Logging, Monitoring, Security!

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Anonymous at 11:21 on 18 Apr 2015

why the f are you cursing so much.

f!!!

Anonymous at 11:27 on 18 Apr 2015

The cursing is unnecessary, the talks are shorter than the time allotted, and "Logging, Monitoring, Security!" contains little to no useful information around security..

Talk ran fairly short and was a bit lacking in content, though what was there was good: real experiences, their consequences, and how to avoid them. Could stand to cover how instead of just why to adopt these practice. Slides appeared to be more of an aid for the speaker than the audience. Speak more slowly, try to break the habit of filling silence with "uh" or "like."

Anonymous at 11:31 on 18 Apr 2015

Would love to rate this talk higher. The subject is very important, but the presenter could benefit from recording and watching his presentation, comparatively with the other presenters.

Pro: critical subject matter, excellent examples, some valuable takeaways
Con: starts by insulting the audience, see color note below, excessive profanity

Unreadable color combinations:
- yellow text on blue background
- blue text on black background

Anonymous at 12:19 on 18 Apr 2015

Talk was short. Had some good content at the end. Many good examples on why you should log and monitor for security purposes. The excessive cursing was a turnoff around 1/4 through and started to become awkward for the

Anonymous at 14:04 on 18 Apr 2015

spoke way too fast. the mic was too loud. please respect your audience and refrain from using profanity. lacking details... your talking examples were fine, but support it more detailed slides.

Reiterating what a lot of others have said

1. The talk was very short and needed some additional content
2. Some swearing is sometimes inevitable, but excessive swearing is off-putting
3. Practice speaking without filling in spaces with "Fill in" words
4. The examples and stories were EXCELLENT - but you need to follow up each one with concrete technical examples on how to fix things and what to plan for in actual projects - also remember not everyone has a sysadmin so even that kind of information should be taught as well (pick your own sysadmin's head for the things they do if you don't know before the talk)

I was looking forward to learning specifics on logging and monitoring ... what tools exist and what do the tools do / don't do for us. Comparison maybe between tools. What things should be logged or monitored.

I was disappointed, but I hope the speaker works on improving the content of his talk and his presentation. Add more detail to real life examples ... specifically WHAT would have helped prevent the real life scenario from happening.

I think this talk has a lot of potential. I liked the personal stories of why we should be logging and monitoring. One of the things I would like to see are what tools you implemented to solve these problems. This will give people a place to start when looking into starting logging and monitoring.

So, I must repeat the concern for cursing that others have mentioned but I think this talk suffered much more from a lack of organization and preparation. When your talk goes less than half of the allotted time it speaks to preparation and lack of run-throughs/practice. That said, there was some good ideas and content buried inside.

I think this presentation has a lot of potential: everyone knows (or should know) why logging and monitoring are vital for maintaining a secure application, but not everyone is a system administrator or even has one on their team. If you're working in a situation where you don't have a sysAdmin on staff, what happens when your system gets compromised? Essentially, developers should know at least the basics - what logging and monitoring IS, why it's important, and what tools are available that can help us implement at least a minimum level of security.

What this talk delivered was several very-pertinent anecdotes about some security situations Cory has faced to-date in his career, and the real-world (re: $$) implications that resulted from these security holes. Knowing what's going on with the system through logging and monitoring can help mitigate these situations when they occur, which, of course is why they are important. After a few stories were told, attendees were given a list of tools with short descriptions about what they did, then the floor was opened for questions.

As an attendee, I would like to see this talk restructured to first focus on describing logging and monitoring - what they are, why they are important, and what problems they help solve. The stories are useful as supporting evidence for why logging and monitoring are needed, and illustrating the consequences of not implementing them. Though I understand specific situations are covered under an NDA, some visual examples would be helpful, too - replicating a security hole in code so users can visualize what they should be looking for would bolster the security portion of the talk, as well. Lastly, talking about each tool used individually, indicating why it's useful, and maybe visually showing what it is/does, and describing some of the alternatives out there will raise developer awareness for the tools that are available.

I didn't think this was a bad talk by any stretch, but giving it focus and keeping your audience's needs in mind will go a long way toward improving it.