Home on nickselby.com

About

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

An accomplished enterprise management advisor and technology professional, Nick serves on the Board of Directors for the 501(c)(3) non-profit National Child Protection Task Force, a rapid-response task force locating missing children, identifying predators, and fortifying law enforcement’s ability to tackle complex crimes against society’s most vulnerable; and as an advisor to the 501(c)(3) non-profit Sightline Security, which gives non-profits a roadmap to operationalize their cybersecurity.

Audio

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Twice Emmy-nominated (okay, okay, Daytime Emmys*, in 1990 and 1991 but, still, let’s see your Emmy nomination, huh?) sound engineer, producer, and voice artist Nick Selby has what must be charitably called the weirdest career ever. He currently keeps his hand in as an engineer working on tape syncs and field recordings - learn more at tapesync.pro including a look at his enviable gear collection.

Nick has been the co-host with Chris Swan of the Tech Debt Burndown podcast since 2021. From 2017 to 2018, Nick was co-host with Peter Moskos of the Quality Policing Podcast, where in 2017 he reported, produced, voiced, and edited the long-form report, Divert to Where? Mental Health Policing in America. He was the voice, executive producer, and lead writer of the Trail of Bits Podcast in 2022.

Books

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Nick is author or co-author of several books.

Security, Policing, and Intelligence

Titles include Cyber Survival Manual: From Identity Theft to The Digital Apocalypse and Everything in Between (2020 and 2017, Weldon Owen); In Context: Understanding Police Killings of Unarmed Civilians (2016, Contextual Press/Calibre Press); Blackhatonomics: An Inside Look at the Economics of Cybercrime (Syngress, 2012), and was technical editor of Investigating Internet Crimes (Syngress, 2013).

Travel

Titles include the first edition (1995) of Lonely Planet Russia, Ukraine & Belarus, and Lonely Planet St. Petersburg; first and second editions of Lonely Planet Florida and Lonely Planet Miami; first edition of Lonely Planet Texas, first edition of Lonely Planet Germany, the fourth edition of Lonely Planet Brazil; and contributions to a range of other Lonely Planet titles including Western Europe and Scandinavian Europe.

Contact

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Happy to hear from you!

Disambiguation

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

A public service, disambiguating the Nick Selbys and homonyms.

Nick Selby, Georgia Tech Viral Speechmaker

Nick Selby, Climber of Mount Everest

Nick Selby, Principal Consultant at Bridewell Consulting

Nikki Selby, Co-founder at The Jab Lab

Nick Selby, HR Specialist at Department of the Army

Nick Selby, Interim CEO of Lupaca Diamond Company Limited

Nick Selby, Telecommunications attorney

Nick Selby, Professor of American Literature, University of East Anglia

Nick Selby, Fine wines seller at Uncorked

House

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Our beautiful house, which sits on five acres, is off a shared, private road 20 minutes from Hudson, and we’re selling it!

Great Room looking East

We’re selling (or possibly, for the right family, or small group of friends, renting it unfurnished) our beautiful, ~4,000 ²ft (372 ²M) house.

Looking north at the kitchen

The house is isolated and private. It has 6kW of solar power, making electric bills in spring, summer, and autumn very inexpensive (like <$50). The house has a sauna, two-and-a-half bathrooms (newly renovated), three bedrooms, and a 1200 square-foot (111.5 ²M) great-room which is combined kitchen, dining room, and living room.

Neumann

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The Neumann U87ai and EA87 shockmount

This microphone was my very favorite, but I have recently moved to a pair of TLM 103s and must reluctantly part with it.

I am selling the kit for $2900, firm.

I bought it in January 2022 for $3,695.00, and it has been in my non-smoking building the entire time. Lovingly cared for, it functions absolutely perfectly. The set I am selling includes the wooden presentation box, the EA 87 elastic-shock mount, and the WS 87 foam windscreen, but not the microphone cable.

Popo

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Nick began providing intelligence to law enforcement agencies as a volunteer in 2008. In 2010, he attended and graduated the Tarrant County College Law Enforcement Academy and began field training at the City of Dalworthington Gardens, TX Department of Public Safety under then-chief Bill Waybourn.

During field training, 2010

He served DWG as a volunteer reserve officer for three and a half years, during which time he responded to or self-initiated some 658 logged police calls, including 347 solo traffic stops (during which he made 26 arrests for offenses ranging from outstanding warrants to driving on suspended license); served 107 (mainly misdemeanor) arrest warrants, and served with or assisted in 24 felony arrest warrants with DWG officers as part of a task force; conducted two dozen criminal investigations including credit card theft, cyber crime, and fraud; wrote and served evidentiary search warrants, released and transported prisoners; responded and assisted at domestic disturbances, fights in progress (serving as primary or backup officer in 15 incidents involving a use of non-deadly force), vehicle fires, structure fires and a grassland-fire. All without incident or a single filed complaint.

