Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Today The Industry Is Changed!

Don’t I love overly dramatic headings? Smile Yup, I do.
Pretty much since the day Security Scoreboard launched, I was a MAJOR fan of the site and have always considered it “an industry-changing idea”  that can solve the #1 problem in information security – no, not APT! – inability to match solutions to security problems and rate what solutions actually solve those problems well. The industry, as we all know, is full of crapware – from “PCI scans” for $0.41 per month to fake anti-spyware and “magic” appliances that “do security stuff.”
And now we have a powerful weapon to fight it! Today Security Scoreboard changes everything … again.
Specifically:
Security Scoreboard has announced the appointment of security industry veteran
Dominique Levin as Chief Executive Officer. The site offering unbiased end-user
reviews and ratings on security products also received an investment and moved its
headquarters to the Silicon Valley.
Yes, you can still think of the site as “Yelp for Security Products” – but also start thinking of it as “crowd-sourced and reality-based Gartner.”  In my opinion, there is NOTHING (!!!) that our industry needs more than clarity and Yes, even more than APT defense and easy-to-use SIEM Smile Lately, a lot of very smart folks have been bemoaning the state of the industry (example, example) and Security Scoreboard relaunch cannot have come at a better time.
Full press-release is pasted below (original) – yes, I am that excited to do it:
Security Scoreboard, which offers security product ratings and analytics based on real-world user experiences, announced that it has received an initial angel investment.
"Crowd-sourcing could significantly improve the validity and quality of the information available about commercial IT products”, said Dana Gardner, president and principal analyst at Interarbor Solutions. “As a consumer I can look at Angie's List, Rotten Tomatoes or TripAdvisor and it's crazy such thing doesn't exist for IT."
“Even if you have the time and money to test different solutions, it's always the details of real-life implementations that come to bite you”, said Chris Sawall, Supervisor of Information Security at Ameren Corporation, a Fortune 500 company and one of the nation's largest investor-owned electric and gas utilities. “You never know how technologies and solutions will really work until you have invested in them. Security Scoreboard allows me to be better informed."
At the time of the investment, the company also appointedDominique Levin as CEO.
Levin comes to Security Scoreboard from LogLogic Inc., a leader in security and log management solutions, where she served as Chief Marketing Officer and Acting CEO. She was also previously VP Marketing at PoliVec, held positions at Nippon Telegraph and Telephone and Philips Consumer Electronics and generated over $630 million in shareholder value as a venture capital investor.
“The recent funding and the move to Silicon Valley will allow us to tap into engineering talent to accelerate our roadmap,” said Levin.
“Security Scoreboard recently introduced new analytics capabilities, which highlight top vendors by user ratings and present trends on site visits”, said Dr. Boaz Gelbord, President and co-founder of Security Scoreboard and himself a practicing security executive. “We are looking to add more sophisticated analysis leveraging user generated data”.   
"The new analytics move Security Scoreboard in the direction from merely showing you what your peers are thinking to making true crowd-based recommendations about which vendor tools to use", said Jay Leek, Vice President of International Security at Equifax.
The company plans to raise additional venture funding later this year.
About Security Scoreboard:
Security Scoreboard is a community generated review and rating site to help security practitioners and executives select the right information security solutions. Security Scoreboard is supported by an Advisory Group and User Council of industry leading CISOs, CIOs and security managers. The site leverages crowd sourced ratings and state of the art analytics to provide recommendations based on real life experiences of other customers.
I am REALLY looking forward to the new era – and I do realize that it will take work!
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Dr Anton Chuvakin