Greg Young

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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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Worst and Best Security Sales Practices: 2 of 3

by Greg Young  |  January 31, 2010  |  4 Comments

Thank you for the comments and emails for the least post.

Here is the second, the Chameleon.  I see a lot of this worst practice from security companies with products that are in the “climbing the slope” of enlightenment phase of the hype cycle, who miss the buzz of those products that are new and seen to be cool at the Technology Trigger phase.  Of course, they forget that there isn’t usually much money for pre-Slope products. 

Although not unique to security markets, security has a high incidence rate because of the fast rate of new product introduction.  The security market has this high rate in response to the change in threats, and the introduction of new technologies that need securing.

I used to see this a lot with products being called a new kind of IPS, and today see it with sometimes with NAC,DLP, or next-generation firewalls being thrown about liberally.  In the slide below, “See also #1″ refers to the slide here.

worstbest2

4 Comments »

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4 responses so far ↓

  • 1 Steve Lodin   February 1, 2010 at 2:41 pm

    The one I like – hiring a qualified, but limited experience person to fill a role, then trying to sell him as an expert to the media and analysts. Experience builds credibility, not false statements portrayed as fact.

  • 2 Greg Young   February 1, 2010 at 6:28 pm

    Sage words, Steve.

  • 3 This Just In: IPS is now DLP   February 4, 2010 at 9:50 am

    [...] colleague Greg Young has written a clever series of blogs on classic vendor mistakes. This one resonated with me: “Saying your product is in X market because X is currently [...]

  • 4 Fun Reading on Security and Compliance #24 | Random Chaos   April 8, 2010 at 8:38 am

    [...] blog has hilarious “Worst and Best Security Sales Practices” (first). Example: ‘”saying your product is in market X, since X is currently [...]