One of my pet peeves with security vendors like Symantec, Vontu, Websense and Checkpoint is marketing collateral that totally disregards the basics of security – it’s like they hired an English major straight out of school and told them to start writing. Sensitive assets, confidential assets, proprietary assets – you can make a total mishmash as long as you mention compliance, SOX and HIPPA at least 3 times in the article.
Since the business situation, corporate culture and IT infrastructure of every company is different, we believe that it is incorrect to choose security countermeasures on the basis of product features – especially when vendors provide pseudo-risk-management justification for their offering – read Andrew Jaquith on the hamster wheel of pain
We submit that selection of security countermeasures requires measuring their effectiveness against a particular threat. Read more about this revolutionary idea on Preventing intellectual property abuse and you’ll see exactly how to choose a security product using a practical threat model – visit Practical Threat Analysis and download the free software.
