Greg Young

A member of the Gartner Blog Network

Greg Young
Research VP
6 years at Gartner
22 years IT security

Greg Young is a research vice president in Gartner and the lead analyst for network security. Mr. Young has experience in IT security in product companies, and in both the private and public sectors. He spent his military career in technology security… Read Full Bio

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Security Article Generator v89.7 Now Available

by Greg Young  |  October 9, 2008  |  1 Comment

The internet is proud to announce v89.7 of the Security Article Generator is now available.  Security Article Generator is the leading provider of topical headlines for press releases, white papers and new articles for the computer security industry.  Users enjoy the easy linking of a technology with a seemingly unrelated topical news or popular media item. 

According to a guy who lives in his mom’s basement who always answers press calls, Security Article Generator rated the top 3 nonsensical article titles in 2008 with:"Dancing With The Stars Finale Highlights Need for DNS Protection", "Economic Crisis Will Lead to Targeted Attacks" and "Britney Spears Driving Case Shows Need For Firewall Rule Reduction".

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IT security has a clear and simple 3 point proposition.  There is 1) a clear threat, and you do 2) reasonable things to 3) stop it.  That proposition breaks down when the threat is not clear or too far fetched, the safeguard is too intrusive or out of proportion to the threat, or if the measure won’t really do a good job.

We haven’t solved security, as evidenced by the casual and frequent announcements of breaches that 10 years ago would have had us shutting down our networks.  Despite having a healthy opportunity for good solutions, the IT security industry seems to generate a large amount of these bad propositions.

Don’t get me wrong, end users and buyers of IT security are mighty smart and too often underestimated.  But when we are bombarded with nonsensical advice and propositions, we have to stop and see if the hubbub is something we need to pay attention to, and once in a while we get fooled or Rick-rolled.

The bottom line is:

  • Vendors: don’t use Security Article Generator or try and make a bad proposition – stick to providing real solutions for real problems.  Your competitors are not your customer, your customer is the customer,  Take care of your users and go cold turkey off one-upmanship.
  • End users: apply the 3 point proposition, have a long memory, and don’t reward vendors who try and hyperventilate away your security budget .

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  • 1 The Best of the Bad   October 19, 2008 at 1:19 pm

    [...] however seems to be another case of the Security Article Generator going into production mode. For G8 leader, losing a small amount of money from your personal bank [...]