Two publicly traded technology companies have separately announced name changes this week. On Monday, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said that McAfee Security, which Intel acquired for $7.6 Billion in 2010, will become Intel Security, but will retain the familiar red shield. “The complexity of keeping digital identities safe grows as mobile applications and devices become…
DetailsEmbedded in all Microsoft Windows server operating systems and in its Azure platform as a service offering is Active Directory; a store of information about all the objects and their attributes that are active within a given Windows network domain. This includes printers, network devices, hardware servers and, most importantly, users. This storage of user…
Details[Full disclosure: As an industry analyst I conduct business with RSA, the security division of EMC, including white papers and recording videos of key executives and customers.] Update Jan 12, 2014: The Guardian reports that privacy rights groups are petitioning Stephan Colbert to boycott the RSA Conference. My reaction to the several calls that have been made by well-respected security researchers, most notably…
DetailsSecurity incident handling software company, Co3 Systems, announced today that Bruce Schneier had joined the company as CTO. Schneier is a highly regarded author and cryptographer who writes frequently on topics of privacy and security. Recently he was called on to help interpret documents revealed by Edward Snowden that uncovered the NSA’s subversion of a NIST…
DetailsMost of the press and preliminary analysis of the FireEye acquisition of Mandiant has been exuberant. The New York Times got to break the news just after the first of the New Year although the deal closed December 30, 2013. Of course the coverage contained the usual predictions of industry consolidation. This is not a consolidation play,…
Details[Full disclosure: As an industry analyst I conduct business with RSA, the security division of EMC, including white papers and recording videos of key executives and customers.] It began with a Reuters story from Joe Menn: Exclusive: Secret contract tied NSA and security industry pioneer in which it was disclosed that RSA, the crypto pioneer and security…
DetailsThreat protection vendor FireEye announced on Thursday that it had acquired security incident response provider Mandiant in a cash and stock deal worth more than $1 billion based on the current value of FireEye shares. The acquisition, which closed on Monday but only was publicly announced after the markets closed on Thursday, was one of the biggest…
DetailsAny organization that has not already started to think about the impact mobility has on IT security should start doing so this year. 63% of businesses provide formal access to some of their business applications to mobile users, a Quocirca research report “Digital Identities and the Open Business,” showed. Furthermore, the sheer ubiquity of mobile devices and…
Details“It’s the most emotional tiiiimmme of the yeeeaaar”… The holidays, filled with emotion. There’s so much going on – from travel, to shopping, to family gatherings, and of course the mad rush to finish out the year’s office workload. For many, it’s super stressful, which can bring on a wave of holiday-time emotion. One thing often…
DetailsMy coverage of the NSA’s massive data gathering and attacks on fundamental security technology has been focused on the expected impact on the IT security industry. I was one of the first to publish trepidation a day after the first Snowden report (NSA Surveillance Threatens US Competitiveness, June 7, 2013) and again a week later…
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