Thursday, May 24, 2012

Red Sky weekly update - pre-Memorial Day weekend

It's Thursday afternoon, and I'm expecting a very hectic day tomorrow so I thought I'd author my weekly blog today before heading into the Memorial Day weekend.

It's been a heck of a week!

Fusion Report 9 set off bells and whistles with a number of folks inside the membership. We've probably got a half dozen new ISPs just like the one we reported on Monday that are now going into the analysis queue.

The portal has been on fire this week... very busy! One of the best things is our newest addition. Yesterday one of the members asked for assistance in contacting an international company. Within an hour of the request we had JPCERT in the portal with an offer to assist. This morning we had one of their incident response analysts involved. You see, this is not just a US problem. It is a global problem. Red Sky wants international participation. It's critical.

Our team is growing!

  • Chris Hall has accepted a position leading Technical Analytics. Many of you know Chris. He and I were together at the DoD Cyber Crime Center... I know what you're thinking. It's bad form to cherry pick your last employer. Well, for the record, I didn't. He'd moved on a year ago. He starts terminal leave in two weeks and will be coming into Red Sky after a short vacation. We're very excited! Chris will lead a team of analysts and will be both technical analysis lead and act as our community manager.
  • We've brought in a new Business Development manager. This guys' a retired Navy Captain from the acquisitions/logistics community, but he's been doing big data integration projects for several years. We've had a number of approaches by vendor/partners who bring incredible capability to the table. We need someone who can drive these relationships to win-win solutions. I'm confident we've found the right guy!
  • We've also brought in a new CIO. He's been handling IT Program Management for a medium sized defense contractor. Our portal is growing and so are the services, feeds, storage requirements, etc. We're happy (I'M happy!) to have someone managing our infrastructure -even if he is still part time with us.. for now!
Changing gears -

Every year I put on my Navy short sleeved whites (admittedly, I had to buy a bigger uniform a few years ago)  and take my kids to the Memorial Day Parade. I live in a small town in New Hampshire of about 3500 people, of which roughly 10% are Veterans and full members of the American Legion. We love the military up here, and the idea of putting on my old uniform, ribbons, clean hat, shined shoes, and then using Memorial Day as a teaching moment for my young girls is something I look forward to, and do, every year.

Please, in your own way, take a moment and remember our Veterans, active duty military, and their families this weekend. Freedom isn't free.

Until next time,
Have a great Memorial Day weekend!
Jeff

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