John Pescatore

This is the 11th year I’ve presented at Gartner’s annual Symposium in Orlando, Florida. The terrorist attacks of 2001 and the dot com bust of the same timeframe caused a lot of changes back then but for the last 8 years it has largely been the same. The same type of room in the Swan hotel with the same oatmeal soap, the same room for client 1-1s, the same analyst work room and the same meals each day.

For whatever reason, Gartner and Disney made a lot of changes this year. The 1-1s and analyst rooms have moved and even worse Disney got rid of the oatmeal soap and now has some sissy Mandarin Mint soap – horrors! It’s funny to see how much these changes have upset the routines of long time attendees, both analysts and clients. Humans really don’t react quickly to change.

For that reason, attackers love change – it always creates openings. The best security programs do react quickly to change. Change in business processes, change in technology, change in threats. These days its all about how quickly you recognize change, how quickly you block threats – but just as importantly how quickly you move from trying to block use of a new technology to containing the use to embracing and securing the use of new technology.