Reading List for Week Ending 6/27/09

I read an awful lot of articles, blog posts, and books and thought you readers might find at least some of them useful. Each week I’ll post links to the ones that I found most interesting or useful. I’ve also created a category, Reading List, so you can easily find and review these lists at your leisure.

Topics included this week are leadership, certifications, and information assurance.

Leadership

• Great Communicators are Great Explainers. To be a great leader you have to communicate with those you lead. “What does it mean and why are we doing it?” As a leader you have to consistently communicate this to get your people on board. Read this one if you lead people or plan to lead people.
• Last week I wrote a post about having fun at work, and then I read this post by Seth Godin. You can use this approach to have fun, and improve your customer service or operations or anything that you want people to improve. Make a game out of it. Look for the behavior you want, and you will find it. Have your people look for it and they will find it and will change their behavior to match.
• 5 Things I Wish They Taught Me in School. A good post by Paul Gardner regarding productivity. The sooner you learn these skills, the more productive, less stressed and happier you will be.
• Why Hope Matters Now A good article discussing how leaders can and should express hope to help improve their businesses.
• Deloitte study on use of social media in the workplace. Businesses are at risk of suffering a loss of reputation.
• Q&A with Jacqueline Kosecoff, chief executive of Prescription Solutions, a UnitedHealth Group company, chief executive of Prescription Solutions, a UnitedHealth Group company. Good advice for people, particularly women in management positions. NY Times article and you’ll need a (free) login.
  

Certifications

• juecker.net Jacob just earned his CCIE and he is writing a blog to help others. He created his own blueprint and has posted some questions and answers to sample problems. He’s just getting started, so be sure to get his RSS feed.

Information assurance

• Washington Post article about hacking franchises. This may not be news to some of you, but there are organized groups that control large groups of hacked computers and sell access to those computers to spammers and other criminal types.
• Security Guidelines created by public and private security experts. This list should help you prioritize your security efforts. You can read the article and / or see a list of the controls. This includes a list of Quick Wins that you can implement first, but beware, “… that a Quick Win does not necessarily mean that these subcontrols provide comprehensive protection against the most critical attacks. The intent of identifying Quick Win areas is to highlight where security can be improved rapidly. These items are identified in this document with the label of “QW.”
• Blog post by Dr Anton Chuvakin reviewing the merits (or lack of same) of a letter sent by merchants to the PCI Council. This is a must read if you deal with PCI.
• Deloitte study on use of social media in the workplace. Businesses are at risk of suffering a loss of reputation.

Tagged as: CCIE, Certifications, great communicators, Information Assurance, information security, Leadership, paul gardner, PCI, productivity, SANS, security experts, seth godin