Happy 15th Birthday TaoSecurity Blog

Today, 8 January 2018, is the 15th birthday of TaoSecurity Blog! This is also my 3,020th blog post.

I wrote my first post on 8 January 2003 while working as an incident response consultant for Foundstone.

I don't believe I've released statistics for the blog before, so here are a few. Blogger started providing statistics in May 2010, so these apply to roughly the past 8 years only!

As of today, since May 2010 the blog has nearly 7.7 million all time page views.

Here are the most popular posts as of today:


Twitter continues to play a role in the way I communicate. When I last reported on a blog birthday two years ago, I said that I had nearly 36,000 Twitter followers for @taosecurity, with roughly 16,000 Tweets. Today I have nearly 49,000 followers with less than 18,000 Tweets. As with most people on social media, blogging has taken a back seat to more instant forms of communication.

These days I am active on Instagram as @taosecurity as well. That account is a departure from my social media practice. On Twitter I have separate accounts for cybersecurity and intelligence (@taosecurity), martial arts (@rejoiningthetao), and other purposes. My Instagram @taosecurity account is a unified account, meaning I talk about whatever I feel like. 

During the last two years I also started another blog to which I regularly contribute -- Rejoining the Tao. I write about my martial arts journey there, usually once a week.

Once in a while I post to LinkedIn, but it's usually news of a blog post like this, or other LinkedIn content of interest.

What's ahead? You may remember I was working on a PhD and I had left FireEye. I decided to abandon my PhD in the fall of 2016. I realized I was not an academic, although I had written four books.

I have also changed all the goals I named in my post-FireEye announcement.

For the last year I have been doing limited security consulting, but that has been increasing in recent months. I continue to be involved in martial arts, but I no longer plan to be a Krav Maga instructor nor to open my own school.

For several months I've been working with a co-author and subject matter expert on a new book with martial arts applicability. I've been responsible for editing and publishing. I'll say more about that at Rejoining the Tao when the time is right.

Thank you to everyone who has been part of this blog's journey since 2003!

Comments

Unknown said…
Congrats on the anniversary, and thanks for the update, Richard. I was curious about your academic studies, if you were still pursuing the PhD. When you didn't mention the academic studies in the "Bejtlich Moves On" post last year, I wasn't sure if you still had a reason to earn the PhD. I admit I was looking forward to seeing how you applied von Clausewitz's theories to the cybersecurity domain.

SC
3:48 PM
Grady said…
Congrats on 15 years! The TaoSecurity blog has been a great source of knowledge and ideas for me over the years, especially back in the heyday of blogging when it was a fixture in my Google Reader feed.

Will we ever see any blog posts based on your partially-finished PhD work? Your subject area sounded interesting...
6:08 PM
Richard Bejtlich said…
Thanks SC and Grady. I might revisit what I wrote for KCL and see if anything is worth putting out in the open.
6:38 PM
Unknown said…
Hi Rich,

Congrats on 15 years. I do not usually follow blogs or tweets and such, but I do see you through LinkedIn now and then. I am not a big fan of LinkedIn, but it is a good site to catch up with old friends from places I have worked.

I am fascinated with the computer/internet security business. I am amazed at the apparent number of people or organizations worldwide who are talented in code to the extent that they can cause so much disruption in businesses and the lives of individuals.

For a brief period, I purchased a small quantity of FireEye stock at the recommendation of my broker just before a period where the stock price was climbing. I watched it climb for about a week and decided to take my profit and get out. I made some money on the trade and then watched the stock crash. I do not like buying stock that I do not understand the business.

I hope all is well with you and the family.

Uncle Chet
7:54 AM
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