When I remodeled my bathroom a few years ago, my initial plan included only a few things: I wanted it to feel bigger (it’s a small space), and everything needed to be replaced – the utilities, furniture, walls, floors, and window.

I know what I like, and I know what I want, but I don’t know the first thing about designing a new bathroom.  Add to that a full-time job and three children under the age of 10, I knew I needed to hire someone who could take complete control of the project while still delivering everything I wanted.

I hired a contractor who could not only do the physical labor, but one who had the expertise to plan and design the whole thing. He asked me questions about which members of the family use the bathroom, and how often, in order to deliver the most relevant plan that fit our lifestyle. Through his consultation, he discovered that this bathroom was the main bathroom in the house, heavily used by our family and visitors alike.  Based on that fact, he recommended a redesign that provided the optimum privacy for our family of 5 – something I hadn’t even considered when initially launching the project. Read More »

Tags: advanced services, AS, FISMA, General Risk Assessment, network optimization, planning, Professional Services, Sentara Healthcare, services, University of Texas Health Center

A Republican task force recently released a limited set of near-term recommendations for cybersecurity legislation that emphasized voluntary standards instead of regulation. Interesting. Several words jump out at me in that sentence. “Voluntary standards”, “near-term”, “not regulated”. I paraphrase.

Seems to me that something as important as a task force that was put together should be working on an overall strategy to address cybersecurity rather than trying to patch holes in the dike. Read More »

Tags: cybersecurity, DHS, FISMA, government, legislation, private sector, security, vulnerabilities, White House Cyber Plan