Matt Blaze and the afterword

[...] but basically, not much has changed in 15 years. If I had it to do over again, I wouldn't really need to change a word. If I had to tweak it, I might add something about human factors in security, a poorly understood and hugely important subject if ever there was one.

-- http://www.crypto.com/blog/afterword

Since about 2005 or so, the "brief profile" I send out whenever I have a speaking engagement of any kind, has had this line in it: He also has a good breadth of knowledge on e-security and related issues, ranging from technology aspects to the human factor aspects that are so important in implementations.

Looks like I'm in good company!

Not that claiming it means I can do it, or do it well, but I just wanted to reinforce the importance of this -- it's not just the algorithms that are important, it's how the algorithms fit into your big picture that counts.

PS: Matt Blaze is a well known crypto and security guru; currently he's at UPenn.  He's not just an eSecurity guru -- he's also an expert safe-cracker and lock picker, as far as I can remember :)  He runs http://www.crypto.com/ and his blog and articles are always interesting...