August 28, 2006 - #104

Good Morning:
Wow. There is nothing going on this morning in security-land. I venture to say the barest cupboard that I've seen yet in the 6 months since I started TDI. So, I'll dig through some of the coverage of the IBM/ISS deal (here [0]). I was going to do a separate post, but this will work. Suffice it to say, there has been LOTS of coverage of the deal. Everything from the impact of consolidation (or is it even consolidation?) to whether this finally legitimizes managed security services.

Of all the varying opinions of the IBM/ISS deal, the most original was from Thomas at Matasano (here [0]). Basically assembling a number of us (Stiennon, Bejtlich, and yours truly) in a virtual panel - Thomas basically excerpted all sorts of stuff from our respective published opinions, took much of it out of context, and came up with a very entertaining mash-up to get his main point across. I've got no arguments with this, since he pretty much nailed what I would have said if there was a real panel. And it made me laugh last night, which after a weekend chasing around after my kids is always welcome.

Have a great day.

Top Security News

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060828/wr_nm/google_apps_dc_5 [1]
Link to this [1]

Top Blog Postings

http://securosis.com/2006/08/26/experiences-with-filevault-mac-encryption/ [2]
Link to this [2]

http://mcwresearch.com/archives/281 [3]
Link to this [3]

http://1raindrop.typepad.com/1_raindrop/2006/08/build_security_.html
[4]Link to this [4]

http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid14_gci1212272,00.html [5]
Link to this [5]

http://www.channelweb.com/sections/allnews/article.jhtml?articleId=192203463 [6]
Link to this [6]

http://www.channelweb.com/sections/allnews/article.jhtml?articleId=192203531 [7]
Stiennon: http://blogs.zdnet.com/threatchaos/?p=393 [8]
Bejtlich: http://taosecurity.blogspot.com/2006/08/all-network-security-functions-in.html [9]
Link to this [9]

here [10]) and SC Magazine (here [11]) draw that conclusion. Clearly this is another example of "Big is the new small," and that's fine. But getting back to Matasano's take, I don't think this kills security innovation. If anything, it's just become apparent that there probably won't be another big, public security company that emerges from nowhere. But as I mentioned on Friday (and Thomas reiterated in the "panel"), as long as entrepreneurs don't get too greedy, there is plenty of opportunity to innovate on the product side and find a home (yes, be acquired) in one of the Big Security aggregators.
http://www.matasano.com/log/439 [12]
Link to this [12]

http://securityincite.com/TDI-2006-08-25 [12]

Technorati: Information Security [13]