Death of Bin Laden, Birth of a New Dynamic

Official reports from the White House announced tonight with President Obama's speech that Osama Bin Laden has been killed by US Special Forces in a firefight in Pakistan. The major news outlets are covering a lot of the context from a strictly populist view, which helps the country and the world heal from the scarring damage caused by this monster and his henchmen and blind followers.

Here's the security side of the issue that they are NOT covering very well.

Bin Laden was able to carefully manage the tribal leadership of Al Qaeda factions in over a dozen countries to the point that they have been able to significantly destabilize most of those governments. Those governments, however, have never been particularly strongly aligned with any one philosophy, economic model, or loyalty structure as they have always had very tribal, very family/region-centric social and governmental structures.

Often the regions are controlled by the heroin and opium drug lord/tribal lords who harvest, transport and sell what the locals believe is the most significant natural resource and income stream they have at their disposal. In other regions, Bin Laden was able to fund piracy, organized crime, terrorism, racketeering, and money laundering activities that created and maintained power bases and structures among his key allies.

With Bin Laden's death, the US government position is correct - the message has been sent that the US will pursue its' foes until they are satisfied justice has been done. This undoes some of the extraordinary damage that has been done to US military and diplomatic reputations abroad since the Vietnam War by US pull-outs and other missteps.

The other side of the equation, however, is also equally true; that now, as in the aftermath of the death of Arafat and the deposition of Mubarak, and other Arab leaders, there is a new power vacuum that will definitely produce unanticipated consequences, and will muddy, if not destroy any chances of negotiated peace for a long time to come.

Don't get me wrong; I don't believe for a second that negotiations with Bin Laden would have produced peace of any kind for anyone. What it does though, is that it consolidates all the supporters of his viewpoint into one organization that can be more easily targeted and disassembled as a single group. Once the power vacuum created by his death divides the organization into many competing factions all searching for a leader, for a new power source, the resulting ensuing chaos has the capacity to erupt into hundreds of new, aggressive, power-seeking groups, each capable of doing a significant amount of damage to military and civilian targets, each needing infiltration and human intelligence monitoring in order to prevent attacks and catch the bad guys.

On the plus side, none of the groups has a leader currently as skilled, financially well-backed or politically talented as Bin Laden was, and as long as that remains true, their coordination will erode dramatically and internal political fights will help to unravel the organization as a whole.

One must remain particularly vigilant to the potential that a leader could emerge to take up the support of not only those disenfranchised by the death of Bin Laden, but also those who find themselves in the middle-eastern and African countries now in the hot-bed of upheaval and revolution: Yemen, Syria, Egypt, Tunisia, Kenya, Somalia, Rwanda, etc.

The emergence of a new leader for the region must be very carefully monitored, because the right leader could bring peace and prosperity to the region which it so desperately needs, whereas the wrong leader could prove to be a far greater tyrant than Idi Amin, Stalin or Hitler, and would be in a position to inflict the kind of body count to prove it. Unfortunately we have had a very poor history of predicting which path a potential leader will take in similar situations that have arisen in history; this time we must be ever vigilant and far more careful in our support or opposition as what may appear as cruelty to us may be necessary leadership in their position, and what may appear as great leadership to us may be the sounding of the death knell for millions later.

The power vacuum will also mean that over the next 2-3 years, the world will not be terribly safe as retaliatory and power-play based acts of terror and violence are acted out both here in the US and around the world.

It is a great thing that one of the worst mass-murderers in modern history has been removed from his position of power, and has been stripped of his ability to continue to inflict harm on generations of people from around the world. There will be a continuing price to pay for it, though, and it is a price we must be willing to continue to pay if we are to ever truly be safe.

The WikiLeaks Fallout

This week's WikiLeaks fiasco has shed light on a number of completely mission critical issues both to business and to government security.

Regardless of your political views on the various wars that the US is engaged in, a large number of the documents that were released so far by WikiLeaks does endanger national security in the US and for our allies abroad. That sounds like a cavalier point, I understand, but there really are substantially greater numbers of lives at risk both now and for decades to come as a result of these 'leaks.'

