Re: Who stay focused? (was: [Fwd: Question])

["Behm, Jeff" <jbehm () burnsmcd com>]

On Tuesday, April 14, 2009 1:22 PM, Jean-Denis Gorin so spoke:
> So, my question is: among all of you, old timer firewall wizards, 
> how many stay focused to infosec

</quasi-lurker>

Don't know that I'm really a true "old-timer[1]," but...I have lived
through the waning days of Gauntlet, getting replaced by the *more*
secure (yeah, whatever) Checkpoint, getting replaced by the more
advanced (ok, cheaper) PIX/ASA. Trying to explain the benefits of App
Proxy vs. Packet Filter proxy to layer 8 is obviously futile (at least
it was in my case).

In this economy, it seems to me that unless one is in a large-to-huge
enterprise, I'd bet not many are able to focus *strictly* on only
infosec. While that's still my primary function (and has been for over a
decade), I'm not able to focus solely on that. Now, along with "infosec"
there's Windows server implementation (on VMWare, on standalone
hardware, etc.), Unix admin, infrastructure architecture, and managing a
variety of security "appliances" that, while not necessarily perfect,
are much better than before we had them.

And yes, there's always the "do the best you can with what you have to
work with" mantra, that, like it or not, does exist blah, blah, blah[2].

> and had kept a global view of infosys) ?
Global view of infosys? How can one *not* have a global view. Maybe I
take that for granted (but shouldn't), because if I had a nickel for
every time a developer/implementer could have made things better if they
would have had the "big picture" view...

Jeff

[1] Definition of "old timer", please? (or perhaps maybe I shouldn't
want to know that answer)
[2] Not trying to resurrect a previous thread of "you're either secure
or your not vs. how much security do you want to buy?"

<quasi-lurker>
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