What does SIEM mean to you?

What does SIEM mean to you?

Go ahead - guess. No, don't Google it, cheater. What do YOU think SIEM stands for?

I'll wait.


Give up?


Ok - SIEM stands for Security Information and Event Management. It's how your computer network infrastructure handles electronic threats like hacks, viruses, denial of service attacks, catastrophic failures, etc.

And the question, then, of what SIEM means to you suddenly becomes a lot more important than 4 weird letters strung together.

Most technology pros probably won't know what they stand for either, so don't worry about it if you are one of the millions of business pros who didn't identify it right off the bat. You're not alone. And that's the real problem.

The latest quarterly report I've read from Gartner leaves me with some major eye-openers.

SIEM technology is based on two separate but complementary technologies: SIM Security Information Management, which deals primarily with log management and compliance reporting, and SEM Security Event Management, which deals with real-time monitoring and incident management.

According to Gartner, the largest driver of investment in SIEM technology has been in the US, and mostly because of a need to meet compliance requirements for SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley) and PCI (Payment Card Industry) regulations.

In other words, companies are doing it because governments are forcing them into it, not because they recognize the dangers in the marketplace and are trying to protect themselves, their companies, shareholders and clients from the threats at large.

The other point that is derived from that is that most investment then will be in the SIM technology, not the SEM or the SIEM blended technologies needed to handle these threats successfully.

This is validated by the increased spending on monitoring employee communications and browsing habits.

Sure, that's a valid and worthwhile expenditure, but if you are ignoring the prospect of someone who is not an employee attacking your infrastructure, then you're missing the missile while looking for the package that has more than 3oz of water.

And that, in a nutshell, is why the crooks love to attack companies. They know no one pays any attention to what they're doing because they are too busy keeping themselves distracted with make-work projects and ineffectual pilot projects.

Companies like yours may not know what SIEM stands for; I can assure you the crooks that live and breathe stealing from companies certainly do.

For more information about SIM/SEM/SIEM technology and the Gartner Report go to http://www.ciradar.com/Free-Resources/Free-Analyst-Reports.aspx.

The Merit Network.

As I am working hard on building a variety of new websites one of the sites that is undergoing tremendous overhaul is my http://www.yerpod.com site. As many of you know I have been putting off this project because it needs a lot of bandwidth that I haven’t had ‘til now.

Now that I can get to it, I’m making big changes, not only to the look and feel, but I’m also building in a lot of new content. In the next week or so when it gets its’ face-lift, you should see a lot of neat, cool features and interesting and engaging content.

One of the projects I’m working on is called The Merit Network. The Merit Network is a channel of Yerpod that will show content and shows about things that earn the exposure based on Merit. These are the people, places, events, skills, talents, and moments which are outstanding at what they are or do.

As I travel across the country and the planet doing what I do, I’ll post the best of what I find there, in video, blogs, articles, photos, and interviews.

Now comes your part. What exceptional people, places, events, things, etc. do YOU think deserve some exposure?

Comment, email, or send smoke signals about what you think DESERVES to be recognized as having Merit and I’ll try and get it up on the site on my next visit through town.

C./

Chris George

Better and Cheaper by the Basket

For those of you who haven’t heard, there’s a trend in groceries that is literally sweeping the nation.

A few months ago I was turned on to a website for a group I’d heard tidbits about for a year or so called Bountiful Baskets. It’s a food co-op that operates in a variety of states and is growing literally every day with new sites, new states, and new offerings.

To find out more about them you can go to their website http://www.bountifulbaskets.org.

The site is sparse and doesn’t really give you an appreciation for what you’re getting for your money, so here’s how it works. You make a ‘contribution’ per order of between $15 and $25. You show up at a site you select near where you live at a designated time, usually very early, on the next Saturday morning. When you pick up your order you get one laundry basket of fruit and one laundry basket of vegetables. These things are usually pretty full to the brim, and there’s often surplus that you can get as well.

You'll get an assortment of each - a head of lettuce, probably some tomatoes, onions, garlic, potatoes, zucchini, yams... who knows what you'll end up with, but you are sure to get some staples and some unusual treats thrown in. This week we got a box of Champagne Grapes included in the mix. Those are the tiny little ones with explosive flavour.

The co-op uses your contribution to order directly from farms and growers to get you the freshest food possible.