Security

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Nick has more than 25 years of experience working as an information and physical security practitioner and executive in the public and private sectors. He has helped his clients safeguard some of the world’s most mission-critical systems.

From life-preserving cyber and physical security functions in the financial services, technology, manufacturing, chemical, petroleum, and healthcare industries and in law enforcement, to critical cyber systems that protect billions of dollars of assets and cryptoassets in the financial services sector, Nick has made certain they stay secure, available, and that they work as intended.

Thanks

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Success!

Thanks for your comment. If it dosn’t get trapped by the spam filter, or sent by the Internet Gods on a one-way trip to Pluto, I will receive it and reply, usually within 24 hours.

Thanks, Nick

Articles

Sat, 17 Sep 2022 18:00:00 +0600

Articles Index

A Privacy-Respecting Percent Calculator

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 15:00:00 +0100

A free percentage calculator I used for years has never offered a paid option, though I would have paid for one. It’s a simple little troika of scripts to calculate percentages, easier to use than to build myself. But when my ad blocker blocked their scripts from harvesting information about me that would help them throw ads at me, suddenly I was confronted with a full-screen alert, disguised as a technical error on my end.

Percentage Calculator

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

About this tool

Then, to make more money, they faked technical errors to trick ad-blocker users into disabling privacy protections. It took about an hour to make this free, tracker-free replacement. No cookies or trackers. Ever. Enjoy.

DocuSign UX Update: Product Suicide and a Digital Unicycle Clown

Tue, 03 Feb 2026 06:57:01 +0100

A couple of weeks ago I logged in to Docusign for the same thing I always do: get a document signed by me and someone in another location. That’s the product’s entire purpose. Docusign had “updated” its user interface. Gone was the simple workflow: upload file, add recipients, mark signature fields, send. In its place: a murderously distracting AI widget that made Clippy look like an old friend. More like the dancing Fig Newton, the digital equivalent of a guy on a unicycle pointing at himself with both thumbs shouting, “Look at me! Look at me!”

From AI FOMO to AI Strategy

Wed, 07 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0100

On New Year’s Eve, I published a piece in Inc.com that I’ve been wanting to write for months: “How FOMO Is Turning AI Into a Cybersecurity Nightmare.” I wrote it because the security, legal, and governance risks aren’t hypothetical anymore. They’re showing up in breach notifications, tribunal rulings, and incident reports.

The First Question Security Should Ask on AI Projects is a terrific article by my friend Rich Mogull at the Cloud Security Alliance that serves as a companion to this one.

Solving SBOM Scrambling

Fri, 02 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0100

Recently I did a podcast with Viktor Petersson, and we discussed his open source project, Sbomify. He has observed what I have about Software Bill of Materials (SBOM): they’re increasingly required for commercial due diligence, yet remain too hard for many companies to produce.

Unlike me, though, Viktor has done something to solve the problem.

The SBOM Problem Nobody Wants to Talk About

During customer or acquisition information security due diligence calls, I regularly witness this exchange:

Tech Debt Surveys Bring Order to Chaos

Fri, 21 Nov 2025 00:00:01 +0200

When executives ask why features are taking so long to deliver, engineering leaders often respond with, “we have a significant tech debt problem.” To the engineer, this describes deadlines untethered to system realities, unbalanced pressures requiring workarounds, and manual processes. To the executive, none of that is clear, and this sounds like a poor manager complaining about working conditions. Neither gets closer to solving the problem, and both grow more frustrated with each iteration.

SaaS Cloud Monitoring with Obsidian Security

Mon, 06 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0100

Organizations regardless of vertical are more dependent on Software as a Service (SaaS) tools and data than ever before. Many CEOs don’t truly appreciate how fundamentally their organizations have changed in the past decade. M365, Google Workspace, GitHub, Slack, Atlassian, Salesforce, and the HR IT stack are now standard, while AI tools demand connections to data increasingly stored in your SaaS cloud.

Executives are often surprised that traditional security information and event management systems don’t handle SaaS data well without significant customization work. Your SIEM sees network traffic, endpoint activity, and infrastructure logs. It often doesn’t see what’s happening inside your SaaS applications where most of your business operates.

Tech debt isn’t an ‘IT issue.’ It’s a business strategy problem.

Thu, 21 Aug 2025 20:00:01 +0200

This article appeared in Fast Company’s “Ask the Experts” section on 21 August 2025. Read the excerpt below, and please click through for the full text.

Every CEO knows the feeling of promised features taking months longer than expected, simple changes breaking unrelated systems, and top engineers fighting fires more than they build the future. Welcome to technical debt: the detritus of yesterday’s innovation that increasingly blocks progress today.

