29 May 2010

Honor the Fallen

Remember Me



USASOC, Families honor memory of fallen SOF Soldiers
Army Special Operations honors fallen heroes with new Memorial Wall
Memorial Day: What you can do (CNN)

Memorial Flags at Arlington Cemetery



Soldier's ShrineFm 7-21-13 :: Appendix C :: Section III- Memorial Ceremony

Memorial ceremonies are patriotic tributes to deceased soldiers....

In most cases, the unit prepares a program that may include a biographical summary of the deceased soldier with mention of awards and decorations. The following elements are commonly part of a memorial ceremony:
  • Prelude (often suitable music).
  • Posting of the Colors.
  • National Anthem.
  • Invocation.
  • Memorial Tribute (e.g., remarks by unit commander or a friend of the deceased).
  • Scripture Reading.
  • Hymn or other special music.
  • Meditation (quiet moment for attendees to reflect).
  • Benediction.
  • Last Roll Call. This is a final tribute paid by soldiers to their fallen comrade. It has its origin in the accountability roll call conducted by the unit First Sergeant following combat. Although sometimes painful to listen through, the Last Roll is called with the conviction held by soldiers that all unit members will be accounted for, and none will ever be forgotten.
  • Firing of rifle volleys.
  • Taps.

30 March 2010

Information Assurance as a Service and Abstracting Complexity "Away"

The State of the Internet Operating System

We are once again approaching the point at which the Faustian bargain will be made: simply use our facilities, and the complexity will go away. And much as happened during the 1980s, there is more than one company making that promise. We're entering a modern version of "the Great Game", the rivalry to control the narrow passes to the promised future of computing.
In the world of Information Assurance, there is a strong desire from application and service developers to "abstract away" the complexities of security. Think of this in terms of Security-as-a-Service or an Information Assurance Framework in the cloud. This can be accomplished for difficult security functions, such as handling X.509 certificates using Server-based Certificate Validation Protocol (SCVP) and PKI Resource Query Protocol (PRQP). The complexity is "removed" from the relying party to the trusted Validation Authority. Given the difficulty and risk associated with different certificate validation implementations by relying parties (some implemented more securely than others), this abstraction of complexity "away" from relying parties to a trusted Validation Authority run by an "expert" has advantages. The security experts create and control the security context in which applications will work.

It also means that the relying parties have made a "Faustian bargain" with the security experts that take "on the pain of managing complexity" and end up "with a powerful lock-in."