markofu’s blog

Firstly, in this time of great stress and difficulty with many challenges across the world, we (David Rook & I) both realise how lucky we are to still have jobs and that those jobs can be done remotely from home. In some ways, these jobs greatly differ, in others, they’re very much the same. Although routines may sound boring or tedious, with the increased pressure, we’ve found they’ve actually resulted in more freedom and relaxation. We figured it’d be fun to share how our routines look as we try to get through the “Crisis Working from Home” period. They’ve modified somewhat since the lockdown started, though outside of spending a lot more time at home, probably not as much as we thought. Mark 07:00-07:30 ::  Either I wake or I’m woken by my kids, but either way I rarely set an alarm.  I have found that my routine is 30 minutes later during Covid, as before Covid, I was in the gym by 07:20.  I usually make a beeline for the coffee machine, where I seek out an espress...

So firstly, we obviously failed at our promise in our first post, i.e. we didn’t post an article every few months. Both of us did contribute to the   Leadership Tribe of Hackers book   so that makes the failure a little less, right???   Anyway, in this post, we wanted to share what we have found to have worked for the Security teams at Riot Games during the Covid pandemic.  Like Chris Hymes described  here , we pivoted early (before the “stay at home” order) to collaborate with IT (and teams across Riot) to ensure there was a secure and reliable “work from home” experience for Rioters. As challenging as this emergent work was, the more difficult and ambiguous challenge arose after-implementation.  Surely, the pressure was off as Rioters were now able to work from home such that Riot could securely deliver new games, transition to a  remote broadcast for eSports , onboard new vendors (to help further with “ wfh ”) and do their usual day jobs? That wasn'...

 A question that I have received a lot over the last few years is: What are good books about managing and leading people in InfoSec? So to help prevent others from making the many mistakes and blunt approaches that I have made, here's a list of such books with a short note on why I feel it's a good read and why I've found the content helpful. P.S. If you don't want to read books,  the best thing to start with as a leader is being a good listener! High Output Management This is the management bible in many ways. It's a truly fantastic book that describes how to lead, manage your team(s) and how to best spend your time on what’s important. It’s survived the rest of time, being published first in 1983, and although this is over 30 years later, this book is still highly relevant and educational. Principles This was an amazing read - in fact I think it is actually a pretty phenomenal gift of knowledge from Ray Dalio to us all. Clearly both Dalio and Bridgewater aren’t fo...