On Friday I attended (with John Halliday, our Director of IS Audit, and several clients) a presentation by Internet Security Systems on "State of Security: An X-Force Briefing".
This was, to say the least, interesting, and it is fascinating to have a little chink of insight into the cloak-and-dagger side of information security. The presentation was somewhat American - if you are Australian you'll know what I mean, if you're American you'll wonder what the fuss is about. Suffice to say, the presentation was a little militaristic and "X-Files", but it works in getting the message across, and their deep and undying devotion for "moronic hackers" that are "dumb and stupid" is clear. The cloak-and-dagger effect is reinforced through their regular assessment of the internet's security condition: as of this writing we are at "AlertCon 1".
They are clearly doing some good work in the area of operation system vulnerability detection and prevention for their clients. You are rather left with the impression that the only good hacker is a hacker behind bars, but then if you are wanting someone on your side on issues relating to technical IT Security, I don't think you could ask for a better ally.
Quote of the day, reflecting a rather hard-nosed view of the world and a message to users that they need to be proactive in managing their information:
"Life is tough, but it's a whole lot tougher if you're stupid"
Kind of says it all, really.
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