The crucial reality is that tech debt isn’t an “IT issue”; it’s a business strategy problem that directly impacts your bottom line, competitive positioning, and organizational resilience. Left unmanaged, tech debt will quietly erode your margins, reduce your velocity, increase your fragility, and throttle your growth.

Managing Tech Debt: A Strategic Imperative for Innovation

Wed, 27 Nov 2024 00:01:00 +0100

We’ve noted that tech debt is inevitable in innovation. The question isn’t whether your organization has it but how much and how well it’s managed. Proactive leaders deliberately decide where and how much tech debt to incur during product development. Once product-market fit is achieved, they implement processes to document and address tech debt during each sprint.

Whether you tackle tech debt continuously or set aside targeted time for it, you need to keep it documented somewhere. Without these measures, tech debt becomes an uncontrolled burden, tracked only by tribal knowledge. This creates single points of failure, making organizations dependent on specific individuals to fix increasingly frequent and severe failures.

Why Tech Debt Matters

Wed, 23 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0100

When software developers cut corners, skipping essential steps to get a product out the door, they’re taking on what the industry calls “technical debt.” Think of it as building on shaky foundations. Unlike business debt, which can be strategic, tech debt doesn’t age well. Over time, it compounds, leading to fragility, crashes, and ballooning costs to fix what should have been done right the first time.

It’s important to note two things: first, almost all innovation accrues some degree of tech debt. Developers focus on solving problems and getting products shipped rather than refining the foundation for long-term sustainability. Sometimes, leaders consciously take on the tech debt on their road to establishing product-market fit — the rationale being that once they find that fit, they can go back and shore up the foundation.

National Academies: Hard Cyber Problems in Law Enforcement

Sun, 29 Sep 2024 11:52:50 +0200

On September 26, 2024, the National Academy of Sciences ‘Hard Cyber Problems’ committee hosted a law enforcement session, and I was asked to present an overview for their consideration.

To build this presentation, I chatted with former colleagues and current friends, to ensure that I wasn’t missing anything. You can watch the open and public presentation here (the presentation starts at 04:20).

At a high level, the issues are:

Identity and Access management

Who gets in, how do they get in?
- Related: What gets in?

Acceptable use

What can we do within the networks?
Who knows when this isn’t the case?
- Related: who manages your network?

Endpoint management

What is an endpoint, how is it managed?
Who owns the endpoint?
- Related: does your department understand the liability of personal devices?

That sounds like pretty much any other network, but the challenges to law enforcement networks are unique.

IC3 Is A Joke

Sun, 28 Jul 2024 19:23:59 -0400

Anyone who works investigating Internet crimes has spent the last few years in a repeated cycle: we come across (through complainants) a victim who has lost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars (or, in a recent case I investigated, millions) to the scam known as Pig Butchering.

In many cases I have worked, the money was the entirety of the victim’s nest-egg. Almost as heartbreaking is this: the victim often won’t believe it was a scam.

Items for Sale or Swap

Sun, 21 Jul 2024 12:26:56 +0200

As we prepare our beautiful house for sale and our move, we find ourselves with a bunch of stuff that we are going to sell on eBay, and we figured it was easier to tell y’all about and see if there was any local interest on the hill.

We will update this page as new items become available and old ones find new homes.

All the prices are best-offer.

Sedona Food Dehydrator

We have dehydrated everything dehydratable in this glorious machine.

Cyber Security Incidents v. Cyber Security Attacks

Sat, 20 Jul 2024 17:19:32 +0200

There’s justifiably big brouhaha over the global computer outage caused by a flawed Crowdstrike update, and everyone is saying what needs to be said about how resilency is a massive issue; monoculture is a huge problem; and just how much Windows sucks in every conceivable way.

But man, was I disappointed when Crowdstrike CEO George Kurtz, who knows better, spouted this chestnut about the largest IT outage in the history of the world:

Some OK News About United

Sun, 14 Jul 2024 17:21:17 +0200

The other day, I wrote about the great Air France app and boarding passes that provide a huge amount of really helpful information.

Today I am talking about something… okay but not great. Not bad, mind you. Just not great.

United’s app and boarding pass.

On Air France, we note that the boarding pass has the time you should arrive, the time you need to get your luggage in, the time the boarding starts, the time the gate closes…

Some Great News About Air France

Fri, 12 Jul 2024 20:16:49 +0200

As someone who does a podcast about technical debt, I often gripe about tech debt and bad user experience — especially when it comes to airlines. That’s why I am so thrilled to write about the great experience I recently had on Air France.