It is harder to find capable, qualified, and reliable resources for intelligence gathering as a result. This means that our information will consistently be less than optimal and the very reasons that people object to our involvement in Iraq under the suggested purpose of eliminating weapons of mass destruction can only be repeated as we will be in no better position to consider national and global security threats in the future.

It means that in combat our troops will never have enough of the right information to be able to minimize casualties both to our selves and to local civilian populations caught in the conflict.

It means that we will never have enough advance warning to stop critical threats before they reach our borders with weapons and intent to destroy thousands or perhaps even millions.

It will put our front line border guards and troops at increasing risk of lethal violence as it has along the Mexican border and in our camps in Afghanistan.

It means our allies will have less reason to trust our information or our ability to protect their sources when they try to help protect us.

That's what it does to our national security and that of our allies, but what does it mean for our companies?

Julian Assange and his cohorts have already shown us the thin edge of THAT wedge, haven't they?

The message they sent this week was clear - either permit the wanton use of criminally acquired information to continue to threaten the security of millions or suffer the economic consequences of their personal wrath as they tried to take down both Visa and Mastercard. They have then followed up with a series of attacks on companies who do not loudly call for Assange's release.

No company is safe from their blackmail and extortion, just as no government is.

If your company depends on the transaction support of Visa or Mastercard, or any major credit card processing, and they are targeted for attacks by saboteurs, hackers, and cyber-bullies (extortionists), then your company is directly affected by these cyber-terrorists and criminals.

There is a substantial difference between the argument in favour of Free Speech and the action involved in stopping commerce globally and holding every corporation hostage to achieve personal and political gains.

Free Speech has limitations, just as all freedoms do. I have the full freedom to swing my fist anywhere I want - just as long as it doesn't connect with anyone else or anything that doesn't belong to me. Similarly Free Speech is limited - it cannot be used to bully, extort, blackmail, or any of a dozen other verbs.

Businesses and governments need to take extra special precautions and make their systems secure so that only those who critically need sensitive information are given access to it, and that any sharing of that information beyond where it is permitted to go is punished immediately and to the maximum extent of the law as a minimum deterrent to this kind of behaviour.

That's not to say that these kinds of regulations should be used at whim in order to silence legitimate whistle-blowing on criminal behaviours by those in commercial or bureaucratic authority. Revealing criminal behaviour is a fundamental responsibility of individuals to society and those who have the courage to do so should be heralded. The difference? They had better be right, it had better be criminal, and it had better be worth it, or the damage they inflict to their colleagues, their clients, their shareholders, their fellow citizens and the public in general is far too severe to allow those who simply wish to garner attention, glory and power by selling illegally obtained secrets for fame.

Money doesn't have to be the prime motivator - it's not necessarily the currency du jour in these kinds of exchanges. The acclaim and satisfaction gained by outing sensitive secrets is often all that those who have given groups like WikiLeaks seek. For that brief moment they had their "Gotcha!" moment. For that brief moment they achieved a sense of glory in having socked it to 'The Man.' And for months and years to come, everyone else involved in that arena pays the price, some of them the ultimate price; there will invariably be those who pay with their lives.

As managers, entrepreneurs, investors and executives, we need to stop this pretense of 'open-source management.' Open-Source effectively means, 'open season' as soon as any disgruntled or immature employee, or unhappy customer decides to go hunting. Some times it is not even them - it may be their friends, their spouse, their family, their spiteful ex; the list is limitless.

And now with the excuses wiped away through the power play by Julian Assange and his WikiLeaks followers, businesses, not just government, can no longer hide behind the shield of excuses as to why they don't have to implement a serious secrecy policy and strategy to keep their information, their clients' information, their suppliers' information, and their employees' information secure.

The 'What are the odds' Greek Chorus will be the ones suffering the tragedy while the rest of us avoid it by taking action today to protect what's important.

Secrecy is no longer a word of convenience in business. For serious business people, it's a word of bond in a world of acute risk and chronic danger.

