Thank You for Another Great Year

Exactly one year ago today I posted a thank-you note for the great year of blogging in 2004. A look at the 2004 statistics shows as recently as July 2004, this blog had less than 6,000 visitors per month, as tracked by Sitemeter. I have no idea how Atom, RSS, and other republishing is affects those statistics. Soon after my first book was published, we broke through the 10,000 per month mark and have never looked back.

As you can see from the 2005 chart above, we're at the 22,000 per month mark now, and broke through 25,000 in August during my coverage of Ciscogate. This blog continues to be a nonpaying venture, despite offers to commercialize, syndicate and repackage the content elsewhere. Others already do this without my permission, but I thank those more responsible people who ask before posting my content elsewhere. For example, I've given the great publisher Apress blanket permission to quote anything I say here. This is my small way to say thank you for the books they've sent me to review. One of my New Year's resolutions for 2006 is to dedicate specific time early each morning (before my 1 year old daughter wakes up) to read, review, and recommend books. I managed to read and review 26 technical books in 2005, but I have a backlog of over 50 waiting for attention.

I read every book upon which I make comments at Amazon.com, unlike some others who consider a rehash of a book's back cover to be a "review." I also try to avoid bad books, so don't expect too many low-star reviews.

I have found your comments to be one of the best parts of blogging in 2005. I really appreciate hearing what you have to say, either publicly as a blog comment or privately via email. I don't have time to reply to the few of you who send me multi-page running commentaries on everything I publish or blog, but I appreciate your thoughts nevertheless.

In 2006 I plan to continue blogging about subjects which interest me, like network security monitoring, incident response, forensics, FreeBSD, and related topics. I welcome any thoughts on other issues you find pressing. If you want to see how I keep track of world security events, please visit my interests page. Those are my bookmarks; I avoid browser bookmarks whenever possible.

In 2006 I also plan to devote time and resources to OpenPacket.org. Many of you have offered some form of support. As that project develops I will request assistance, either here or on the OpenPacket.org Blog. 2006 should also be a big year for TaoSecurity, my company. I am not sure if 2006 will be the year I decide to hire employees, but I am considering hiring contract help for some in-house coding projects. These projects would support the company's consulting, incident response, and forensics services. Should anything be of use to the wider community, it will appear on the TaoSecurity products page. If you would be interested in working for TaoSecurity, please feel free to send me your resume in .pdf format to richard at taosecurity dot com. I am always interested in meeting security practitioners who can administer systems properly, perform network- and host-centric incident response and forensics, write security tools, speak and publish original material, and seek to save the world one packet at a time.

I have ideas for additional, specialized training courses for 2006. At the moment demand for private 4-day Network Security Operations classes has been strong. I am working with a few different customers to support specialized training outside the core NSO focus. Some of those endeavors may be offered to the public. I will also submit proposals to speak at a few more USENIX conferences, which are public opportunities for training in network security monitoring. I post word of any place I intend to speak at my events list.

I do not have any new books scheduled for writing in 2006. Having authored or co-authored three books in three years, I expect to take a break. I have ideas for more articles like the one in Information Security Magazine. I should have an article in the February 2006 Sys Admin Magazine on keeping FreeBSD up-to-date.

My family and I wish all of you a prosperous 2006!