Yesterday, Adrian posted his take on a conversation we had last week. We were headed over to happy hour, talking about the usual dribble us analyst types get all hot and bothered about, when he dropped the bombshell that one of our favorite groups of products could be in serious trouble.
The Oracle Critical Patch Update for October 2008 was released today. On the database side there are a lot of the usual suspects; DMSYS.ODM_MODEL_UTIL seems to be patched in every CPU during the last few years. All in all the database modifications appear minor so patch the databases according to your normal deployment schedules.
Rich and I got into a conversation Friday about database security, and the fate of vendors in this subsegment, in light of recent financial developments. Is it possible that this entire database security sub-market could vanish? Somewhat startled by the thought, we started going down the list of names, guessing who would be acquired, who was profitable, and who will probably not make it through the current economic downturn without additional investment- it seems plausible that the majority of…
Thankfully most criminals are not that bright. Article in the Arizona Republic this morning about a group of three Mexican nationals who were on a little shopping spree in the Valley of the Sun. The trio was going to various electronic retailers and making purchased with fake credit cards. The cards appeared to be legitimate card stock from legitimate Mexican banks, but account numbers from valid U.S. accounts.
There was some great hype in the wireless security world this weekend thanks to an article that made it on to Slashdot, and some FUD pumping so-called security consultants. Elcomsoft issued a press release that they can now crack WPA keys WAY faster using the GPUs (Graphics Processing Units) on the latest video cards.
What a wild, wacky, crazy week. I have a funny suspicion a lot of stock brokers and investors are scraping together their spare change for some major liquid escapes this weekend. As a small business we haven’t felt the impact yet, but we are keeping a close eye on things and preparing to adjust our strategy as needed. Security deals are definitely slowing- we sense an impending rush of acquisitions, and a general feeling of nervousness. The need for security never goes away, but if you aren’t…
Someone at Google has created Mail Goggles. It’s a little Gmail utility to keep you from sending out email while, uh, under the influence. Jon Perlow, the author, had this to say …
I don’t remember the exact quote from King of the Hill (an animated series here in the US), but it went something like this.
Well, I did not see this coming. Today Symantec Corp has agreed to acquire Message Labs for $695 million. That represents close to a 5x multiple on $145M in revenue. While market conditions are not rosy, this price is not out of line for a segment leader who is seeing growth in the highly competitive email security market. This appears to be a good strategic move; they address their largest weakness in email security (SaaS), they can leverage the continued convergence of security offerings in…
Looks like the cat is out of the bag. Someone managed to figure out the details of clickjacking and released a proof of concept against Flash. With the information out in public, Jeremiah and Robert are free to discuss it.