[SecurityRatty] tag: terrific

Network World Coverage of ScienceLogic at Interop

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 11:36:22 +0000

We were all really excited to have the opportunity to illuminate Sevick and Wetzel about ScienceLogic’s value proposition at Interop.

Yesterday, they posted a terrific blog post about what they saw at Interop. Fortunately, ScienceLogic was one of the technologies that they highlighted from the show. I have written earlier posts about how difficult it has been to gain smart, insightful coverage for our solutions with technology media.

I have to say that they really got it! And it feels so good. We know that we have a bit of a hidden gem of a product here at ScienceLogic and will be working overtime in the coming months to take our business and products to a “Blue Ocean” environment that will shock and surprise many others in the media. However Sevick and Wetzel will be amongst the first to get a close-up on why and how we will deliver a new paradigm to this marketplace in 2009!

A few excerpts from their post:

“We noticed yet more specialty network management vendors, leading us to wonder how the market can support such a plethora of them, and we felt empathy for IT teams that have to master yet more interfaces.”
“Application performance management and application acceleration vendors were well represented. Such products play well in today’s climate because they allow enterprises to get the most out of existing IT investments instead of buying more “stuff”. One particularly interesting vendor we talked to was ScienceLogic. They are integrating IT infrastructure and application monitoring into a single, not-very-expensive platform that will serve mainstream business well. This is smart, and we predict they will give the CA’s, BMC’s, HP’s and IBM’s of the world a run for their money.”

Check out the blog post here and keep App Performance View on your radar..

Suns Scott McNealy Speaks at Potomac Officers Club

Wed, 07 May 2008 16:37:40 +0000

Yesterday afternoon I met Sun Microsystems’ Chairman and Co-Founder Scott McNealy at an event that the Potomac Officers Club sponsored at the Tysons Corner Ritz Carlton. Scott was delivering a terrific speech in which I learned a lot of interesting facts about Sun’s open source initiatives. As Chairman of the company who coined the phrase “The network is the computer” his prediction continues to be fascinating, especially with Sun’s focus on Open Source software initiatives

To start off, Scott gave a very funny Top 10 list: “How the IT world is like our lovable Government and Washington establishment”. (Several of these were LOL for me!) A few of my favorites:

Each has a different plan for Security
Both are huge cost centers with creative budget practices
Both are trying to secure our ports
Both invented the Internet
Both generate a log of “hot air”
Source code and Legislation are equally unreadable and buggy
Random misuse of power from the Mayflower Hotel to the Datacenter

Scott talked about the world today with millions of new users of the internet, over 10 billion videos watched on the internet on a regular basis and the internet’s impact of disintermediation of traditional revenue producing business models:

E-bay and Craigslist– disrupts the media business and want-ads revenue stream
Amazon.com disrupts the book/publishing business and becomes the worlds electronic card catalogue
Youtube is disinter mediating TV with their videos
Curriki is creating the new online coarse curriculum displacing scholastic books which we spend $4.3 Billion annually.

(more…)

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Security Catalyst Forums

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 02:17:00 +0000

I've written often about all the ways I have met people. My network has certainly grown in the last year between facebook, linkedin, the numerous blogs that I read and the numerous blogs that they all link to.

One place that has certainly been a terrific place to meet smart people interested in Information Security and to harvest some of their ideas are the Security Catalyst Forums. Registration is free and gets you access to some really amazing people.

Each week someone volunteers to sum up the last week's postings and this week is my turn so here goes...

Andrew Hay is doing his CISSP and has been given a lot of advice by the members. Generally it is agreed that cccure.org is a good resource but always ready to jump in and start new Security Catalyst initiatives, Michael wants to put together a resource for those Catalyst Members studying for the CISSP.

I personally did the official CISSP boot camp training course and found it well worth doing. I bought the official ISC2 guide but found it to be too wordy and technical. It is a great resource though and I have used it many times since my exam but at 10pm after a days work it is the last thing your eyes want to see.

Education seems to be a theme at the moment - Didier Stevens write his GSSP-C exam and Kevin Riggins is debating doing a Masters in Information Protection/Assurance.

Information Security is slowly becoming so much more more than just Firewalls and Antivirus and the education needed is becoming vast. I think it has already come to the point where it is impossible to know everything and practitioners now need to work out what section of Information Security they want to get into.

I personally am interested in the management side of InfoSec but if I choose that then I will not be able to get deeply into any particular part of InfoSec anymore. I have my CISSP and would love to get a Masters like the one above but GSSP-C would be too restrictive for me but to each his own. Well done Didier and good luck Andrew, Kevin and all those that are looking to grow their knowledge.

Don Weber raises an interesting question - should businesses be monitoring search queries via their proxy servers. My feeling is that yes, they should. Companies should monitor everything and they have the right (in South Africa at least) to do so. However, (there is always an however with me) context is everything. One has to use the information that one gets from logs as a guide and try to understand exactly why someone browses so much or such strange sites or whatever. I believe that Information Security has to become a central part of the organisation and has to make connections with all departments. All browsing issues must be driven by HR with technical and policy help from InfoSec.

There were other discussions, jobs posted and conferences listed but I'm not going to go into them all. The last thing I'd like to say is that I asked a question on the Security Catalyst Forums and got some quality replies - all different but all quality that will allow me to do my job that much better.

Great article on reminding you to stay safe online.

Sat, 05 Apr 2008 12:20:54 +0000

Unless you are a security geek, you have to have protection to stay safe online.

clipped from www.oneones.com

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