Introducing Metacurity – An Answer to Cybersecurity Information Overload

It’s been a long time since I blogged here – about a half a year actually.  In that time I’ve been working on various projects that pushed blogging to the back seat.  One of those projects was to redesign this blog into a more professional look and integrate the blog into a redesigned corporate website, with a common look-and-feel.

Along the way, I decided to incorporate into the new integrated sites a “news feed” that addresses a problem plaguing the digital and network security sector:  information overload. Fairly soon, that redesign project took a back seat to figuring out how to sift through the escalating number of news stories, journal articles and other sources of cybersecurity information and present it in a way that is the most helpful to overworked cybersecurity practitioners and other professionals interested in the subject.

For at least the past five months I’ve increasingly focused on that challenge to the point that it’s almost become a more than full-time job. The result of that work is a stand-alone website, Metacurity. Relying on over fifty (and growing) standard sources of cybersecurity news, plus dozens of other sources, Metacurity is an evolving site that presents sifted, breaking and other news in a clean, easy-to-scan format.

I’ve worked out a system for selecting the most timely, useful and relevant articles, blog posts, and other sources and publishing them in summary form, with links directly back to the sources themselves. Although still wholly subjective and imperfect, I use a rough set of criteria for what gets published. These criteria generally are:

1. Timeliness: Although articles that break news aren’t necessarily always the most informative or best, being first does matter, if for no other reason than it shapes the conversation.
2. Level of Skill: Well-written articles and posts that do justice to the subject catch more attention. Articles that are nothing more than a couple of paragraphs, gloss over or fail to point out important distinctions or are extremely late to the game don’t appear that frequently.
3. Originality: A related criteria is originality. Items that are typically rewrites of press releases or rewrites of major news stories with very little additional reporting or analyses are low on the priority list.
4. Pure-Play: The topic of cybersecurity overlaps with so many other topics – privacy, cloud computing, national security, criminal justice, diplomacy and other major concerns. It’s difficult to parse out articles, reports, blog posts and studies that are solely focused on how to maintain secure reliable networks. But, those articles that do deal mostly or exclusively with cybersecurity get higher priority.
5. Impact:  Some “scoops” have major impact on discussions surrounding cybersecurity. Some headline-breaking articles in the cybersecurity arena do not necessarily hold up under further analysis but nonetheless create a stir. Although rare, these kinds of reports are higher on the priority list.

In the middle of the site, or further down the screen on mobile devices, appear blog posts produced by cybersecurity vendors labeled as “Corporate Posts.” These items are useful and often news-making posts produced by the dozens of vendors in the IT and information security arena.  (Although the Corporate Posts are selected based on editorial judgment, we are offering vendors the opportunity to spotlight their posts at the top of this section via sponsorships. We are also offering companies the ability to promote their employment opportunities and conference organizers to promote their events via highlighted entries in our events section.)

Metacurity also features a table that encapsulates cybersecurity events around the globe and a handy box for employers to promote their cybersecurity openings to the tiny available pool of available and qualified cybersecurity professionals.

Ultimately Metacurity will become much more efficient at picking out what’s important based on data analysis.  As Metacurity evolves, we’ll add more and different types of information. I want feedback on how to make the site better and more informative. Please contact us and share your thoughts.  Happy reading!

And yeah…I’m finally getting around to the redesign of this blog.  Stay tuned.

Posted in: Cyber Security,cybersecurity