Security Strategy, Plan, Budget

I just love these folks. Take the best open source pen testing tool you can think of, put it on steroids, give it a user interface that makes it simple and fast to pen test in a production environ­ment without losing the granularity of manual testing if you need it, and you have Core Impact. Well, almost. Every year I say that I am going to find a better tool, and I actually do comb the market -- unsuccessfully.

How do you differentiate a product that keeps getting mixed up with a commod­itized market, but really doesn't belong there? What differentiators do you look for that can keep you from being included in a herd where you don't belong?

ArcSight gets a lot of play among security experts in the security event management (SEM)/security information manager (SIM) game.

Sometimes you run across a company that just deserves to be selected as an innova­tor. You look them over and won­der why you didn't pick up on them before. Mandiant is one of those companies. There is a reason, of course. Mandiant started as a services company providing forensics, litigation support and incident response. So if you were in the product purchasing mood, you would not have run across these folks.

Sometimes a different approach is needed. The notion of the UTM was developed from the need to consolidate point solutions. There are a lot of problems, of course. They cost more to buy and manage, they use more power and they need a sophisticated staff to manage them.

If you thought the UTM market was crowded, take a look at the intrusion prevention systems (IPS) market. We bluntly asked our innovator in this product space why they thought that they were innovators in such a commoditized market. The answer was immediate and unambiguous: "When a product category becomes mainstream, there are big opportunities, but you must innovate to take advantage of them."

Wireless, is it? Everything is going wireless - well almost everything. That, in itself, poses a challenge for a wireless security company, such as this innovator. It also offers big opportunities and AirMagnet has identified and addressed them.