Few occupations have such a low reputation as used car salespeople. Well OK maybe lawyers ;-). For the most part though used car sales people are not really as bad as they are made out to be or perhaps as bad as they used to be. Yes, there is the "what do I have to do to put you in this car today" attitude, but by and large - lemon laws, consumer protection rules and truth in advertising regs have taken some of the snake oil out of the fast and loose way of doing business which earned them their reputation. Who doesn't hear or read an ad today for cars without the "fine print" being mentioned.
In the world of NAC though we have no such protections built in it seems. It is very much "caveat emptor" - buyer beware. NAC companies can pretty much say what they want, claim what they will. How is a prospective customer supposed to know the truth? Some say you can check references, but even then much like someone applying for a job, do they ever give a reference who is not going say something nice about them? The easy answer of course is try it for yourself. There is no substitute for actually kicking the tires.
Here is another idea I was thinking about, I call it the Better NAC Business Bureau (BNBB). Its mission is to shine a spotlight on some of the dark alleys and rat holes that some NAC vendors do business in. The same way the used car salesmen of the world have been rehabilitated, lets do the same with NAC marketing!
With that in mind, the first investigation of the BNBB is in regard to some recent press releases from two NAC vendors. The first press release is from StillSecure and is in regard to Lehigh Valley Hospital and Health Center. It claims that LVHHC is and has been a NAC customer of StillSecure for the past two years and continues to be a customer. The press release has quotes from the CIO of LVHHC. The second press release and case study is from NAC vendor X . It also claims that LVHHC uses this companies product product for NAC throughout the entire organization. They also have a quote from someone at the organization (OK, not the CIO, but someone). Who to believe? Does LVHHC have two NAC solutions? I doubt it. What to do?
Well we can look at a little history. For instance which of these two NAC companies claimed they did not use Nessus in their NAC product and than it turned out they did. What company took the infamous TCP reset and tried to peddle it as a "virtual firewall". Of course there was the time they took out Google ad words on my name. Yes my friends, it seems that playing fast and loose with marketing claims has earned this company a bit of a used car salesman reputation. But like gas mileage, past performance is not controlling and your performance may vary.
So lets give this company the benefit of the doubt. Maybe in their burning desire to show reference customers they were a little to quick to pull the trigger here. Lets give them a chance to go back and check with their sources and see if they have the facts the straight. If they find out that perhaps they were mistaken about this customer using their product for NAC for over 20,000 users at LVHHC, lets give them a chance to retract or correct the press release and case study. At that the BNBB would close this file without any prejudice. Case closed, the BNBB does its job again. What do you think would be a reasonable time to do this? Two weeks? Three weeks? I'll tell you what, the BNBB is founded on fairness. Lets give them a month.
If after a month though they have not updated the case study and press release we will have a podcast here and we will delve into this further. We are going to find out what the NAC solution there is. Of course Forescout is invited to participate in the podcast and can even bring their own guests if they like. But at the end of the day, there is only one solution being used for NAC at LVHHC and we all are going to find out what that is. That hospital ain't big enough for the both of us!
If you would like to be involved in this podcast or the BNBB drop me a line at podcast@stillsecure.com