I am especially pleased because in response to some of my statements, posts, and articles about airline tech debt, I get inundated by smarmy, condescending comments from friends who work or have worked at airlines. “Oh,” they intone patiently, “if only you understood how difficult it is at airlines to make customer experiences better, given that all our systems are old and everythihg has to go through Amadeus or Sabre.” And the like.

Nick on the RSnake Show

Thu, 04 Jul 2024 06:50:49 +0200

It’s been several months, and I forgot to mention that I had a really amazing time with my friend Robert Hansen — much better known as RSnake — when he invited me to meet in Kitzbühel, Austria to appear on his podcast, The RSnake Show.

RSnake is one of the most well-read, curious, and skeptical consumers of information on the planet and his show is really fantastic. So I was honored to be asked.

Nonalcoholic Alternative Drinks

Tue, 11 Jun 2024 10:41:21 +0200

The nonalcoholic (NA) cocktail and beer industry has changed so much in the past decade that it is unrecognizable. Like you, prior to 2021 I found nonalcoholic beer repugnant, and ersatz cocktails to be generally supersweet, vile, and loathsome. Then I visited the home of a friend who’d stocked a whole bar full of NA spirits and aperitifs. He poured me a little bit of Roots Divino Aperitif Rosso and another little bit of Monday Mezcal and I was blown away. Then he made me a margarita and I was hooked.

Lose Weight Now. Well, Lose Weight Over Six Months.

Wed, 06 Mar 2024 13:30:26 +0100

In 2019, I lost 50 pounds. By 2021, the total loss was 60. Many have asked me the secret, and I’ve told them all the same thing:

“It’s a complicated regime: I ate less and exercised more.”

Usually people kind of nod and smile at this. Of course, it’s oversimplifying things, and enough people have asked me how I did it that I figured I would make a short post about it.

Solving Single Points of Failure

Wed, 06 Mar 2024 01:27:15 +0100

Once, I was involved in an effort to break some bad habits. Among them, there had developed a cultural reliance on people who had become single points-of-failure.

I say a “cultural reliance,” because one guy who had emerged as the single-point-of-failure of some seriously critical things — the one person on whom all deployments and all production changes depended — had been hired to replace the last guy who had emerged as the single-point-of-failure — the one guy on whom all deployments and all production changes depended.

Engine-Out Landing Plans

Wed, 28 Feb 2024 15:21:53 +0100

Sometimes when I am working on security incident response, I remember that I have an advantage: I am an instrument-rated airplane pilot.

I fly small planes. While any pilot flies - from the most boot VFR student to the Houston-to-Tokyo 777 captain - they’re maintaining a continuous instrument scan (ensuring the dials all agree), and regularly looking outside the airplane. For traffic. For weather.

And every few minutes or so, for emergency places to land.

The Three Types of Company Offsite

Sun, 18 Feb 2024 11:03:34 +0100

We just finished a several-day long corporate offsite, and I really like the balance we struck between offsite types.

I’ve found there are three types of offsite: The Balance, The Whatevs, and The Bataan Death March.

Like a Top Ten List I’ll do these in reverse, but TL;DR: go for the balance.

As anyone who’s ever been on the Bataan Death March offsite, it can feel a lot like some corporate idea of “creativity;” something one might imagine is suggested by the very same executives who force you to commute needlessly to the office to “build culture.”

In Memoriam: Jim Hart

Sat, 10 Feb 2024 12:47:59 +0100

I was going through some old emails after the recent death of Jim Hart, a dear friend and - among many other things, Flyguides publisher.

I met Jim at the 1992 Frankfurt Book Fair. He was sitting at the Lonely Planet booth when I wandered up and gave him a copy of a guidebook I’d written on St Petersburg, Russia, and he said, “Ah, yeah, let me have a look at it. Why don’t you come back tomorrow?”

Strong Regulations Must Govern Cryptoassets

Mon, 22 Jan 2024 06:57:01 +0100

Since I began work in the cryptoasset industry in 2017, my position has been that for all their problems and challenges, blockchain technologies and cryptoassets are here to stay. Because there is such substantial institutional investor demand for cryptoassets they must be strongly regulated in a manner that supports transparency and fairness.

As I’ve written, I participated in a Blockchain Association (a cryptoasset industry lobby) event in DC last November. We spoke with congressional aides about the need for stronger legislation of cryptocurrency and cautioned against proposed rules that, while possibly increasing cost and complexity of compliance, would likely be ineffective in their stated goals of reducing terror funding and money laundering.

On Illegal Gunfire: What's It Worth To Us To Stop It?

Tue, 16 Jan 2024 14:12:58 +0100

My friend Ralph Clark has been CEO at Shotspotter (now Sound Thinking) since 2010. I’ve done consulting for him, and we stay in touch and he sent me this piece he wrote.

