Network and application security

Websense gives partners more reasons to say “yes” to its program

One of the philosophies that I really appreciated out of former Intel Chairman and CEO Andrew Grove when he was still active was his staunch belief that investments in the future should not be sacrificed for the short-term good of a company’s stock price. This is not something that many high-tech vendors usually pay much attention to when the economy is all whacked out (like right now), so it’s refreshing when I hear about a company that subscribes to that notion, especially when the investments are focused on solidifying and supporting its channel relationships.

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Lisa Loe out at McAfee

Lisa Loe, McAfee’s vice president of North American channels, has left the security vendor after just three months.

McAfee just confirmed this afternoon that Loe is no longer with the company. McAfee hired Loe in September; she had previously spent nine years as Symantec’s senior director of strategic partner sales, but she left in April after corporate restructuring affected her job.

Just last month, McAfee president and CEO Dave Dewalt told CRN that Loe’s hiring was part of a concerted effort to show that McAfee would be 100% dedicated to the channel. And last week, McAfee channel chief Roger King said this year’s executive shuffling at Symantec — including the departure of channel chief Julie Parrish — was a boon for his company and its partners.

Looks like King, who will oversee McAfee’s North American channel for now, will now have to deal with some of those same issues.

Microsoft plans more security offerings

Morro, Microsoft’s free consumer security software, is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg regarding the company’s latest security push.

Microsoft this week announced that a security and IT management offering for businesses will become part of its hosted Microsoft Online Services family in 2010. And the company also has a major security-related announcement planned for next month.

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Microsoft sets its sights on consumer security

Microsoft is coming out with free consumer security software — a move that could spell trouble for the leaders in the market.

The company said yesterday it’s discontinuing its Windows Live OneCare subscription security service next year and replacing it with the free software, code-named Morro. Morro will protect against viruses, spyware, rootkits and trojans, according to Microsoft.

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Symantec CEO John Thompson to retire

Symantec CEO John Thompson is retiring next year, and COO Enrique Salem — a controversial figure among Symantec partners — will replace him.

The company made the announcement this afternoon, and the move will become official April 4, 2009. Thompson will remain as chairman of Symantec’s board of directors, and Salem will join the board at that time. Thompson becomes the second high-level Symantec executive to leave in as many months; worldwide channel vice president Julie Parrish left for NetApp in October.

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Integrated security suites neither integrated nor sweet

The big trend in the security market these days is the “integrated security suite” — a packaged software offering that promises to ”reduce complexity, make for easier deployments and give customers comprehensive, end-to-end protection,” or some marketing mumbo-jumbo like that.

But a new Forrester Research report says, by and large, these integrated suites are neither integrated nor sweet. And that’s good news for security solutions providers.

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Symantec’s Security Operations Center: A look inside

During last week’s Symantec Partner Engage conference, I got to do something only 200 of Symantec’s 17,500 employees can do: access the company’s Security Operations Center (SOC).

The SOC in Alexandria, Va. is one of Symantec’s four centers throughout the world. The others are in England, Australia and India, and together they process 2 billion incidents a day for Symantec’s managed security services customers. Here are some photographs from inside the SOC and some more information about the facility:

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RSA names partners of the year

RSA recently recognized its top partners at its SecurWorld Partner Conference. Here were the winners:

North America Channel Partner of the Year: Forsythe Solutions Group, Skokie, Ill.
DMR Channel Partner of the Year: CDW, Vernon Hills, Ill. 
East Channel Partner of the Year: Akibia, Westborough, Mass.
Central Channel Partner of the Year: DPSciences, Cincinnati
West Provider of the Year: Network Computing Architects, Bellevue, Wash.
Canada Channel Partner of the Year: Cyberklix, Mississauga, Ont.

Symantec tries to mend its ’stubbed toe’

I’m a Symantec user. At home, I run Norton 360. My work laptop has Symantec AntiVirus. They both work very well. But oh my God, are they memory hogs.

Whenever either computer is running slowly — which happens a lot – I launch the ol’ Windows Task Manager, and sure enough, there’s the Symantec program, eating up RAM like Pac-Man gobbles up dots. At last week’s Partner Engage conference, COO Enrique Salem even admitted problems with product quality, saying, “We’ve stubbed our toe a little bit.”

Now — finally — Symantec’s trying to fix the problem.

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CompTIA security-certified professionals now top 50,000

The Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) says it has certified more than 50,000 IT professionals with its vendor-neutral CompTIA Security+ designation. How many individual vendors can say the same thing?

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