Quick Incites - May 30, 2007

Maybe I should do the "All Things Incite" conference and have big wigs like Microsoft come and announce groundbreaking innovations at the conference. Yes, I'm referring to the hype around Microsoft's new Surface computer. Just what I need, Windows in my coffee table. But it's a slow news week, so this will give the windbags something to flap their lips about, at a minimum.

It was also hard for me to fathom how much news the Google-GreenBorder deal got. I was getting press calls throughout the AM and my Blogbridge was a fluttering all day with folks philosophizing about how Google is now coming after the security market. My thoughts on the topic were summed up pretty nicely by Dan Kaplan of SC Mag in his coverage of the deal.

And for those of you still on the fence about the Pragmatic CSO bootcamp, one week from today in Atlanta, time is running out. Only ONE spot left. Find out more on the Security Incite site.

80% of people believe this crap: Did you see the Gartner quote via Mark Shavlik's blog? "By the end of 2007, 75 percent of enterprises will be infected with undetected, financially motivated, targeted malware that evaded their traditional perimeter and host defenses." Credit Gartner's Ken McGee with that one. These kinds of prognostications are great. You can never prove it and it makes good sound bite. I guess the G has dropped their probability assessments as well, which is too bad. I would have liked to see ("we have no idea what probability this jackass prediction has") right next to it. That would have been funny.

Blue Coat blows it out: Looks like WAN optimization is hot and the folks at Blue Coat are benefiting. The fact that Websense is a little distracted probably didn't hurt either, but BCSI announced a good quarter and a rosy prediction for the next quarter. You can check out Blue Coat's official earnings release. FYI, Brian NeSmith has been in place at Blue Coat almost as long as Stratton was at VeriSign. Guess NeSmith has more lives that Felix the Cat in an era when CEOs get swapped out like the cat litter.

CSOs and CIOs have no knowledge? Say it ain't so!! - Joanna Rutkowska is getting a real education by having to deal with customers, as opposed to computers or hackers. Based on this SearchSecurity post, she is appalled that most CIOs and CSOs don't understand basic security practice and then they have the gall to talk at security conferences. That's because they are increasingly BUSINESS PEOPLE and they shouldn't have to know firewall configs and how the Blue Pill interacts below the hypervisor layer. But the CIO better know who in his shop knows that stuff.

Now that's what I call incident response - Rebecca Herold has it right in this post on the leak in Hillary Clinton's Iowa strategy, we can learn a lot about crisis communications and incident response by paying attention to the politicians. Just imagine what they have to deal with, every day there is a "leak" or a defection or something else to spin. But points I gathered from the original article (follow Rebecca's link) are to stay on message and be truthful. Actions also speak a lot louder than words. It's all in a day of a political campaign, and that sounds like no fun to me.

More tomorrow. Enjoy your day.