While his article is clearly making the case for budget, Ralph raises a tremendously important point: in more than 90% of Chicago gunshot fatalities, the deceased are young Black men. In 2016, I wrote in the Washington Post about this as a national statistic: “Gun violence is most acute among young black men… [The homicide rate per 100,000 of white males between 15 and 19 years old is 1.8. For Hispanic males, it’s 14.6. For African American males, it’s a staggering 50.6 per 100,000.”

User Journey, User Flow

Fri, 05 Jan 2024 08:03:55 +0100

About three weeks ago, as I was about to book a flight, I saw that I had a credit in one of my airlines’ wallets - and it was about to expire. “Must be used for travel commencing no later than 31 December 2023,” it said.

Well, I thought, that’s handy - let me use it on this flight. So I did. But about three hours later, I received word that the trip I’d planned wouldn’t be needed, so I cancelled the ticket.

QPP: Body Worn Cameras

Wed, 20 Dec 2023 12:33:56 +0100

Somewhere between a fifth and a half of US police are wearing body cameras. It’s hard to tell the exact number, but we know the number is rising. Body worn cameras are clipped to the uniform or the headgear of an officer, and they’re intended to capture the officer’s eye view of incidents.

Body cams have been held to be the most important solution to police transparency in America. Here’s South Carolina’s Republican U.S. Senator Tim Scott, speaking in 2015.

Letter to Congress

Tue, 05 Dec 2023 08:30:39 -0500

November 15, 2023

The Honorable French Hill
The Honorable Stephen Lynch
The Honorable Patrick McHenry
The Honorable Maxine Waters
The Honorable Sherrod Brown
The Honorable Tim Scott

Dear Members of Congress:

We are former United States military service members, intelligence officers, and national security professionals who understand first-hand the seriousness of the threats we and our allies face every day. We write today as entrepreneurs and investors working in the digital asset space who wish to address head-on the issue of illicit finance. Our goal is to partner with you to achieve long-term solutions.

Cyber Leader CISA Suport Letter

Wed, 15 Nov 2023 13:55:49 +0100

November 8, 2023

The Honorable Chris Murphy
Chairman, Subcommittee on Homeland Security Senate Appropriations Committee
Washington, DC 20510

The Honorable Katie Britt
Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Homeland Security Senate Appropriations Committee
Washington, DC 20510

The Honorable Dave Joyce
Chairman, Subcommittee on Homeland Security House Appropriations Committee
Washington, DC 20515

The Honorable Henry Cuellar
Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Homeland Security House Appropriations Committee
Washington, DC 20515

A Wilco Quest

Wed, 15 Nov 2023 11:31:48 +0100

I had a conversation this morning that I really enjoyed with On Freund from Wilco. Wilco is a hands-on simulator of technical procedures that’s more immersive and realistic than any (forgive me) computer-based training I’ve seen. If you’re like me, when I say “Computer-based training” you get an immediate pain-avoidance response, but this is different.

Really different.

* * *

I’ve been thinking a whole lot lately about incident readiness. Typically, incident responders inside and outside companies spend a lot of time on tabletop exercises, or TTX, preparing for procedural things - fire drills to assure that, when defecation hits ventilation, people understand their roles and know what to do.

The Gen Z blacksmith breathing new life into an ancient art

Tue, 18 Jul 2023 13:32:43 -0400

For more information, please visit Rocky Hill Forge’s Instagram.

In Columbia County, Spijk Selby is forging the future of traditional blacksmithing

Spijk Selby hammering out a knife blank at his Ghent, NY forge - Patrick Greco, Albany Times Union (Click image to enbiggen)

GHENT — Every morning Spijk Selby wakes up and walks a short distance from his family home in the forested hills of Columbia County to a decagonal structure tucked into the trees. There, between sips of coffee, he lights a coal fire that at its core reaches temperatures exceeding 3,000 degrees.

Divert to Where? Quality Policing Podcast

Wed, 28 Jun 2023 08:35:02 +0200

NARRATOR (Nick Selby): About one in four people arrested in America suffer from both severe mental illness and drug or alcohol abuse. The bigger problem might well be the people with mental illness who aren’t arrested. People like Floyd, a clinically depressed 64 year old homeless man with broken ribs, sleeping on the bench of a picnic table in a Texas park.

FIELD RECORDING

FLOYD: I even thought about killin’ myself.

What To Ask When Preparing for the Worst

Tue, 20 Jun 2023 00:32:43 -0400

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery planning is an essential part of cyber preparedness at any company. BC/DR planning is also the kind of thing that most people put off. But it is becoming increasingly important in assessments by insurance carriers for cyber and errors and omissions policies.

Making sure that all your organization’s stakeholders have both a common understanding of the BC/DR decisions that have been made, and the impact of these decisions on how long it will take to get back to business as usual, is just as important as the recovery framework itself.

