Review – Substack Annual Update 1-1-24

NOTE: I do not normally abbreviate a Substack Update post, but I am making an exception for the first of the year since this is taking a bit of a different look at things.

I would like to start off the New Year with a hearty thank you to all of my Readers and a brief look back at 2023.

CFSN Detailed Analysis

I started this newsletter in May of 2021 as a means to monetize my continued efforts at Chemical Facility Security News (the CFSN of this title). I had been writing that blog for 14 years and had only received a few hundred dollars for those efforts over the years, mostly through payments for Google ads with some intermittent support through donations. Keeping that blog up requires a great deal of time and I have recently been supporting myself with Social Security and a part-time job. I had been hoping to reduce the time as a part-timer, but that has not yet been possible.

Chemical Facility Security News

This blog continues to be an important part of my life. I had a record number of posts (1131 vs 846 in 2022) last year, or an average of just over three per day. A large part of that increase is due to the new ‘Short Takes’ posts that I started in the fall of 2022. These are listings of articles that I have read that day that I think are worth sharing with my readers. I include a pull quote of what I think is an important part of the author’s point of view for those that do not have time to read the article. I had been doing something similar on TWITTER.com for years for individual articles, I just formalized it here in digest form. It has been very popular. Generally, the “Short Takes” posts are the last post of the day. Frequently, a number of articles on a single topic (or class of topics) will present themselves earlier in the day. I will combine them into a ‘special’ edition, most frequently a ‘Geek Edition’ for posts on scientific topics.

Future ICS Security News

This fictional blog has not been very active this year. The extra time that I have been putting into the other two publications has come mainly from the effort that would have gone into these posts. While these stories are fictional, they do have some inspirational basis in fact. This makes it more difficult, and time consuming to write. I want to continue these posts with some level of predictability (hard to drive readers to the site without that predictability), but I am still working out the logistics of keeping all three publications going.

Other Publications

From time to time, I am asked to contribute an article to other publications. I do list myself as a ‘freelance writer’ on LinkedIn, so I almost always respond favorably to such requests. I prefer to get paid for such articles, but I have been known to do such article pro bono when the topic or the publication is of particular interest. I typically report these articles in the appropriate ‘Substack Daily Update’ post.

Personal

I turned 70 last year, finally reaching middle age. I am happy to report that I am hale and healthy. To paraphrase the song I may not be as good as I once was, but I am good once as I ever was. My wife and I have slowed down from our early days, but we both continue to do most of what matters to us most. You cannot ask for much more from life. Please take a look at the Wife’s jewelry site on Etsy, Bama Beader.

 

For a larger discussion on the topics above, see my article on CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/substack-annual-update-1-1-24 - subscription required.

Future ICS Security News

Those readers who follow me on Twitter®, LinkeIn® or FaceBook® may have noticed last night that I have started a new writing project, Future ICS Security News. I am using this new platform to look at control system security from a slightly different perspective, what could happen with existing control system vulnerabilities.

I have been thinking about how to approach this project for about a year now. I had first thought of self-publishing a series of short-stories about control system security issues where the protagonists were involved with or affected by system hacks. I tried my hand at a couple, but they were a lot more work than I was willing to put into this project.

Because of the recent spate of news stories about ‘fake news’ in social media during the recent election cycle, I started thinking about doing this as a series of news stories about as-of-yet non-existent cyber-attacks on control systems. I tried my first one last night and was happy enough with the results to start a new ‘blog’ post on Google®, Future ICS Security News.

The first post, Local Student Arrested for Airline Incident, did not take much more time to write than a standard blog post. It was very loosely based upon an article I read about continuing work Ruben Santamarta has been doing with airline entertainment system vulnerabilities. Now my story has no technical details in it (because I don’t know any), so it takes a ‘what if?’ approach to looking at the problem. My answer to that question is my fault, not Rueben’s.

I really do like the fake news story approach. It lets me do a story with minimal character development or conversations (both story writing techniques that I find time consuming to do right) yet still look at potential control system security consequences. It also allows me to have a little fun with puns (watch names) and insider jokes.

I am not yet sure how often I will be doing new ‘news stories’. I’ll have to see what kind of reader response that I get and how often the story ideas strike me.

This will probably be the last time that I mention one of these stories here. I will be announcing the publication of each new story on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. Feel free (PLEASE) to pass the links around; I would love for these stories to reach an audience outside of the control system security community. Maybe even have a congresscritter cite one during a debate in committee or even on the floor. Onion has managed that, why can’t I? (GRIN)