After my “used car salesman of NAC” series I was going to give Ray and the gang a break. But the depths they sink to just never cease to amaze me! Today I received a Google alert on NAC with a link to a press release announcing the NAC used car sales guys continuing to deliver best in class security management solutions, yada, yada, yada. The basis for this claim was that “SC Magazine awarded ForeScout’s CounterACT a four-out-of-five star rating, lauding the product’s ability to “function like a firewall, an IPS and a NAC device all rolled into one”. They wrapped some customer quote (that had nothing to do with the SC magazine story) and voila!, can they put you in this car today?
So why do I call this out? No, no sour grapes here. Actually StillSecure Safe Access received the same 4 out of 5 stars and when we dig into the rating here are some interesting facts:
In actuality, our friends the used car salesmen only received a 2 star rating in ease of use, a 2 star rating in documentation and a 3 star rating in support. In contrast StillSecure Safe Access received 5 stars across the board, except for a 4 star grade in documentation. How both products finish up with a 4 star rating overall based upon this is frankly baffling to me. I think it has more to do with the reviewer not wanting to spank any of the products too badly. I have already asked for a clarification and will let you know what I find out. But being a slick marketing machine, I thought it the height of chutzpah that they would put out a release around this, considering the best buy and editors choice were two different products. But I guess that is why they did not have a quote or a link to the actual review. The review starts out with this memorable quote, “The ForeScout CounterACT was the device which took the most time to install and configure.” Later on the reviewers had this to say, “The second part of the configuration was far more difficult. The initial screens for the GUI made us feel lost and we immediately began looking for the documentation CD.” Now does that sound like a review to be touting? Only those master car salesman would seek to put out a press release trumpeting the results of this review. They are counting by wrapping enough other quotes (and frankly who knows about those) around it, no one will bother to dig into the facts here. Hey, thats what you guys pay me for, telling it like it is!
