Yesterday’s storm toppled a big eucalyptus tree across the backyard fence.

Can you guess what we get to do today?

Last night, I was experimenting with IFTTT to see if it would automatically announce my blog posts on Twitter and LinkedIn.  Last night, it worked on LinkedIn, but not Twitter.  Apparently there was a problem with authentication to my Twitter account. That fixed, it seemed to work just fine this morning … albeit not very quickly.

Much has been written and said recently about using data analytics to mine data for existing or probable security breaches. This morning, thanks to a tweet by @RohanPinto, I learned about a small, but practical application of this science … hunting Zebras.

In a Dark Reading article entitled, “Five Ways To Better Hunt The Zebras In Your Network,” Robert Lemos talked about zebras:

… Not the kind on that roam the African savannah, but the kind that sit at computers behind the corporate firewall.

Zebras are the employees, and their computers, who are doing something odd. Defenders are right to want to protect the zebras in their network, but defenders should occasionally “radio tag” and follow their zebras to see where they go.

He then proposed five steps to fight the zebras who might do you harm

1. Know the network
2. Collect all the data
3. Find the foolish zebras
4. Combine with threat intelligence
5. Check back on your foolish zebras

It is worth the time to read the details of each step.

Happy Hunting!

This morning, I stumbled across a feature of Twitter that allowed me to download an archive of my tweets – all 11,651 of them, dating back to May 2007 when I first got on this crazy ride.  Here is my first, ever so profound tweet …

… and a graphic navigator showing the relative number of tweets I posted each each month.