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Gartner Debunks Over-Hyped Security Threats
TPIRman writes "At Gartner's recent IT Security Summit, the research company's analysts identified five over-hyped security concerns. Among the supposed FUD are mobile malware, unsafe VoIP, and cracker-friendly wireless hotspots. Gartner, which has made a name for itself tracking hype, claims that irrational anxiety is holding back technologies that offer benefits greater than their security risks. A Techworld columnist argues, though, that Gartner is sending mixed messages."
It seems to me that Gartner gets paid to say stuff like this. Someone hands them a stack of studies and some cash, and tells them to "spin this and make us look good."
The question here is whether in this case they were paid by the VoIP and mobile technology providers, to convince everyone that everything is alright and nobody needs to worry, or by the virus writers, to convince everyone that everything is alright and nobody needs to worry...
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
This is actually a good question, especially in light of the security risk question. I think the only way to evaluate benefits of technology is to look at how much a technology reduces the cost of living and/or how much it improves quality of living. For instance, a plow greatly reduced the cost of living for farmers - they now had to spend less time plowing for a given amount of production. The invention of air conditioning increased quality of living quite a bit. It's a little more difficult to measure just what having VOIP, for instance, gives us. VOIP doesn't really reduce the cost of living, and it really doesn't improve the quality of living compared to POTS. Perhaps it does slightly reduce the costs, if VOIP is less expensive than POTS, because that means VOIP users spend less of their "time" paying for communications.
The risks need to be weighed against the benefit though. For instance, there's a greater risk of getting injured by a plow than by digging things by hand, but the benefit is huge. The way I think things should be examined is what is the added risk for added benefit?
My personal assessment is that VOIP or wireless hotspots, or whatever, are not going to improve my life quality over what it is now, nor will they reduce my cost of living significantly. So, if there is *any* added security risk, it's not even in my consideration.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
I've been Googling for the last fifteen minutes and couldn't find any reference about the Gartner Group downplaying AIDS.
Gartner debunked something? When did they become objective? This is the same Gartner that i've heard say "and for this consulting engagement price, i'm sure that our findings would favor your solution." Please. Any "research" they've done is obviously either just a mish mash of other people's findings, or it's sponsored by a vendor.
-- http://www.criticalassets.com
If you're gonna troll, choose a version of linux that was released a little more recently.
GETPKG - Package Management for Slackware
Yeah, the the other guy said, Red Hat 7.1 came out in 4-16-2001. Maybe try the latest Fedora Core, that will be the latest Red Hat type distro you can get. After you try that, and still have all the same problems, then you can complain.
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Aren't they the same group of people who fired someone for suggesting that people switch to Firefox from IE because IE wasn't secure? This was before SP2 was out I believe. Maybe they thought that was hype too... A group that fires someone for speaking the truth makes me question their qualification as consultants.
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