Published December 14th, 2004
in Entrepreneurship.
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I live, breath and sleep SecurityLab. It is my only focus these days and I am 100% committed to seeing it succeed. So it can be frustrating when trying to explain my vision of the company to others who don’t have the same level of dedication that I do. Sometimes I just want to shout “can’t you see it? its right there! open your eyes and take a step back.”
Of course the problem is usually not others but me and my ability to clearly explain my vision. So I am working on this. It has been a process and I think I’m getting better. The benefit is that even if someone doesn’t agree with my vision they can give me feedback on how to shape it and that has been helpful.
Sometimes people just don’t give a crap about my vision and are only concerned with how I can improve their financial situation. Initially this was upsetting to me, but I am working on this too. After all if my vision is great or if it sucks the bottom line is how do they benefit. So I am working on clearly explaining the benefits.
When I first came to Boston I worked at another security startup called CORE Security. They had and still have an amazing CEO named Paul Paget. Since the Boston office was small I had a chance to work closely with Paul. I was constantly amazed at his ability to lead the company and reinsure all of the employees that what we were doing was right, necessary and progressing the company’s vision. I eventually left the company but I learned from Paul that leadership positions at startups require so much more then number crunching. It requires the ability to constantly convince those around you to see the long term vision.
Perhaps my frustration is not from the lack of long term vision from some of those around me but the fact that I wasn’t able to convince them to see it. But I am relaxing and becoming content with the belief that some will see it and others will not. Thats just the nature of vision.
Published December 8th, 2004
in Entrepreneurship.
These days I am working on finalizing the content for SecurityLab first online course offering. If you would like to beta test it drop me an email.
I’ve been meeting with various business people shopping around for someone who would be interested in stepping into the CEO role for the company. This has been an interesting process. Aside from meeting tons of successful business people and growing my network of connections I have discovered that there is a industry of early startup CEO’s who only purpose is to help young startups make it from point A to B usually stepping out and moving on to another venture before the company reaches C. It has been interesting because these guys have amazing track records and I wonder why I haven’t known about them earlier.
On another note. I had my largest single day financial loss while trading. A little ill timed but, lesson learned.
Published December 7th, 2004
in Japan.
Never worked for the Japanese National Government
My work for was Nagano Prefecture not Soumushou which is the national government. Nagano hired me to test their deployment of Juki. The purpose was to verify that the network was safe for its residents to use. I’ve never done any work with Soumushou.
The results of my test lead Nagano to believe that the network was not safe for use, though they suspected it before my test. I have an NDA with Nagano that prevents me from discussing technical details of their network environment. However my report was made public by Nagano and was distributed widely to the media with my name omitted.
In comes PacSec. Nagano had no objections to me discussing the results that were made public and identifying myself. The majority of my presentation was suggestions on how the network in general could be improved and a inside look into the difficulties in performing the test. Its not every penetration test where you have switch cars and check into hotels under false names to avoid the media.
Soumushou, Nagano, the Japanese auditors I performed the test with and a group of lawyers were given the contents of my presentation one month before the conference. The issue is, one hour before my presentation Soumushou told the Japanese organizers (who are government contractors) to cancel my event because they didnt want me talk about Juki Net. And herein lies the problem.
What about the money?
Any proceeds from the court case will be donated to various privacy and freedom of speech organizations in Japan and America minus legal fees.
My Statement Made Day of Lawsuit
Ejovi Nuwere
November 22, 2004
First I should say that this lawsuit has nothing to do with technology or hacking. It has everything to do with freedom of speech. My presentation 10days ago at an international symposium in Tokyo was censored by Soumushou. I planned to present research at this symposium that the government might have disagreed with. However Instead of meeting with me directly and trying to resolve their concerns Soumushou forced the organizers to cancel my talk. What they did was censorship in its most basic form. Soumushou has no right to tell anyone citizen or non-citizen that they can not speak. We should all be entitled to think and speak our own opinion free from government oversight.
I could have chosen to remain silent but by doing so I would become be a poor example to others who wish to speak out and an encouragement to those who wish to censor. My conscious can not permit me to allow this to go unchallenged. This is not about activism it is about democracy and encouraging open dialogue.
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