Abner Stories

Marketing Security? An Introduction

I think security should be a core component of marketing, engineering, and training strategy for every tech vendor that sells infrastructure components and mission critical apps. Here's why.

1. Customers Are Becoming More Discerning:
Large customers are learning about the risks certain products and technologies represent to high value information - wireless LANs and web services are two current targets. Sales teams are likely to encounter questions concerning: security quality assurance, developer and customer security education, vulnerability response, and government regulations like HIPAA, Gramm-Leach-Bliley, EU Privacy Act and The Patriot Act.

2. Security Patches Are Expensive:
Large software vendors spend roughly $100,000 to produce a security patch for each platform a product supports – often driving costs to over a million dollars per vulnerability. The burden on customers is even greater as IT personnel work overtime to protect themselves from new vulnerabilities.

3. Leading Vendors Are Building Secure Reputations Haphazardly:
Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, Sun, and Cisco all use security as a message in their marketing efforts. These leaders and many others all address components of a customer’s desire to manage risk, but few profit from these efforts due to a focus on functionality and not the multi-faceted and interwoven tasks of managing risk.

Note: I intend on going into detail on each of these three points up in separate postings over the next couple of weeks. Stay tuned.