Hack The Planet

I was out at Interop the last few days and I thought I would just throw a few of my impressions out into the ether.

There is something very disturbing about how rude people are when you try and talk to them. Not everyone at Interop was rude but there were some folks that were just straight up jerks. I know everyone working in a booth is just trying to do their job but aren’t we all there to inter-operate or what not? To communicate and show how we can work together?

It is similar at most shows I have been to. People working the booth don’t want to discuss what they are doing or even just how the current show is going. I stopped by the Foundry booth and the lady that greeted me turned into a stone cold bitch when she found out I was a partner and actually already used Foundry gear. That is the way to keep partners or keep me recommending your gear. Not that I have amazing say in what people purchase but I talk to a lot of folks and I make sure to mention other companies that have gear or software I like. Maybe the person buys, maybe they don’t but they have heard a positive reference to the company.

The issue is the people that are sent to shows. The company I went with sent the right people, a good mix of marketing, sales and engineers. I didn’t notice anyone at our booth blowing folks off or being like “You’re a vendor, go away!” The booth staff even lent some of our gear to other booths just because.

In contrast to the Foundry witch the Solar Winds folks were great. I chatted with them for a bit and have a customer of mine looking into using them to monitor system utilization. Having a positive outlook on a company greatly increases my desire to recommend their product or even just work harder to make it work well with ours.

All in all Interop was a good show. I just think companies need to stop hiring folks to work the booths that A) aren’t really employees of the company and B) don’t have any idea what the company does.

I have found in my travels that more often than I would like people have interpreted security as needing to be so complex that not even they understand it. “Well if I plug this in over here and then close my eyes and plug the other end over there we should be secure.” Security should be clean and simple. I know that the vision of some teenage kid in his pj’s hacking away when his folks think he’s asleep terrifies us all, but come on, who are you fooling. Making security complex only means that you spend less time working on your systems to confirm that they are patched and up to date, or even really working. When testing out a new security product you should find out how much time it will take to manage and how it will make your life easier in the long run.

In a recent phone conversation I found myself thinking, “Why does this person want this specific solution?” This is probably how you should start any conversation when you are discussing implementing a security product/solution in someone’s network. The issue is the person didn’t know why they needed this specific solution so I was educating them on the risks they were taking by not having it. This seems to be a constant theme in my conversations with people, “Why this solution?”

It shouldn’t be so surprising to me that people often don’t know what they want or why they need something. The security industry is full of people that know everything there is to know about security (or think they do). The issue is people outside of the industry really don’t understand the risks that are out there or how to protect themselves. If you ask these folks many will say spam, viruses or hackers but they don’t know why they say that. It is just what CNN, MSN or whatever news channel they subscribe to tells them to fear.

Maybe it is time for the security industry to start an initiative to educate people who are not security savvy as to the real risks that are out there….like Lindsey Lohan.