Building a parallel Internet, security buzzwords that should be retired, and the news - Barrett Lyon - ESW #482

Interview with Barrett Lyon

Why do we need a Parallel Internet? Barrett details his journey to build truly private access to the Internet. My first thought was, "why not VPN? Why not TOR?" He has good answers to both. To get there, he had to ship his own hardware all over the world. He had to stand up a CDN. DNS. BGP. Anti-DDoS.

This is more than just a safer, more secure way to access the Internet - it is an API-driven, optionally agent-controlled software-defined network. And it's a consumer-priced product that starts at $6 a month? My head is spinning.

Note: this is NOT a sponsored segment, I'm just legitimately fascinated by it! When this was pitched to me, it sounded so outlandish, I almost passed on it. Then I saw that Barrett created and sold 5 companies, two of which were major anti-DDoS vendors. Clearly, this guy knows how to build serious, scalable infrastructure. Enjoy the conversation!

Segment Resources:

• The main website: https://doxx.net
• Doxx.net Discord channel: https://discord.gg/595hAxHH4
• Barrett's previous work mapping the internet for the Opte project: https://www.opte.org

Vibe Check

Which security acronym/phrases deserves to be retired?

• 38% - XDR
• 25% - Zero Trust
• 25% - UEBA
• 6% - CNAPP
• 6% - Non-Human
• 0% - Other (leave a comment)

Nothing like some acronym soup and buzzwords to really get people out to vote! Shared anger can be a powerful thing, and I'm here for the rants.

I have to agree with the top three votes: XDR, Zero Trust, and UEBA (User and Entity Behavior Analytics). CNAPP can see ya later, and since agents outnumber humans 100-1,000 to 1 now, can we call our user accounts "Pro-Human" instead of calling service accounts and agent IDs "Non-Human"?

I'm currently raising on this business concept - pre-revenue, pre-TAM, pre-founder, and pre-idea. Expecting to close a $150M pre-seed at a $100B post-money valuation in the next few weeks. Let me know if you want in. ????

Top Comments

• "Other - The "AI TRiSM" term can go kick the biggest of rocks"
• "Other - Shift left"
• "My god I have always hated zero trust and would love to see it die. What a stupid, over-the-top & exaggerated phrase to just basically mean that having a bunch of unauth/flat user roles things is bad… how an entire category of the industry managed to piggyback off cloud to make ZTNA a thing I've no idea. Also led to the annoying trend of overly segmenting all the things. rant over"

Enterprise Weekly News

Finally, in the enterprise security news,

1. We check out funding
2. There are a lot of acquisitions
3. And a round of layoffs
4. A tech startup goes out of business after two breaches
5. Private keys should be larger than "4"
6. PHP2Shell disrupts everyone's plans this week
7. Want to impress your friends with the quirkiest 2FA authenticator ever? Stick around until the end of the news.

All that and more, on this episode of Enterprise Security Weekly.

Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/esw-482