Tonight I was honored to participate in a delightful dinner at Hotel Monaco in San Francisco, hosted by our friends from PwC.  Ironically, the first topic of conversation around our table was started by Danielle Butke, whom I have known for several years.  Back in June, 2006, I posted on this blog a less-than-flattering photo I took of her taken at the Catalyst Identity Management conference.  I later posted a better photo, but apparently, Danielle has been the subject of a lot of ribbing over the years from her PwC colleagues because of those photos, so she requested tonight that I remove the photos from my  blog.  I am pleased to report that all photos of Danielle have been successfully removed from this blog and my Flickr account.  All that remains are mysterious frames where Danielle’s face used to grace the pages:

But around the dinner table, we agreed that I needed to replace the photos.  We chose Rex Thexton, PwC Identity Management guru extraordinaire, to replace Danielle on my blog.  So here is Rex on the left, striking his best “Velocity” pose. 

Plus, for good measure, on the right is my Oracle colleague Joe Palastro, who happened to be sitting next to me and somewhat reluctantly agreed that I could post his photo.

Sorry about the the grainy photos, but what more can an iPhone offer?

Thank you, my good friends, for a delightful evening and memories!

Here is to a great year ahead of us!

The PwC document, “Findings from the 2011 Global State of Information Security Survey,” states by way of introduction, “As global economic conditions continue to fluctuate, information security hovers in the balance – caught between a new hard-won respect among executives and a painstakingly cautious funding environment.”

The report addresses five areas:

1. Spending: A subtle but enormously meaningful shift
2. Economic context: The leading impacts and strategies
3. Funding and budgets: A balance between caution and optimism
4. Capabilities and breaches: Trends too large to ignore
5. New areas of focus: Where the emerging opportunities lie
6. Global trends: A changing of the guard