You can also order what are called specialty packs and cases, depending on what’s offered at the time. Right now it’s things like pears and an Italian Pack, but they also offer 5-packs of specialty breads, boxes of specialty cookies, granola bars, and other things.

You won’t know the exact contents of your main contribution order or the specialty packs, but the value is always undeniable. I have started to make Saturday mornings my main food shopping time and immediately compare what I got for $15 and what the stores are charging the same day for the same foods and I know I’m saving $35-60 each time I place an order.

For fresh food, straight from the farms, at amazing prices, check out http://www.bountifulbaskets.org and see what I mean.

The All New CGR! New Look, New Opportunity!

Welcome to the New Chris George Report!

In keeping with the times, I'm updating The Chris George Report to bring you more content. You can read all about it on the new About The Chris George Report page, but basically I'm aiming to bring you, my readers, more tools, more opportunities, more threats, more analysis, more art, more food - in short, more ME.

So let's get this show started, shall we?

Remember how Competitive Intelligence is about finding unique opportunities or threats that you WOULD NOT ordinarily find?

Today’s feature is about an OPPORTUNITY I’ve found to make building and monetizing your own membership site a whole lot easier and more affordable than you would ever expect.

First – what is a membership site? A membership site is a site with content that is available only to members, usually only to members who pay a subscription fee of some kind. The idea is that you add content regularly, and that content is of value to your members, enough for them to happily continue to pay the regular subscription fee when it comes due.

Next, how does this apply to you? The vast majority of people have a skill set or knowledge base of data that other people would love to have, but quite simply don’t. Whether you’re an outstanding cook with great insights and recipes or a professional-grade woodworker with fantastic plans for furniture and cabinetry, most everyone has something they’re good at, and good enough at it that other people would be willing to pay a nominal fee to keep up with the latest and greatest in that subject.

This means that you probably have something that people would pay to see, hear, or read that you can offer them regularly.

One group of friends I know is building their own animation site, where they produce new shows and their members pay a small fee to see them.

Many public speakers, trainers and subject matter experts would love to have a way to take their expertise, distill it into video clips, podcasts, and articles that their customers can get regularly; and a membership site is a great way to do it.

Most membership sites though are very hard to get up and running. They can be costly, time consuming to program and edit, and then comes the problem and cost of promoting it. Their developers may not be up to the job, there may be problems in interfacing with PayPal or the merchant account transaction software. You may have to shop around to get a shopping cart software package too. All of these steps are big hurdles for the ordinary person or business pro to get through in order to get a regular paycheque from interested buying consumers.

Until now.

I’ve found the solution.

Recently I started researching getting my own membership site online. Sure I’ve had experience building them for others before, so it helped me a lot in figuring things out and where to look for better information, but it opened my eyes to a number of tools to make the job a lot easier, and taught me about a lot of major traps to avoid.

Since I know that having even a few hundred subscribers a month can add up to thousands of dollars in regular revenue for any subscription site, I wanted to share my research with friends and contacts that can use an ongoing source of income that is in their complete control!

If you want to know about a completely easy, straight-forward way to add lots of regular income to your bank account (and in this recession, who doesn’t?) then please email me chris.cayer@reyactive.com and I’ll be happy to share all the details with you (free, no catch, otherwise it wouldn't be much of an opportunity, would it?).

Reyactive News

Today I’m busy trying to get the copy banged out to get my website up and running for Reyactive. I have to tell you I am uber excited right now. I am hiring a salesperson to rock out selling my courses and later to add on selling my book deals too. I think this is going to be golden, with an opportunity to really help business people get on top of the skills and training they need to be able to protect their companies, their employees and their clients from the very real threats out there.

Every day the news gives us more and more examples of how the bad guys are getting the upper hand.

Today it’s a $1500 cellphone hack. Friday it was news about epic fails in security from network access exposures.

What’s the massive risk that will be exposed tomorrow?

The world of business is getting more dangerous and less profitable for the vast majority of companies. You see that in the flat hiring numbers, the increased overtime percentages and the weak economy.

It’s only sensible that businesses take the opportunity to beef up on those skills that will get them the level of protection they need to be ahead of the curve from the bad guys.

I’m wrapping up the final stages of designing my all new Seminar on Business Self Defense. It’s an introduction to what’s really happening with real life examples of brand names that have already gone through it. These are companies you know, in situations your company may soon face, if it hasn’t already.

The website, the Seminar, the training courses, articles, blogs, travel, and art… it’s a busy time over at Reyactive. But it’s never boring!