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Our Blogs Open Sauce - A GNU perspective Talking security with Bruce Almighty | Talking security with Bruce Almighty |
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| by Sam Varghese | |
| Friday, 01 February 2008 | |
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Page 4 of 6 So there's never been physical threats or anything like that? I've never got physical threats, no. I believe I'm perceived as someone with integrity. Even if you disagree with what I say, I'd like to think it's obvious that I don't have an agenda, that I'm not trying to wreck somebody personally, that I'm just saying what I think because I think it's important to say it. And I think that helps. It's remarkable that inspite of all this, you have come to be known as someone of absolute integrity. A couple of things - there's value in my doing that. When Counterpane became a company, I made it very clear that having me shill for the company would not be in its best interests. But the value of me being associated with Counterpane is because I'm me, and if I lose that Bruce-ness, that integrity, then I lose that value. And when BT bought Counterpane it's the same thing. You don't want me becoming the BT security spokesman. British Telecom? British Telecom. They bought us in October of '06. And I said, 'look, if you expect that, this won't work. As soon as you say, you can't write this, you can't say this, I want you to say that, we need to be on the phone when you're talking to a reporter, I'm going to leave'. But there is value, enormous value for BT in having me as an independent security spokesman. And as long as BT recognises that value, that will be great. And BT's been great. They've never said, 'I want to be around when you talk to a reporter'. They've never said, 'I want to approve what you write. I want to read what you say before you've said it.' They'd never say, 'This is our campaign, and these are your talking points for the month.' BT's been a good company to work for. They do great research which I'm involved in. I do some of their company events. But they don't want me shilling for the company. They want me being me. So it's working out great. I do try to walk that fine line, and I've been lucky to find employers that recognise the value. That's the way it works. One more thing I find amazing about you is you have an excellent open, dialogue with the media, whoever it is. And you're not a person who says, 'no, I can't speak to so-and-so'. This has served you remarkably well in your career. You know, I like to think I'm a media slut, basically. I used to say I'm a media whore, but then I realised I didn't get paid. But I think my job, such as it is, is to communicate security to as wide an audience as possible. So it's important, I mean, the press is how the public get their security information. But you've always written good stuff. There's a lot of press that's lousy out there. And anything I can do to help that, to fix that, I try very hard. Whether it's a big publication, local, national or international, it's all valuable. And especially in the world of internet and blogging and email and forwarding you never know what it is that you write and say that will influence people. So you can't just say, 'I speak to the American press. I speak to the national press. I'm not going to talk to the IT press anymore'. Especially in something like an interview, because that's easy. In speaking, it's harder. I get three or four speaking invites a week. I have to say no to most of them, because I just can't do it all. And there I have to pick and choose. But for talking to the media, I don't yet have to pick and choose. Someday I might. I may have to say I can only do four interviews today, so you three I'm going to have say no. If that day comes I'll have to do a triage. But until then I can talk to everybody. I think it's important to do so. |
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