TaoSecurity Blog

Source: The Economist, 31 Jan 2015 TaoSecurity Blog readers know I am a fan of Edward Tufte . When I see a diagram that I believe captures the tenets of his philosophy of presenting information, I try to share it with readers. Two weeks ago in its 31 January 2015 edition, The Economist newspaper published Saudi Arabia: Keeping It in the Family . The article discussed the ascension of King Salman to the Saudi crown. The author emphasized the advanced age of Saudi kings since the founding of the monarchy in 1932. To make the point graphically, the article included the graphic at left. It captured the start and end of the reigns of the monarchs, their ages at the beginning and end of their reigns, and the median age of the population. Readers are able to quickly compare the duration of each monarch's reign, the monarch's ages, and the trend toward older monarchs. Readers can see the traditional widening gap in ages of rulers compared to the population, as well as the r...

If you've been a TaoSecurity Blog reader for a while, you may remember how the writing and speaking of Edward Tufte changed the way I taught classes and delivered presentations. I wrote about the Tufte class I attended in June 2008 in my post The Best Single Day Class Ever . Since then I've written a few other Tufte posts here. The most recent post, from 2012, was  Netanyahu Channels Tufte at United Nations . I explained how Prime Minister Netanyahu literally drew a red line on a diagram during a speech to the world. Today in my Twitter feed I saw that Edward Tufte himself reTweeted my link to that 2012 story. I am so thrilled that he read it, and presumably knows that his work changed my professional life and how I interact with audiences. Thank you sir. And yes, this does sound like a "fan boy" post. I still recommend you take his one day course , whenever it's offered nearby. I see he will be in the DC area 31 March - 2 April 2015. Tweet

This is not a political blog, and I don't intend for this to be a political post. I recently watched Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu's speech to the United Nations on Thursday. I watched it because I am worried about Iran's nuclear weapons program and the Iranian security situation, to be sure. However, what really intrigued me was the red line he actually drew on a diagram, in front of the United Nations. In the video I linked, it takes place at approximately the 26 minute mark. The screen capture at left shows this event. The reason this caught my attention was that it reminded me of the Best Single Day Class Ever , taught by Edward Tufte. I attended his class in 2008 and continue to recommend it. I've since blogged about Tufte on several occasions. Netanyahu's action, to me, seems like pure Tufte. The primary goal of his speech was to tell Iran, and the world, that Israel is setting a "red line" involving Iran's nuclear weapons pr...

Today is Microsoft Patch Tuesday, which means if you so choose you can read posts by the Microsoft Security Response Center like February 2011 Security Bulletin Release . The advisory states "we have 12 bulletins addressing 22 vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows, Office, Internet Explorer, and IIS (Internet Information Services). Three bulletins are rated Critical." Microsoft communicates information about these vulnerabilities using two graphics. The first is "Severity and Exploitability Index": The second is "Bulletin Deployment Priority": I'm not even going to start a discussion about why the first chart shows "risk" and then "impact" (isn't impact a component of risk?) I'm also not going to dwell about how the first column of the second chart has been "overloaded" to include only a small bit of information on the code affected, rather that prominently communicating that data in a column of its own. Instead,...

This week I finished the four main books written by Edward Tufte, namely The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, 2nd ed , Envisioning Information , Visual Explanations , and Beautiful Evidence . I decided not to review them individually at Amazon.com for several reasons. First, I received them as a set 2 1/2 years ago at The Best Single Day Class Ever , what I call Tufte's class. Tufte's class and written work present a single set of ideas and some material is presented from multiple angles in several books. This makes it congnitively difficult for me to review them individually. Second, I did not treat them like other books I read, meaning I did not mark them with my own notes and underlining. Frankly the books are like works of art and it would pain me to mark them up! That makes it tough for me to review my reading process and withdraw comments suitable for a book review. Third, so many people have already reviewed the books that I did not feel I would bring ...

Please stop what you're doing and read Mike Cloppert's latest post Security Intelligence: Defining APT Campaigns . Besides very clearly and concisely explaining how to think about APT activity, Mike includes some original Tufte-esque figures to demonstrate APT attribution and moving up the kill chain.

Recently I railed against PowerPoint . In this post I'd like to congratulate Black Hat and some of their Briefings speakers for submitting white papers, not just PowerPoint presentations. This evening while cleaning out a tmp directory I noticed a copy of a white paper by IBM's Tom Cross from Black Hat DC 2010 titled Exploiting Lawful Intercept to Wiretap the Internet . The paper describes Tom's analysis of Cisco's implementation of CALEA for law enforcement-directed wiretaps. The paper is 18 pages, but the last 3 are basically citations. It's a great piece of work which I wish I had read earlier. For me, this paper emphasized how much of a failure it is to try to deliver complicated information in PowerPoint form. I got more out of taking 20 minutes to read Tom's 15 pages of material than I could have trying to make sense out of his 41 slides. Tom is a good writer whose paper delivers solid arguments. Rather than just praise the paper and slam the Powe...

Last year I attended The Best Single Day Class Ever , taught by Prof. Tufte. He changed my outlook on PowerPoint for ever. Today in FCW magazine I found a pointer to 8 PowerPoint Train Wrecks , like the slide Bill Gates is presenting at left. While following some of the linked presentations, I came across this line from the shmula blog : While at Amazon, we were all told by Divine Fiat that ALL presentations — regardless of kind, cannot ever be on Powerpoint. Period. Bezos prefers prose and actual thoughts slapped in a report — an actual paper report with paragraphs, charts, sentences, an executive summary, introduction of problem, research approach and findings (body of paper), conclusions and recommendations — not choppy, half-thoughts on a gazillion slides. Thank goodness. I am not crazy after all. That same blog post makes other good points, and links to an imagined Barack Obama "Yes We Can" PowerPoint deck . Hilarious. Richard Bejtlich is teaching new classes in ...

Please see Black Hat USA 2008 Wrap-Up: Day 1 for the first part of this two-part post. Day two of the Black Hat USA 2008 Briefings began much better than day one. Rod Beckström, Director of the National Cyber Security Center in DHS, delivered today's keynote. I had read articles like WhiteHouse Taps Tech Entrepreneur For Cyber Defense Post so I wasn't sure what to think of Mr. Beckström. It turns out his talk was excellent. If Mr. Beckström had used a few less PowerPoint slides, I would have classified him as a Edward Tufte -caliber speaker. I especially liked his examination of history for lessons applicable to our current cyber woes. He spoke to the audience in our own words, calling the US an "open source community," the Declaration of Independence and Constitution our "code," the Civil War a "fork," and so on. Very smart. For example, Mr. Beckström provided context for the photo at left of Union Intelligence Service chief Allan Pinke...

I had the great fortune to attend Edward Tufte 's one day class Presenting Data and Information . I only knew Tufte from advertisements in the Economist. For example, the image at left was frequently used as an ad in the print magazine. I had not read any of his books although I knew of his criticism of PowerPoint, specifically with respect to the Challenger disaster. This was the best one day class I have ever taken. It profoundly altered the way I think about presenting information and making arguments. If any part of your professional life involves delivering presentations, you must attend this class. It's a complete bargain for the price. I would like to see every professional at my company take this course. Following Tufte's advice would provide the single biggest productivity improvement and corresponding "return on investment" we are likely to see in my tenure. There is no way for me to summarize Tufte's course. You should attend yourself...