9 Years of 9/11.

9 Years. One day has impacted the world for 9 long, hard years.

It was the day that Osama Bin Laden and his gang of fruitcake followers took the world and shook it like a rag doll.

9 Years later there are those that still believe it was all a government plot, or that it was just a one-shot deal; it could never happen again.

To those people, the thousands of lives that were lost then and since, are meaningless faces on a screen, meaningless names on a wall or in a cemetery or a field of battle.

To those people the inconveniences of modern travel, the cost of our wars overseas, the cost of partnering with our allies to control ‘threats to our national security’, and the cost of housing captured terrorists is all a big waste of money and time. To them it is just a scare tactic to keep them from doing what they want, to whomever they want, whenever they want. It is an impediment to their freedoms.

And in the limited viewfinder through which they see, they are correct.

What are the odds, they say, of another terror strike like 9/11? One in a million?

It’s amazing how often one in a million actually happens.

For some, the condition is called War Weariness. It’s a known phenomenon when a country at war gets tired of being in the state of war. They want to be able to go back to their normal lives and don’t want to be always in the ‘pressure cooker’ of war.

Actually, I’m truly amazed that anyone in this country can have the unmitigated gall to even state that we are at war.

Sure we have troops overseas, fighting like hell to keep us safe, to keep our families from feeling the devastation of losing their loved ones in a hail of bullets or a crumbling, burning building hundreds of feet in the air.

Sure we have a 3 ounce limit on fluids allowed on an airplane.

But the cold hard reality of war hasn’t struck home in this country, and it hasn’t happened for one reason. We’re not taking our defense of our homeland as seriously as we should or ordinarily would in a normal war.

In World War II, there were military checkpoints all through Europe in an effort to defend against foreign agents, invaders and saboteurs.

In the height of the Cold War, one did not discuss company business in open forums, let alone government or national business with people who weren’t expressly designated for those conversations.

Although we had the right to voice our political opinions, we had the better sense not to, as we would never give an opponent that kind of leverage to do us, our families, our neighbours, or our economies that kind of damage.

Today – today all we have is the twin refrains ‘I have my rights’ and ‘What are the odds?’

If you had to pass military checkpoints today, if you and your family only had rationed portions of food, energy and fuel, if you had to live under the kind of strict rules of communication that real wars demand, I can assure you of 2 things: 1) by now you’d have earned every right to feel a sense of War Weariness, and 2) you’d know why your views of the war today are not only out of place, they are a disgrace. They are a disgrace because although we are asking our troops, law enforcement, fire-fighters, and medical experts to keep us safe, we have those among us who mock, ridicule, insult, undermine, and passively or actively endanger them out of a sense of entitlement. It’s their ‘right’ to do so.

It’s their right to harass, insult, impede, and effectively threaten the mourning families of fallen military personnel at the cemetery during the funeral.

It’s their right – but that doesn’t make it right for them to do so, and they damned well know better.

To the pastor who wants to burn the Qu’ran – you’re old enough, and experienced enough to know better.

To the politicians who want to set timelines for withdrawals and draw-downs – do you honestly think the enemy sets timelines for when they plan to give up? You’re smart enough; you know better.

To the politicians and bureaucrats who allow themselves to be duped into ‘economies and efficiencies’ by cutting our human intelligence budgets because ‘our friends and allies’ have it covered; to you I have one question: When your child is planning on getting into trouble, do you hear about it from your office friends in time to stop it? They probably have kids in the same school, and their kids are honest, right?

They are our friends and allies, but we all know better than to rely on someone else to do something we know we need to do ourselves. It’s good for us if we are all involved so that we don’t let anything slip. That does mean, though, that we need to be involved; we need to be there too.

To the bureaucrats and politicians in this field, they have heard this for their entire careers but have refused to live by it, refused to implement it. To those men and women, in this day and age – you know better.

