Data analysis - Clustering using euclidean distance

Recently our ability to gather large amounts of complex data has far outstripped our ability to analyze them.  Although our human brains can process data in complex ways but it does not scale when it comes to large volumes of data. Clustering is one way to distill data to some groups and understand relationships within the dataset.  Clustering is used in many scientific research fields such as natural science, genetics, politics and of course in sales and marketing.  I recently published a blog on analysis performed using euclid distance and clustering at my work SEI for cybersecurity- link here.  Here I am going to simply explore the mechanics of using Euclid distance for clustering using some simple Python code and examples.  Don't worry, it is simple Math hopefully once you walk through this sample.

The phishing game new tactics

I recently came across a very well formatted phishing email with a valid SSL certificate and close enough domain name to PayPal - paysnal.com that caught my attention.  The techniques are age old as in the real world of fishing - the lure, the distraction and the impersonation.  Like in the real world of fishing - what a fish considers a day-to-day normal business (like fish eating worms), can be a successful trap (death for the fish).  Let me explore this to show how the story unfolded

So you want to disable SSLv3?

Recent vulnerability released by Google called Poodle - puts security administrators to scramble keeping up with "heartbleed", "retiring of SHA-1" and "removal of SSLv3"  As I come from the solutions and enterprise architecture background, I get pinged by these questions about the real risk and impact of implementing these security enforcement's.

Inconvenience != Security

Many people have suggested idea for how they can better secure their users from doing stupid mistakes and ask for my opinion.  Most of these ideas (IMO) seems to add just inconvenience to the user without improving security.  So, my quote for this has been

"While security is not convenient, just inconvenience is not security either!"