Memos from Quarantine #14: Here Comes the Sun

As we now count weeks, not days, of being in COVID-19 quarantine, there’s plenty to find discouraging.

The children are all home without their friends, and school is likely done for the year.

The shops, restaurants, theaters and sports arenas are all shuttered. The parks and beaches are closed. “Eating out” is literally just that – cook a burger on the grill and enjoy it in the solitude of your own backyard.

Easter is on Sunday, and we’d better rally for that because – guess what? – New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has declared the Easter Bunny an “essential worker.” There will be eggs to hide.

But just when I sit down on a Tuesday morning and start to feel a twinge of “This is it?” … I look outside and see a beautiful sunrise that reminds me: Oh, yeah, sunny, 60 degrees, and spring really is here.

Although there’s no doubt that this week and next will be when the US sees the worst impact of the coronavirus … and I don’t want to minimize that. 1.3 million COVID-19 cases in the world, 74,000 deaths globally – 10,000 in the U.S. – those aren’t trivial numbers. Those are lives and families and tragedies.

But there are signs that quarantine is working. We’re starting to see a slowdown in the growth of new infections, which is exactly what social distancing is supposed to do. If we can stay the course for a while longer, we can be optimistic. We can curb the spread.

I’m encouraged, too, by the response I see in my professional circles. For instance, I had a conversation last week with Anahi Santiago, CISO at ChristianaCare, a Delaware-based health system. And while the interview was sparked by the pandemic and how she and her team are responding to the needs of securing a new remote workforce and supporting the emergency healthcare needs, it quickly turned into a discussion of telehealth advances.

New ways to work, new appreciation for technology and security - a kickstart for digital transformation. Positive achievements are emerging from crisis management.

You can see my interview with Anahi here:

I’m also encouraged by the virtual events my own company is kicking off this week. We’re well known for our global Fraud and Breach Summits, as well as the Executive Roundtable dinners we conduct worldwide – live events, all. Well, in the “New Now” all the live events are virtual, and they begin on Thursday with a virtual roundtable discussion on the topic of SIEM and EDR – What Are the Right Roles? I’m co-hosting the roundtable with friend Sam Curry, CSO of Cybereason, and we got together the other day to jumpstart the discussion. You can see our chat here:

After weeks of ruminating on bandwidth and fraud and unsecured devices and networks, it’s nice to be talking about telehealth and threat hunting and SOCs.

Just like after a winter that ended with the cruelest of human experiences, it’s great to see grass growing, trees budding and to have the bunnies and deer in the backyard again.

And, hey … here comes the sun.