we really shouldn’t be creating yet another oversized, value-rich target for our enemies to attack. We need our government to stop and think about the impact of dumping all of our records into one big box, wrapped up with a bow sitting on the window ledge with a sign on it saying “Steal Me.”

Even if the best result should happen, suppose errors *might* be made. Just…suppose…. Have you ever had to try and get an error off your credit report? Just how easy do you think it’ll be to get an error off your government run medical records?

Call, write, email, send smoke signals, light the Bat-light – but let your government know how important it is that they develop a real plan for the security of our national electronic resources, and then, and only then, can they begin the next monolithic task of exploring a national health records project.

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Race to 2010...
I promised that each blog I write I’ll try and include a good news story to go with the more demanding articles. Today is perhaps a more personal story on that front, but it remains, nonetheless a substantive one.

See I have a plan. I have a plan to bring success and resources to as many people as I can. Ok…we can exclude the crooks, phonies, lazy useless jerks, et al, but for moment, the rest of us know who I’m talking about.

One of the key things about building a successful business is building on a strong product or service with a variety of corollary revenue streams. For lack of a better description, building a diversified portfolio of revenue streams that reflexively also encourage the sales of the business’ primary products and services.

This is not the same thing as simply adding more fees to what you already do without changing or improving the offering to your customer. For all intents and purposes, that’s just playing with the price, and in every case I’ve ever analyzed it always comes back to bite you. A*L*W*A*Y*S.

No what I’m referring to are those services or products that make your customers want to come back to buy from you again, even when your main product or service isn’t quite what they’re looking for.

But suppose you’re not a business owner… what good does that do you? Maybe you never wanted to run your own business, maybe it’s the last thing on your mind. Fair enough. Relate it to whatever income you have. The theory applies equally.

Suppose you work at a job with an hourly rate. You can work overtime or pick up shifts from a colleague to make a little extra for a while. You can have a bake sale, you can sell some crafts, have a yard sale, do some handywork for a neighbour, or pick up a second job. Maybe you could have your car wrapped with advertising or rent out a room or your family cottage. You could invest in property or something else. But the more often your corollary income reflects a way for you to increase your rate of pay from your main revenue source, the better the results will be.

NOW WAIT ONE COTTON_PICKIN’ MINUTE!!!!!

This is NOT an endorsement of conflict of interest. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. The objective *must* be a situation that is a win-win with all the appropriate ethics, morals, etc at play. Otherwise, again, you’ll just be asking for trouble.

So those of you who are business pros, that whole batch above means absolutely squat – you’ve seen it a million times before, right?

Wrong. The point here is that I am working on the final details of a plan to help several thousand people do just that – build new, strong, stable primary and corollary incomes (and no, I don’t mean MLM marketing!!!!!)

I’m looking for a “few good men and women” who want to see a concrete, tangible, verifiable plan to build wealth at a pace and volume that *they* dictate (within reason). I’m hoping to have a few thousand registered by the end of the summer, and by the end of the fall we should see some stunning results already, if I’m right.

There’s no such thing as a free lunch. I’m not promising anything that doesn’t involve hard work, some extra hours, and a little getting outside of your comfort zone. I’m not promising a plan that’s entirely free – you *can* sink as much money as you want into it, but I won’t get a dime for whatever you’re doing as a result.

But what I am promising is that I will make my best effort to show you how to make money like you’ve never seen, in legal, honest, traditional business models – no fly-by-night crap, no “you must by 27 videos just to join, no scams, no BS.”

And better yet, I’m going to post the guts and details of the plan on the blog over the coming posts in between other good news stories. Free.

Now Glenn Beck has the 912 project, which is a marvelous effort to bring Americans of every political stripe together to achieve political community and shared discourse in this country.

My goal is to help Americans of every political and financial stripe to achieve financial success through positive shared discourse in this country. I was thinking of calling it the 913 project as a result but then thought better of it. Sorry Glenn, I tried.
Then I thought of the way Americans and the west pulled together to win the race to the moon. The technologies and prosperity that resulted from those efforts has its fingers and feelers right through today. Your microwave popcorn, GPS navigators, satellite radio, and so on, all have their origins in that monumental social push behind NASA.

So here is what I think my goal should be. I want to raise as many millionaires as possible (legally, taxes paid, all the good stuff) within a 1-year window. So, starting September 1st, I will launch the new race to financial success and see how effective it was by the following September 1st. And if it works out like I hope, then we’ll try and top it each and every year after that until Americans and Canadians alike have achieved financial success individually, collectively, and nationally. By which point, hopefully, I’ll have written myself out of a job.

So get ready, world! We’re laying the ground work for the Race to 2010!

Chris George.