Clouds Got In The Way

The Configure virus, aka Conficker C couldn't have come at a better time. For the past few years, we've pointed out that the security industry needs a good old fashioned virus to put a spike in sales. The timing of Conficker couldn't have been any better — you'd think that the RSA Conference team was giving PR advice to Conficker's creators. Imagine this scenario — in March, about five weeks before a big security conference, news gets out of the discovery of a "state of the art" threat with advanced intelligent features and modern link security for phoning home. This threat was to deliver its payload on April 1st (just three weeks before the conference). Just what the security industry needed. Unfortunately, there were only a few vendors who make marketing hype around this threat. Almost 1/3 of the signage at the show exhibits were about "cloud" strategy — the industry's latest buzzwords. And it's worth pointing out that these were mostly hype strategies without any real underlying technology yet. And the keynote's speakers' slides also were mostly about future strategies, not dealing with the current threats. It's a shame — a threat with such good timing is a valuable thing to waste.