Friday, December 29, 2006

On Ugly Stuff

So, Mike Murray brings up this fun point: ' My favorite way of asking it: "What, if your company [...], would be a complete deal-breaker for you? What would make you completely disengage?"'

I'll bite, Mike: one of the truly disgusting things (which would make me reach for my resume in a second) would be for a [security] product company to use a competitor's product to protect its own network. Don't laugh (please cry, in fact!), this stuff actually happens...

I am sure that decent companies run their own stuff and Snorts happily protect Sourcefire's network while Proventias guard ISS (and now IBM) from evil attackers, thus telling the world that their stuff is indeed the best for them as well as their customers. However, what in the whole wide world would make you buy security gear from somebody who prefers some other brand to his very own? And what would make you work for such a company [well, maybe a fat salary will :-), but that is a separate story]?

A milder version would be to simply shy away from using its own product, because it is so "enterprise-grade" that a small company (such as its creator) will not benefit from using it internally. It is a bit less disgusting and credibility-busting, but it smells pretty darn bad as well...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hey Anton,

I can totally understand that one - if I was working for a company, I'd want them to "eat their own dog food", so to speak.

I've never been in that situation myself - whenever I've worked with or for a product vendor, they have used their own product to protect themselves.

But there's definitely a lack of integrity in the idea of not using it.

Dr Anton Chuvakin