John Pescatore

A member of the Gartner Blog Network

Archives for September, 2009


Back to the Future: The Next Generation Firewall

by John Pescatore  |  September 30, 2009  |  8 Comments

Back in the mid-1990s I worked at Trusted Information Systems in the early days of the firewall industry. TIS Gauntlet, like most of the first commercial firewall products, were proxy-based – they broke the connection from the outside world to the internal trusted network and used protocol-specific proxies to provide very thorough inspection of the [...]

8 Comments »

Category: Uncategorized     Tags:

Twelve Word Tuesday: The Cloud Needs Its Own MPLS

by John Pescatore  |  September 29, 2009  |  Submit a Comment

Without an added value security layer, public cloud fails for business applications.

Submit a Comment »

Category: Uncategorized     Tags:

Benchmarking Security – Are We Safe Yet?

by John Pescatore  |  September 25, 2009  |  4 Comments

I still cringe at that scene in Marathon Man where Laurence Olivier puts Dustin Hoffman in the dentist chair and tortures him while asking “Is it safe??” In fact, now I cringe even more because it reminds me of so many conversations between CEOs/CIOs and CISOs: “OK, we gave you the budget increase. Is it [...]

4 Comments »

Category: Uncategorized     Tags:

Don’t Blame Your ISP For Dirty Bits If You Continue To Pay for Them

by John Pescatore  |  September 24, 2009  |  Submit a Comment

I seem have dedicated a lot of Twelve Word Tuesday posts to the issue of getting ISPs to be more active in filtering malware out of the incoming bits they sell us (see here and here and here.) This week a lot more verbose versions came out, with Google calling for ISPs to cooperate in [...]

Submit a Comment »

Category: Uncategorized     Tags:

The Myth of the Unstoppable “State-Sponsored” Cyber Attack

by John Pescatore  |  September 23, 2009  |  9 Comments

I do a lot of presentations on the changing threats in cyberspace. I always start out by saying the economics of developing cyber-threats is very different than for physical threats or traditional warfare. Governments do not have an advantage in developing cyber-threats – that is why the vast majority of the most damaging attacks are [...]

9 Comments »

Category: Uncategorized     Tags:

Twelve Word Tuesday: Blocking Attacks Is Perfectly Neutral

by John Pescatore  |  September 22, 2009  |  Submit a Comment

“Network Neutrality” still allows ISPs to block “unlawful” content and harmful connections.

Submit a Comment »

Category: Uncategorized     Tags:

Turns Out Security Down Under Is A Lot Like Security Up Over

by John Pescatore  |  September 21, 2009  |  1 Comment

And the toilets flush in the same direction, too! At last week’s Gartner security summit in Sydney, I did five presentations, was on the closing panel, did several one on ones, and had numerous discussions with conference attendees. If I took away the Australian accents, I would have been hard pressed to tell I was [...]

1 Comment »

Category: Uncategorized     Tags:

Twelve Word Tuesday: Block More, Mop Up Less

by John Pescatore  |  September 15, 2009  |  Submit a Comment

If the roof doesn’t leak, who cares how hard/often it rains?

Submit a Comment »

Category: Uncategorized     Tags:

Driving Safely Down Under

by John Pescatore  |  September 14, 2009  |  Submit a Comment

I’m here in Sydney for the Gartner Asia Pacific Security Summit, so blogging this week will be sporadic but with hopefully some flavor of the security concerns in this region. One thing I noticed right away is that cars drive on the left of the roadways, meaning you always have to look right first as [...]

Submit a Comment »

Category: Uncategorized     Tags:

President Obama Joines the Worriers About Social Networks and Data Leakage

by John Pescatore  |  September 10, 2009  |  1 Comment

Reuters reports that when asked by a teenager how to become president, President Obama replied: “Well, let me give you some very practical tips. First of all, I want everybody here to be careful about what you post on Facebook, because in the YouTube age, whatever you do, it will be pulled up again later somewhere in [...]

1 Comment »

Category: Uncategorized     Tags: