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Mon, September 25, 2006

Amrit Loves Cowbell

By Rich

Amrit Williams is a coworker over at Gartner and he’s obsessed with cowbell and security tools that go to 11. Let’s just say this post isn’t the first time he’s brought it up.

Seriously, Amrit is a great analyst and welcome addition to the security blogging world. Unlike many of us he worked his way through the trenches of the vendor world, including stints at McAfee and NCircle.

And, in this case, he’s right. A dirty secret of security is that if you do your job too well, people stop buying new product. Remember when AV was $30 with unlimited free updates (and didn’t bring your system to its knees)? Seriously, it was.

Here’s a snippet, and check out his site:

Bottom line: You should not have to pay more for increased functionality year over year – demand more from your vendors, tell them that you don’t need an anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-rootkit, anti-phishing, anti-x, with a personal firewall, host-based intrusion detection, and wireless security and networking configuration capabilities each sold to you at a premium – get them all for a single price, the price you paid last year for AV. Let them know that turning it up to 11 is not going to win the gig when what you are really looking for is more cow-bell.

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