Trends In Cyber Scams Around The USA - Letter From the Chief

Thu, 08 Jun 2023 00:32:43 -0400

Over the past few months, we have written about specific cyber-related scams and dangers. In this letter, I thought I would let you know how these kinds of threats to residents of our city fit into the wider American picture.

To do this, we contacted law enforcement officers across America to ask them the kinds of issues they are facing.

The top five answers were predictable, but the scale is surprising. The difference between the kinds of cyber attacks that we hear about on the news - attacks that target businesses and government, like business email compromise and network intrusion - and those that target citizens has resulted in two new terms.

Trust

Mon, 29 May 2023 13:32:43 -0400

I was excited recently when Ciaran Martin, the very respected founder and former head of the UK’s excellent National Cyber Security Centre, posted a toot on Mastodon linking to a note he’d written for The Economist. In his toot, Martin stated that the article was an attempt to be…

“…optimistic about cyber security and public policy for The Economist (£). Also tried to push back a bit on the AI apocalypse stuff, arguing that we should do what we (eventually) did with cyber and start breaking down the problem into chunks and improving how we manage it bits at a time”

Phone Scams On The Rise - Letter From the Chief

Sat, 08 Apr 2023 00:32:43 -0400

You answer your phone, the hoarse voice at the other end says, “Grandpa?”

This is the introduction to one of the five most common phone scams in America today: the “Your Grandson Has Been Arrested” swindle.

Scammers dial numbers at random, hoping to get an elderly person at the other end of the phone. As potential victims, we make his day when he says, “Grandpa?” and we answer, “Jimmy?” because now they say, “Yes!” and we are convinced it’s our grandson, Jimmy - and boy, he sure sounds like he is in trouble.

Address Poisoning - Letter From the Chief

Wed, 08 Mar 2023 00:32:43 -0400

Late last year, thieves using address poisoning schemes stole more than $2 million from small investors and cryptocurrency enthusiasts. We have seen a marked increase in people falling for a clever and simple scam that targets cryptocurrency holders: address poisoning.

While the police department would never recommend any specific investment, we recognize that even with the wild fluctuations in prices of cryptocurrencies, large banks and brokerages still offer them, and people are still eager to participate and invest in them. In this newsletter, we will tell you how this scam works, and how to protect yourself.

It Depends: Software Supply Chain Security - TOB Podcast

Mon, 20 Jun 2022 13:32:43 -0400

NARRATOR (NICK SELBY): We’ve been thinking a lot about supply chains lately. Because they’ve been breaking. Coffee. Surgical masks. Computer chips. Condoms. Lunchables. They’ve all fallen victim to supply chain problems.

And that got me thinking about my friend Clint Bruce.

CLINT BRUCE [FROM VIDEO CALL]: - Hey buddy, how are you?

NICK SELBY [FROM VIDEO CALL]: - I’m good, man, it’s really good to see you. Hey, Clint, thanks so much for doing this …

ZKDocs and Zero Knowledge Proofs - TOB Podcast

Mon, 20 Jun 2022 13:32:43 -0400

NARRATOR (NICK SELBY) Let’s say you had to protect your life’s savings - in cash - all by yourself. You’d need to figure out a lot of things, but hey: there’s this book, it’s been around as long as anyone can remember, and it tells you the 30 steps you need to take to protect it, so no one can steal it.

SFX: MONTAGE, FADE UNDER: Steel welding, power hacksaw, pneumatic ratchet

Phishing Your Team Isn't The Answer

Sat, 16 Oct 2021 07:44:04 -0400

Successful phishing attacks - tricking your employees into clicking a link and then taking an action, such as providing information to a fake web page - is the primary vector for ransomware infections. But it’s really not that simple. Ransomware exploits weaknesses in training, but also in how you have architected and executed on your overall information technology and information security fabric. Even if you removed phishing completely (which is hard), ransomware would still present a threat.

Shooting For The Stars? Jump into the Pool

Sat, 27 Feb 2021 16:15:39 -0400

When I was in the public sector, I struck up a conversation with the guy tasked with provisioning my mobile phone and laptop. He was working in IT support but said he really wanted to break into information security. Later, I spoke with my friend, the CISO, and mentioned the guy. Two months later, that guy was an infosec junior staffer, and a few months later, a threat analyst.

There’s a thrilling new wave of potential talent comprising people working in adjacent fields trying to break into information security. Sometimes they’re from IT, and sometimes, from adjacent fields like civil engineering, or marketing. These career-transitioners are often bright, technically minded, educated, and curious, and they’re eager to help us fill the yawning chasm in our talent-pool. But we’re just not helping them help us as much as we could be.

