Hello (Again)

“Right now I’m having amnesia and deja vu at the same time.”

— Steven Wright

Hello, all. Back for my second stint as a Gartner network security analyst and blogger. I left in early 2010 to go off and build/run some cool application and network security product lines. When I got the opportunity to return to Gartner in mid-2013, I jumped at the chance to once again help organizations make the right strategic security technology decisions.

I’ve been busy since returning. I (working with Greg Young and Jeremy D’Hoinne) led Gartner’s analysis of Cisco’s acquisition of Sourcefire; I wrote with Mr. D’Hoinne about how to determine when an organization is ready for a next-gen firewall; and I am lead author for the 2013 “Magic Quadrant for Intrusion Prevention Systems“, published last December. In addition, I’ve  also contributed to Jeremy’s fine note describing factors important to building a SSL traffic decryption strategy, and I helped Craig Lawson in an update to Gartner’s definition for next-gen intrusion prevention systems.

In 2014, I will continue covering such network security areas as firewalls, IPS, UTMs, WAFs, and associated technologies. I also plan to define Gartner’s approach to security (firewall) policy management, and hope to start dealing with issues within enterprise Security Operations Centers.

I’m answering many of the same client inquiries as I did four years ago – the buzzwords are different, the threat has changed a bit, but the core problems endure. My next blog will provide my take on how things have changed (yet remain uncannily the same) in network security between January 2010 and January 2014.