Author: Adam Firestone

adam-firestone-2018Adam Firestone is the Editor-in-Chief of United States Cybersecurity Magazine as well as a member of the Security Industry Association’s Cyber Advisory Board. Mr. Firestone has more than 22 years of experience in the security, defense, intelligence, and government contracting industries. He is an accomplished solutions architect, senior engineering executive with experience in advanced cryptology and identity management technologies, has led a cybersecurity organization, and the defense and federal subsidiary of a global Cloud-native middleware company. Mr. Firestone has a patented invention for ensuring multi-level data security. Additionally, Mr. Firestone is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University. He graduated from Yale University, is a former United States Army officer, and also possesses a legal background, having practiced law in New York.

@ACFirestone

From the Winter 2020 Issue

Reassessing the Cyber Workforce Gap

Author(s):

Adam Firestone, Editor-in-Chief , United States Cybersecurity Magazine

AF Workforce Gap image

Epidemiology, with respect to public health, is often used as an analogy when discussing cybersecurity.  The two are strikingly similar, encompassing notions of impacted populations, specialist expertise, containment, and cure. Education is acknowledged as a primary means of reducing epidemiological risk, especially with respect to HIV/AIDS.1  It has this effect by generating an ability to … Read more

From the Fall 2019 Issue

Running on a Treadmill: Breaking Through Ingrained, Ineffective Solution Habits

Author(s):

Adam Firestone, Editor-in-Chief , United States Cybersecurity Magazine

harmful-products

Christopher McDougall’s 2009 book Born to Run:  A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen paints a damning picture of an industry dedicated to a profitable but harmful product line. With each successive product generation, the extent of the damage caused by reliance on the product grows, driving purchases of … Read more

From the Fall 2019 Issue

From the Editor-in-Chief

Author(s):

Adam Firestone, Editor-in-Chief , United States Cybersecurity Magazine

Hello, Albert Einstein is widely reputed to have said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results. While Einstein never actually uttered these words, they are a useful illustration of much of what happens across the American cybersecurity community.  Breached? Conventional wisdom says that the root cause is … Read more

From the Spring 2019 Issue

An Information Security Triality: Balancing Security, Surveillance, and Convenience

Author(s):

Adam Firestone, Editor-in-Chief , United States Cybersecurity Magazine

Information Triality

Information security cultural iconography focuses on heroic and demonic archetypes, resulting in a pageant of evocative, emotional imagery that influences reportage, regulation, acquisition, enterprise governance, and the choices made by individuals with respect to their digital personae. The angels (in the epic struggle in the wires between good and evil) are the network defenders. They … Read more

From the Spring 2019 Issue

From the {EDITOR-IN-CHIEF}

Author(s):

Adam Firestone, Editor-in-Chief , United States Cybersecurity Magazine

Hello, As Cassius said to Brutus in Act I, Scene 2 of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves.” And so it is with the American cybersecurity community writ large. At the risk of igniting the fires of controversy, it’s time to draw a line in the … Read more

From the Winter 2019 Issue

Irresistible Forces and Immovable Objects: When National Security and Cybersecurity Collide

Author(s):

Adam Firestone, Editor-in-Chief , United States Cybersecurity Magazine

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Security is inherently binary, like being alive or being married. Just as you can’t be “almost married” or “almost alive” (Schrodinger’s cat notwithstanding), you can’t be “mostly secure.”. There’s no way to create a solution that will permit compromise only by certain entities under certain carefully delineated circumstances while defeating all other malicious access attempts. … Read more

From the Winter 2019 Issue

from the Editor-in-Chief

Author(s):

Adam Firestone, Editor-in-Chief , United States Cybersecurity Magazine

Hello, At the beginning of 2019, the American cybersecurity community finds itself at a crossroads. Perhaps it might be more appropriate to say that cybersecurity policymakers, technologists, and practitioners find themselves fighting a battle on two fronts. On one side, there’s the traditional hostile cyberspace. We expect this. We’ve trained for this. We’ve built for … Read more

From the Fall 2018 Issue

from the {Editor-in-Chief}

Author(s):

Adam Firestone, Editor-in-Chief , United States Cybersecurity Magazine

Hello, 2018 marks the 15th anniversary of National Cyber Security Awareness Month (NCSAM), which is observed every October. NCSAM, a collaborative effort between government and industry, is intended to help ensure that every American has the resources needed to stay safer and more secure online. The 2018 NCSAM will focus on consumer cyber safety, recognizing … Read more

From the Summer 2018 Issue

TEOTWAWKI: The Impending Cryptopocalypse

Author(s):

Adam Firestone, Editor-in-Chief , United States Cybersecurity Magazine

AF-TEOTWAWKI-header

In 1889, the New York publisher John Wiley & Sons published an obscure scientific piece by Daniel S. Troy titled The Cosmic Law of Thermal Repulsion: An Essay Suggested by the Projection of a Comet’s Tail. On page 60 of this text, Troy suggests that if the forces of “thermal repulsion” or “gravitational attraction” were … Read more