Invest in Mental Health Squads

Thu, 17 Dec 2020 13:32:43 -0400

In 2014, I began formally tracking unarmed people who died after an encounter with the police. In each year since then, one statistic leaps out to me as the lowest of the low-hanging fruit: more than half of those who die after a police encounter are suffering from mental illness, addiction, physical disability, or a combination of those things.

Based on the data I have been analyzing for five years, I believe an asymmetrically effective way to reduce police-involved violence is for every one of America’s 12,500 local police departments to create from their existing workforce a mental health unit, comprising two cops and a mental health professional. Have them patrol every day.

Zero Factor Authentication

Wed, 19 Feb 2020 13:32:43 -0400

Are you asking the right questions to determine how well your vendors will protect your data? Probably not.

Let’s say you own a small business, and you want to get a payroll service to help with withholding taxes and automatic deposits into your employees’ accounts. That’s a very useful, powerful service: You’re giving a third party the right to withdraw funds from your bank account and send them to others.

We Can Police Mentally Ill People With Empathy, Not Jail

Thu, 02 Nov 2017 13:32:43 -0400

“I don’t have ID,” Floyd is saying, “they won’t let me into the shelter without ID.”

Welcome to a Monday in the Hurst, Euless and Bedford Behavior Intervention Unit, the BIU.

Floyd, a clinically depressed, 64-year-old homeless Euless man, is speaking with Officer Casey Sanders and Ken Bennett of the BIU. On weekdays, Sanders and Bennett, a clinician, seek out people with disabilities, like mental illness, to check on their welfare.

Sandra Bland Act Sets Example for the Nation

Sat, 17 Jun 2017 13:32:43 -0400

On Thursday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed the state’s Sandra Bland Act, named after the black woman who was found dead in a Waller County jail cell, into law.

Bland’s case was a controversial one. In 2015, she was pulled over by a state trooper, and what should have been a routine stop quickly escalated into a violent encounter. The officer, who was later fired for violating protocol, said Bland became uncooperative. She was arrested and jailed, and her death was ruled a suicide. It was later revealed that Bland might have suffered from depression and had a history of mental health issues.

Forget Leaks. Intel's Problem Is Not Sharing.

Wed, 31 May 2017 13:32:43 -0400

Intelligence is a process, not just a product. When intelligence is not shared appropriately, the process breaks. That’s a bigger problem than leaks.

Everyone in the security world is worried about leaking. Last week, for instance, the U.K. government excoriated U.S. officials for leaking sensitive information about the Manchester terrorist attack. Americans, the British say, cannot keep secrets.

In the context of domestic terrorism, however, the real crisis isn’t what we leak — it’s what we don’t share. More than 15 years after the Sept. 11 attacks, federal agencies are somewhat more willing to share information with one another, but they still hold back when it comes to local law enforcement.

Local cops don’t pursue most cybercriminals.

Fri, 21 Apr 2017 19:26:46 -0400

Imagine calling your local police after you’ve been mugged and being told, “Sorry, muggings are complicated. We don’t handle those. Try the FBI.”

That’s exactly what happens every day when Americans call their local police to report online bank fraud, tax-return fraud and other crimes committed via the Internet. I work on this a lot as a police detective. From what I’ve seen, outside of a few cutting-edge offices like Manhattan’s district attorney and some amazing computer crime task forces that work with the FBI or the Secret Service, the vast majority of American police and prosecutors have received precious little training in how to investigate and prosecute cybercrimes.

When Pain Meets Bad Health Policy and Bad Drug Laws

Wed, 11 Jan 2017 15:52:11 -0400

A year ago, I woke in the night with pain so severe I was crying before I was fully aware what was going on. A 50-year-old cop sobbed like a child in the dark.

It was a ruptured disc and related nerve damage. Within a couple of months, it became so severe that I could no longer walk or stand. An MRI later, my surgeon soothingly told me it would all be okay. He would take care of me; the pain would end.

Forget New Gun Laws. Here's How To Reduce Illegal Gunfire

Thu, 14 Jul 2016 06:00:00 -0500

Instead of focusing on doomed legislation, we should try something different.

In Dallas this week, President Obama spoke movingly of the five officers killed after a protest. The president spoke beautifully of these officers’ acts of service, charity and good will, and he honored how bravely they placed themselves between a gunman and the people who had come to defend their constitutional rights.

Cops and Community Bond is Key

Tue, 24 Nov 2015 15:52:11 -0400

This past month saw several deadly encounters between police and unarmed civilians, including the highly controversial death in Minneapolis of Jamar Clark and the shooting by police in Opa-Locka, Fla., of Cornelius Brown.

