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DNC Creates 'Cybersecurity Board' Without Any Cybersecurity Experts (techdirt.com)
An anonymous reader writes from a report via Techdirt: The Democratic National Committee has created a "cybersecurity advisory board" to improve its cybersecurity and to "prevent future attacks." Politico reports: "'To prevent future attacks and ensure that the DNC's cybersecurity capabilities are best-in-class, I am creating a Cybersecurity Advisory Board composed of distinguished experts in the field,' interim DNC Chairwoman Donna Brazile wrote in a memo. 'The Advisory Board will work closely with me and the entire DNC to ensure that the party is prepared for the grave threats it faces -- today and in the future.' Members include Rand Beers, former Department of Homeland Security acting secretary; Nicole Wong, former deputy chief technology officer of the U.S. and a former technology lawyer for Google and Twitter; Aneesh Chopra, co-founder of Hunch Analytics and former chief technology officer of the U.S.; and Michael Sussmann, a partner in privacy and data security at the law firm Perkins Coie and a former Justice Department cybercrime prosecutor." What's surprising is that none of these members are cybersecurity experts. Techdirt reports: "If the goal of the board was to advise on cybersecurity policy, then the makeup of it is at least slightly more understandable, but that's not goal. It's to actually improve the cybersecurity of the DNC. Even if the goal were just policy, having someone with actual technology experience with cybersecurity would be sensible."
An acquaintance who is a manager once told me that he can manage anything because, well, managing is managing. Another one suggested to me when I was a teen to go study management because, well, managers will always be needed...
Isn't that a little pretentious and old school like where the boss is the boss, doesn't matter if he is right or wrong or if he knows what he is talking about.
Seems to me hard to understand how a manager can manage something he doesn't know anything about unless he has skilled technical assistants. But how will he evaluate the skills of his assistants? I suppose if the assistants tell him what he wants to hear, it might help.
This is one of the fallacies of modern MBA-style management: management is a specific skill that's the same across all industries.
In it's worst form, it's what gets us CEOs who slash costs and show growth for the first year, then leave with a golden parachute while the company flounders.
If you study management even a little, you realize that the best managers are expert in their respective fields. This is not to say that software managers must be expert coders, but they need to have in mind the capabilities and limitations of the company products, the tools that the coders use, the current marketing trends, and some ad-hoc guesswork as to where the market is going. And also, they should at least know how to code, if not be an expert at it.
Consider: Do you think a generic manager could step in and manager a newspaper without intimate knowledge of the newspaper business? How well do you think that company would do if it actually happened?
Looking at some of Warren Buffet's writings, I note that he has people he trusts that can quickly learn the business and make informed choices that ultimately turn a company around. For example, a troubled company that supplies hardware, his people identified parts that had little profit and were available from other suppliers, as opposed to other parts that had more profit and were unique to the business. That's how he buys distressed companies and turns them around.
This is not what generic MBA-style managers do: learn the business, go into detail, and make strong decisions that benefit the company.
Looking at how GE gets vice-presidents, they always hire from within. They take a director and move him over to another department for a couple of years, and see how well he does. Then they move him again, and in a couple of years move him again. Over time, the directors become very well informed about how the business actually works, and anyone who isn't flexible enough to learn and do well in the business gets weeded out.
GE executives are some of the best managers in the world.
I've worked with a lot of "plug-in" managers who never seem to know where to go or what to do. They take the opinions of their staff as gospel without adding their own expertise, and serve as a simple buffer between the workers and upper management.
Don'tcha just feel good knowing how well Hillary will be keeping the nation secure when you cast that ballot?
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
If nothing else this election has shown how generally we're herded into voting for A or B, where A and B are carefully selected by a few power brokers. The GOP lost control of their election process, and now we have Trump taking a dump on everything Republican. This leaves us with only one realistic choice, because Bernie was railroaded out of the Democratic process.
And honestly, Bernie was the most viable candidate out of the last few realistically standing. Cruz reminds me of an angry born again cookie monster. Trump is a schizoprhenic bi-polar narcissist. Clinton is... Clinton. Bernie was out there but had some realistic ideas, and his crazier crap would never get by Congress anyways. That's part of Congress's job, after all, to rein in presidents.