[Notes:

In a world where data storage is almost unlimited and algorithms promise to interrogate data to answer any question, it's tempting for security teams to simply follow a "log everything, for ever" approach. At this week's CSIRT Task Force in Malaga, Xavier Mertens suggested that traditional approaches are still preferable.

Last week I was invited to be a member of a panel at the UN Internet Governance Forum on how law can help security and incident response and, in particular, information sharing. It seems there are still concerns in some places that privacy law is getting in the way of these essential functions.

An interesting talk from Rockwell at this year's FIRST conference looked at how to organise incident response in environments containing network-connected hardware devices. Though Rockwell's focus is on industrial machinery, the same ideas should apply to smart buildings and other places where a security incident can cause physical, not just digital, harm. This is not the only difference: connected hardware devices tend to be much more diverse than PCs, and they are expected to have much longer lifetimes.

Incident response teams often share information when investigating incidents. Some patterns may only become apparent when data from different networks are compared; other teams may have skills – such as analysing malware – to understand data in ways we cannot. Since much of this information includes IP or email addresses - information classed as Personal under data protection law - concerns have arisen that attackers might be able to use the law to frustrate this sharing.