Symantec, Dancers and Hot Issues

I had the pleasure of attending the Symantec Vision Event in Sydney last week.

The event followed a familiar path. A loud Corporate video to open proceedings, followed by a troop of tap dancers. What tap dancers have to do with Symantec remains a mystery to me, so all ideas are welcome.

Then a senior sales exec presented corporate motherhood, while the audience waited for the real content to arrive. And arrive it did, with interesting keynote speakers from Symantec and a superb business keynote.

Glitz and glamour aside, my overall take-out was that Symantec has products that are at the heart of many of the big IT issues.

In 2006 The Council of Australian University Directors of IT (www.caudit.edu.au) developed a list of their Top 10 issues. They have updated the list for 2007 and it is

1. Staffing and Workforce Planning - Skills Shortage, Retention and Recruitment
2. Service Management - Support and Delivery: Availability, Capacity, Change Management
3. Project, Portfolio and Risk Management
4. Governance and IT Strategic Planning
5. Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery
6. Identity Management: Authentication, Authorisation, Access
7. Security
8. Information Management: Storage, Archiving, Records Management
9. Funding and Resourcing
10. Administrative Systems - ERP Upgrades and Enterprise Architecture

I think that Symantec has products in 5 or maybe 6 of these 10 categories.

I preach that any selection process should begin with a detailed understanding of the need, and then should include considerations of the other technology inter-relationships – both technical and commercial.

When that work is done, I am sure that in many cases, Symantec products will be worthy of consideration.

Web 2.0 – Hype, Reality and Security

I have been reading a lot lately on Web 2.0. There are numerous articles and commentaries that range from “Its hype” to
“It’s changing the world” to “Its YouTube”.

There is no doubt that today, millions of people put content on the Web using sites such as Myspace, Facebook and Linkedin. There are numerous Blog sites such as this one, and then aggregation services like Technorati and Feedburner.

The scale is astounding. If I read it correctly, there are close to 8 million Blogs on Technorati, and on Myspace it says that more than 700,000 Blogs have been updated today!

These sites are much more than hype – they are phenomenally successful at attracting users.

So is there a security implication if they are used in a business environment?

Security company Sophos seem to argue that there is. Sophos publish a Security threat update, and if you haven’t read it, I recommend it.

www.sophos.com/pressoffice/news/articles/2007/07/securityrep.html

This Sophos report states that virus writers are placing malware on third-party web sites – and they suggest that about 80% of all web-based malware is being hosted on innocent, but compromised, sites.

Sadly, malicious code is also placed on the social networking sites. Sophos quote that in March 2007 the SpaceStalk spyware Trojan was discovered embedded in a QuickTime movie on a Myspace page.

So, how do you protect your users and resources from this malicious code? Do you block these sites?