While there are, throughout the country, many points of serious disagreement between citizen protesters and police supporters, the death of Brown, as with the death of Donald “Dontay” Ivy in April in Albany, highlights one area on which agreement should be easy.

Some Old Flyguides Stuff

Mon, 25 Oct 2004 12:47:59 +0100

I was going through some old emails after the death of Jim Hart, a dear friend and - among many other things, Flyguides publisher.

You can read just a little bit about Jim here.

In 2002, he and I started Flyguides. It was an online travel site for pilots, doomed from the start by an advertising model without hope of supporting it. But we did good stuff.

Below is a sample of one of the monthly newsletters we at Flyguides made for the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association.

On Patrol With Munich's Bounty Hunters

Sun, 02 Mar 2003 09:53:15 -0400

The team of plainclothes agents moves in, and takes position. The suspect is in the corner, the gentleman with the pierced face, shaved head, tattoos and a scuffed leather jacket. He is almost 2 meters tall.

I’ve seen this kind of thing before, riding shotgun with cops in New York and St Petersburg, but Munich’s kopfgeldjaeger, “head-hunters”, are different. They’re despised and mocked: I met one who’d appeared on a TV talk show as having one of the, “worst jobs in Munich”.

Yet Another Year-Of-The-Linux-Desktop Piece

Mon, 09 Sep 2002 15:52:11 -0400

A Cannes-based private investigator, Alain Stevens, recently switched computer operating systems from Windows to Linux. “It’s a security issue,” Stevens said. “Viruses which target Windows could send confidential documents from my machines to random people — and that could send me to prison.”

Citing cost savings, open standards and enhanced security, the German government in June reached a Linux deal with International Business Machines Corp. and SuSE Linux AG of Germany for its local, state and federal computer infrastructure.

Meet Russia's Software Pirates

Sun, 12 Jul 1998 08:17:49 -0400

Every day here and in dozens of other Russian cities, pirate dealers sell copies of the world’s most popular software titles at $5 per CD-ROM.

Despite fears about the economy, small and medium-sized businesses are flourishing in this elegant northwestern Russian city - and pirated software is installed on almost all of their computers.

Nearly all high-end computer games, Encyclopaedia Britannicas and other educational and reference CDs are distributed through illegal sources.

Where Are The Nuclear Wessles?

Mon, 01 Jan 1996 13:32:43 -0400

I’d come to Severodvinsk, about an hour from Arkhangelsk, to see the submarines. An expatriate Italian bartender living in Arkhangelsk had told me I could take pictures of Soviet-built atomic-powered submarines right from the city’s harbor.

‘Course, what he didn’t mention was that Severodvinsk was a “Closed City” - that is, off limits to foreigners even these days - because it’s a storage area for the Soviet-built atomic-powered submarines that park in its harbor. Formerly it was closed because it was a staging area for the nuclear gear that used to be transported to the islands of Novaya Zemlya, back when the Soviet Union was doing above-ground nuclear testing there.

On Patrol With Russia's Most Hated Public Servants

Fri, 07 Jul 1995 10:02:18 -0400

In the United States, it’s the IRS. In the Soviet Union, it was the KGB. In England it’s Manchester United fans, but in the new Russia, motorists and passengers alike loathe, fear and despise the ubiquitous members of the Gosavtoinspektsia: GAI. GAI (“gah-yee’) are traffic officers who stand at intersections throughout the country looking for signs of vehicular misbehaviour. Actually, they can pull you over for anything they want.

And they do.

A Soviet Spoke in the Wheels of Progress

Thu, 16 Jun 1994 13:32:43 -0400

Life has changed very little over the past few years for Stanislaw Kudrzycki, a shift supervisor for the Polish national railway (PKP) and his 19-person crew at Kuźnica on what is now (1994) the Poland-Belarus border. At the railway station of this desolate town, a 24-hour a day operation functioned in exactly the same way it did when it was established in 1972 to process passenger trains crossing into and out of the Soviet Union.

Privacy

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

I Actually Care About Your Privacy

Last updated 16 November 2024 13:05 UTC

This privacy notice for nickselby.com describes how and why I might collect, store, use, and/or share (“process“) your information when you use my website, nickselby.com.

I do not collect sensitive personal information.

WHAT INFORMATION DO I COLLECT?
WHAT DO I DO WITH THE INFORMATION I COLLECT?
DO I USE COOKIES AND OTHER TRACKING TECHNOLOGIES?
HOW SECURE IS NICKSELBY.COM?

1. WHAT INFORMATION DO I COLLECT?

When you use my contact form, I collect your email address and your message.

Search

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Thanks

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Success!

Thanks for your message. If it doesn’t get trapped by the spam filter, or sent by the Internet Gods on a one-way trip to Pluto, I will receive it and reply, usually within 24 hours.

Thanks, Nick