You know there are enemies of the state. You know there are child molesters in the streets. When between one out of three, and one out of four kids is sexually assaulted before they turn 18, and it is most often by someone they know very well, the excuse that it ‘couldn’t happen to my kid’ doesn’t fly. Similarly, when you know that many foreign nations’ have openly explained that they are actively attacking our electronic and communications infrastructure and our economic base by targeting utilities and private corporations for economic sabotage, you know better than to tell the public they are safe. You know better.

You have the right to say anything you want. You know better than to do it.

9 Years after 9/11 I look at the responses I see to quotes from our leaders about tolerance, respect, calm and deliberation and I see people frequently responding with whatever they feel they have the right to say, and often it is with flippancy and dismissive permissiveness that they feel they are entitled to attack those who have kept us safe.

I saw no military checkpoints. I saw no food and fuel rationing. I saw no massive increase in military equipment manufacture. I saw no emphasis by companies to restrict communication to restricted personnel lists. I saw nothing more than the Patriot Act and the 3oz rule. Sure the Patriot Act had some serious infringements on a private citizen’s rights and freedoms. But it’s not like the restrictiveness our own nation experienced in World War II.

There were no internship camps where all Muslims were forced to go.

The complaint about racial profiling? Do you remember what that even was? Are you seriously comparing today’s racial profiling techniques of law-enforcement with those of Hitler’s SS? You know better.

There were no anti-insurgency agencies generated since 9/11 to infiltrate and attack domestic groups in the same scale and scope as were in place in the days of the Hoover.

There was no fear of Agent Smith in his black suit, black loafers, crisp white shirt and dark glasses, his military style-brush cut, walking into your place of business or home to ask you some very serious and very unpleasant questions to determine if you were loyal or subversive.

I’m not advocating that we go that direction either. I am saying that the level of discussion has been raised to the degree of intrusion as if that were in fact what has been happening. It isn’t. It wasn’t. It hasn’t been. And we all know better.

We know better than to whine and wimper and throw fits about how hard done by we are by having to defend our nation. We know better.

It’s time, 9 years after 9/11 that we started to DO better. It's time we started to stop letting our feelings of entitlement dictate how we act and speak, and start recognizing that we may have the right to touch a hot stove burner, but we know better than to do it.

We have the right to burn the Qu'ran but only a complete insensitive idiot with no better sense than an ornery mule would be dumb enough to do it.

We have the right to protest military funerals, but we need to rise above that and stop the callous, disgusting and sabotaging self-agrandizement that allows us to do so.

We have the right to disagree with the former President or the current President on how they handle the issues of our national security and our economic policies; but we need to rise above simply calling them a 'nutsack.'

We need to not only know better, we need to do better.

Or we also know we're going to see more 1 in a million chances happen. And that won't make anyone feel better.

Hackers from Iran Make Announcement

http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.php?nn=8906081424

Whether the article referenced above is legitimate and verified or not, it's hard to argue that at the very least it isn't being considered by governments, crooks, and terror organizations around the world.

And clearly they are not just targeting government websites, but corporations as well. After all, economic sabotage is a trick thousands of years old.

It's critical that business people, private citizens, and governments get their heads on straight and stop treating this like something you can deal with by a strategy of ignorance, ie if you ignore it long enough, it'll go away.

It's too serious, too important, and affecting too many businesses, people and countries for that.

If you want to learn more about how you and your company can start to protect yourselves from these kinds of attacks, and from incidents like the hostage taking that is working itself out live right now at the Discovery Channel HQ in Maryland, near our national capital, then you really need to sign up for my Business Self Defense seminars.

I know it's a commitment - a day and $295 of your money are a lot to ask you to set aside in this economy, but the consequences of ignorance, in this case, are extremely severe. Please help me build our national ability and your personal ability to resist and defend against this kind of threat.

C./

Chris Cayer.

News article about ongoing social media threat.

Just a note folks - this is being used not just to target individuals, but also companies. Companies are especially valuable targets as they usually have access to MANY users information, both internally and customer info.

http://www.zdnet.com/news/spam-scheme-spreading-via-facebook-chat/461066?tag=nl.e550

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!