Is the Grand Hall of London’s Olympia exhibition centre the best place to project an image of an industry? To my mind its galleried space, rich with cast iron girders and glass is more appropriate for an antiquarian salon than the latest in advanced technology.
Yet one could argue that it is actually very appropriate to the nature of the security industry. Data protectors may be operating in a technological environment but the threats they are dealing with are as old as the hills – theft, damage, invasions of privacy, breaches of trust and disclosure.
So to this year’s Infosecurity exhibition and conference, the meeting space for so many firms dealing with all those troubling security matters. The key issues identified here - as in the rest of the media over the last couple of years – are (a) awareness of data security having become a matter of criminality rather than vandalism and (b) the techniques of social engineering of temptation and false trust.
There is however a dichotomy. Yes, people are aware that criminal gangs have taken over and that they have to be careful about opening emails and viewing web pages. What they buy is either a system with a comprehensive built structure of protection or a solution from security specialist. The former might be a company like Juniper, a network supplier but providing comprehensive network access control for its products. The latter might be a company like Sophos, offering security solutions across a wide range of hardware.
The market is far more complex than that simplification, of course. Security experts categorise information security in four areas: the network, applications, internal threats and data integrity.
Are customers – particularly SMEs - thinking in terms of those categories? Or do they just want a solution. Perhaps Security as a Service (SaaS) may be the answer for them.
Watch this space for comment and my developing ideas on the matter.